Visa Law Would Give U.S. World’s Tired, Poor Technologists: View
2011-12-01 00:00:10.0 GMT
By the Editors
Dec. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Congress works. Or so it seemed for a
day this week when the House of Representatives voted 389 to 15
to ease restrictions on the entry of highly skilled immigrants
to the U.S.
The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2011 was
sponsored by conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats
alike. It avoided the political pitfalls of comprehensive
immigration reform by focusing instead on a very narrow yet
necessary change, eliminating country-specific caps on immigrant
engineers, computer scientists and the like. In a measure of its
broad support, the legislation is backed by technology
companies, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and pro-immigration
groups.
Under current law, immigrants from an individual country
can claim no more than 7 percent of the 140,000 employment green
cards issued annually. As Representative Steve Cohen, Democrat
of Tennessee, pointed out, that cap applies equally to Iceland
(population 300,000) and India (1.2 billion and rising).
Removing the caps will enable U.S. companies to retain more
skilled immigrants from countries such as India and China, which
have a surfeit of scientists and technologists eager to work in
the U.S.
In addition, the legislation would raise the country limit
for family green cards from 7 percent of a total of 226,000 to
15 percent, thereby easing backlogs for immigrants from Mexico
and the Philippines, in particular, and helping, perhaps, to
strengthen families.
What the legislation will not do is increase the total
number of green cards dispensed. That’s a shame because doing so
could help boost a still-sagging U.S. economy. Only 15 percent
of visas are granted for economic reasons, a policy that
undermines U.S. companies competing in a global talent pool.
Foreign students account for the majority of computer science
and engineering doctorates earned from U.S. institutions. (In
2006, more than 4,500 foreign students earned engineering
Ph.D.’s in the U.S., almost two-thirds of the total.) Yet
there’s no policy to allow, let alone encourage, them to stay in
the U.S. after graduation.
Add in that immigrants have a much higher propensity to
create new businesses -- a Duke University study found that they
helped found more than a quarter of the technology and
engineering companies established in the U.S. between 1995 and
2005 -- and one is left wondering why this simple visa reform
didn’t take place eons ago.
The answer, of course, is politics. Republican presidential
candidates are busy competing to make the most nativist appeals
for votes. After the House passed its legislation on Nov. 29,
Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, host of the upcoming caucuses,
promptly placed a hold on the bill, which is expected to have
broad support from his Senate colleagues.
The 112th Congress has made little progress of any sort and
none at all on immigration. There is no reason a bill that
passed the House by an overwhelming margin should be stymied in
the Senate. For the health of the U.S. economy -- and perhaps
for the health of Congress itself -- this eminently passable,
aggressively unobjectionable, bipartisan legislation should be
approved quickly.
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--Editors: Francis Wilkinson, David Shipley
