Making It More Difficult For Talented Immigrants Is Utter Foolishness

TW: I will not bore with cliches about the contributions of most and especially highly educated immigrants over our history but these policies are just stupid. Since 9/11 it has become more and more difficult for well-educated (or those seeking education) immigrants to spend time in the U.S. One of the U.S. key competitive advantages as a nation has been our ability to attract and take advantage of talented immigrants throughout the world. We should be initiating policies to make them more welcome not less. If the Dems (and apparently some Republicans) in Congress are getting sideways on this, then shame on them.

From the Economist and Tom Friedman:
"Thomas Friedman alerts us to a very troubling development on the immigration front:

'While I think President Obama has been doing his best to keep the worst protectionist impulses in Congress out of his stimulus plan, the U.S. Senate unfortunately voted on Feb. 6 to restrict banks and other financial institutions that receive taxpayer bailout money from hiring high-skilled immigrants on temporary work permits known as H-1B visas.'

This has the potential to be just as, if not more, harmful than “Buy America”, at least in the long run. Like it or not, finance has become an increasingly quantitative field, and Wall Street is going to need highly-skilled people to repair the financial system. New techniques need to be developed and employed. There are simply not enough natives with adequate skills to go around. Particularly if salaries in the finance field shrink, quantitatively-skilled Americans will be drawn to other industries.

Even more troubling, as Mr Friedman points out, is that these high skill immigrants are the very ones who can create jobs. According to research by:

25.3 percent of technology and engineering companies started in the United States from 1995 to 2005, at least one key founder was foreign-born. Nationwide, these immigrant-founded companies produced $52 billion in sales and employed 450,000 workers in 2005. The majority of these immigrant entrepreneurs came from India, United Kingdom, China, Taiwan, Japan and Germany.

...a main source of job growth in America is entrepreneurial firms. The immigrants who start these types of firms often come to America as students and then work in industry on H1-Bs. This visa is often a gateway to residency.

American immigration policy was at one point unique for encouraging highly-skilled immigrants, but other industrialised countries have begun to attempt to attract educated workers. Britain now has a points system in place, and the European Union is considering a blue card which will speed up the visa process for high skill workers. So if America does not want these job creators, they can go elsewhere.

Immigration is a major impetus for entrepreneurship and innovation. If long-term economic growth and job creation is the purpose of the rescue package moving through Congress, then preventing firms from hiring immigrants undermines that goal."
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2009/02/dangerous_protectionism_rears.cfm