Disruptive Tendencies

Immigration Policy as Scientific Impedance (Redux)

Yesterday, I wrote about how two out of three Americans, awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine this year, were immigrants to this country. Well today, as I perused the Times again, I came across an article on this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics recipients. It turns out that two out of three of the Physics winners are also immigrants. Dr. Kao was born in Shanghai and Dr. Boyle in Canada.

Imagine a scenario today, where a Chinese or Canadian engineer had a job opportunity in the US. Chances are that their prospective employer would attempt to sponsor them for an H1B visa, an employer-sponsored visa for positions requiring advanced degrees. But there is a limited number of these every year, and typically the H1B pool is vastly oversubscribed. So maybe today’s Dr. Kao or Dr. Boyle can’t even enter the country to work.

Or perhaps they get lucky, and get that coveted H1B. Despite the fact that neither their spouse nor their children are able to work under their H4 status, they decide to emigrate anyway. The 6 year clock starts ticking, and unless they get a Green Card during this period, they’ll have to move elsewhere at the end of this period – earlier if they lose their position with their employer sponsor.

Once again, they’re amongst the lucky ones, whose employer agrees to the expense and administrative overhead and begins the employer-sponsored Green Card process. Before the application is actually submitted, the company needs to submit a job description, with a minimum set of qualifications required to do the job, and have this approved by the Department of Labor. Once signed off by this Department, the position needs to be posted internally and advertised externally for a period of 30 days, during which time the employer is required to accept applications for the job.

If, during this phase, an American applies, who meets the minimum level of qualifications, the potential applicant is deemed to be taking a job away from an American and cannot apply for his/her Green Card, meaning that once his H1B 6 year clock runs down, he/she must leave the country.

It’s very easy to imagine tomorrow’s potential Nobel Prize winners being put through this process today. Does anybody believe that employment is zero-sum? That there is a finite number of positions available? Or is it more enlightened to acknowledge that scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs are creators of jobs, and that their desire to immigrate to America should be embraced and encouraged.

There’s way too much friction in the system today. Brains abhor friction, and in a flat world, can just as easily be located elsewhere. When the Nobel Prize winners in 2040 are all in China, Russia, India or Korea, it will be too late for America, and it need only to look back a few decades and bemoan its own immigration policies.

That’s my .02!

Martin Suter

(martin.suter at iplicensing.net)

 

Immigration Policy as Scientific Impedance

A headline in today’s New York Times proudly proclaimed, “Three Americans Share Nobel for Work in Cell Biology”. The three winners discovered telomeres, thus solving a longstanding puzzle involving the ends of chromosomes. Apparently the implications of their work extends to cell division in both cancer and aging, which I must say, I’m very pleased about.

The article goes on to describe how two of the recipients were women, and how rare an event this is, with only eight women having won the Nobel Prize for Medicine previously. “Fantastic”, I thought, as science needs more women role models for young women today.

Then the article took a slight turn – it seems that two out of three recipients are immigrants. Dr. Blackburn came to the US in the ‘70’s, because it was “notably attractive as a place to do science, but goes on to suggest that “while America is still a magnet for foreign scientists, one shouldn’t take that for granted.”

Having previously blogged about the implications of an unenlightened immigration policy (“US Immigration Policy & Global Competitiveness”), I read on with interest.

Indeed, the point that was made by Dr. Szostak was that the world was now much more competitive in science, and that “we have to work a little harder to attract people from around the world and make sure they want to stay here.”

But as noted by Dr. Cech, former president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, onerous visa requirements are benefitting European countries especially, as “Even now, there is an implication when foreign scientists apply for visas that they should be distrusted, denied several times, and should have to hire lawyers and jump through a lot of hoops.”

Brains, like bits, abhor friction. It doesn’t matter whether the electrical impulses are synapses firing or semiconductors crunching data, electricity travels the path of least resistance. If US immigration policy makes it too onerous for today’s brilliant young minds to move to the US, these future scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs and yes, even Nobel Prize winners, will no longer be able to proudly call themselves “American”.

That’s my .02!

Martin Suter

(martin.suter at iplicensing.net)

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