US Immigration Policy & Global Competitiveness

A line from a poem, “The New Colossus”, by the nineteenth-century American poet Emma Lazarus, appears on a plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty. It ends with Liberty herself speaking:

“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

 

While this may have sufficed as American immigration policy pre-WWI, when a strong back and a desire to work was all that was necessary to build out the nation’s infrastructure, it doesn’t cut it today. And yet, in many ways, these sentiments continue to be reflected by US immigration policy in the 21^st century.

America is slipping by most meaningful, objective measures: Education, healthcare, productivity, GDP per capita, trade deficits, etc. I was at a private lecture, a couple of years ago, at which Gene Kranz (“Failure is Not An Option”) was the guest speaker. He decried the situation in fairly stark terms by saying that there will not be enough US aerospace engineering graduates to backfill the positions vacated by retiring NASA engineers. How are we going to beat the Chinese to the moon or continue to push the boundaries of exploration with a manned mission to Mars if we can’t fully staff NASA?

The US has many different visa classes. The H1B is an employer-sponsored visa specifically for those positions that require advanced degrees. However, the number of H1Bs available each year is a fraction of the demand, meaning that one’s chances of getting a visa are reduced to a lottery. Companies like Google and Microsoft have been vocal in their view that their ability to fully staff in the US is negatively impacted by the inadequate quota levels of available H1B visas and have gone so far as to open substantial R&D offices in Vancouver, as well as in places like India, China & Russia.

While getting an H1B is a milestone for many professionals, it is limited in terms of time (3 year term, 6 years max), and does not allow for spouses or children to work in the US. Nor is it a path to US citizenship – that path is through a Green Card.

There are essentially two ways to get a coveted Green Card – sponsorship by a family member already resident in the US, or sponsorship by an employer. The family sponsored applicants need not have any advanced skills or education – only a desire to reside in the US and a family member capable of sponsoring them. And while we cling to the belief that it is possible to live the American Dream, the reality is that many of these Green Card holders have neither the education nor the skills necessary to help America improve its competitiveness in a frictionless, flat world.

I speak from personal experience when I say that the path to Green Card for educated professionals is not trivial. Many potential Green Card applicants may also be H1B visa holders, at least the lucky few to have gotten one. The perception continues to be propagated that a Green Card applicant can’t be in the country to fill a position that an American is capable of doing. The first step is for the employer to demonstrate to the Department of Labor that no American meets the minimum qualifications laid out for that position. Not that they are more qualified than the prospective immigrant, simply that they meet the minimum qualifications. This is a very low bar to set and as a result, many highly qualified non-US citizens that want to live, raise their families and pay taxes in the US are not able to do so.

The sad fact is that these jobs are being created elsewhere, as the production of “bits” has very different location requirements than does the production of “atoms”. American leadership in technology and its competitive advantage are evaporating, and what’s unfortunate is that many of the people that could help stop this slide, have been lined up at the door, asking politely to get in.  However, too many are turned away and prevented from doing so.

Immigration needs to be managed, but the pool of potential immigrants is a tremendous resource to be tapped. An enlightened immigration policy would be aligned with a clearly defined set of national priorities. Want to improve competitiveness and GDP? Make it easier for educated professionals to live and work in the country. Let their spouses, many of which are also highly educated, work and contribute as well. And most importantly, so doing will allow their children to be educated, work and stay in the US as well. Professionals are net producers and help to grow the national economy and the tax base not takers.

So continue to let in the tired, poor and huddled masses, but make it easier for those of us that are neither tired, nor poor, but who desire to be productive members of the US economy to stay in the country for more than six years.

That’s my .02!

Martin Suter

(martin.suter@iplicensing.net

Comments

[A. Lebel]

The shortage of H1B visas and the prevalence of the family sponsorship programme are two symptoms of America's inability to bring in the right talent at the right time. Being myself an immigrant, I should probably not complain about the failures of a policy that eventually propelled my career to heights that would have been unthinkable in my home country. With that said, the only reason I was able to get the credentials to work in the US is the fact that I married a US citizen. Was it difficult to come into the country? Not at all! In fact, it could not have been easier.

Obtaining an F-1 student visa is simply a matter of being accepted into an advanced education programme (which, frankly, constitutes a *very low* barrier of entry) and passing an interview with a government official in one of the numerous US consulates scattered around the world. I was seemingly unfortunate to study in a field in which all subsequent job applicants are required to possess a US citizenship -- but otherwise finding a job if you are a Master's graduate of a large US university isn't particularly difficult. The reasons, based on my professional experience, are (1) a shortage of domestic talent driven by poor educational standards and atrophic financing; and (2) a shortage of foreign talent caused by excessive governmental red tape.

In the years that I have been hiring people, the vast majority of applicants have been foreign students/workers who finished their education in the United States (recall my comment about this not being a proof of competence). Moreover, my experience is that this pool of talent isn't particularly productive and *not at all* innovative (granted, this is a generalization, but I’m not trying to be politically correct). Is it because students in foreign countries are less qualified? Every scholastic competition I have read about ranks the United States poorly compared to European and Asian countries -- so what is it?

I'll opine that the best and brightest are not coming out of graduate programmes in the United States, but are still working in the best companies in their home countries. And I'm sure that many of them do long for the opportunity to be let loose in an aggressive marketplace with the resources to make dreams come true -- but this opportunity never comes.

Instead, US companies will hire the people that are available locally, use the F-1 visa for a year and then take the path of least resistance which is to apply for all the right visas and finally sponsor the employee to become a permanent citizen.

It is sad that, in their search for talent, US companies are not able to attract the best, and must settle with whoever decided to pursue a higher education in an American university -- which may, or may not, be a good thing depending on what you think of "higher" education. At the same time, the home country (or Europe, which is a lot more open to foreign workers) gets to keep those that could have become the stars of the next business generation.