Thursday, June 26, 2008

Let's Not Deport the Tech Talent

U.S. immigration policy should be: A nation cannot have too many highly educated people, so send us your PhDs yearning to be free.

Instead, U.S. policy is: As soon as U.S. institutions of higher education have awarded you a PhD, equipping you to add vast value to the economy, get out. Go home. Or to Europe, which is responding to America's folly with "blue cards" to expedite acceptance of the immigrants America is spurning.

Two-thirds of doctoral candidates in science and engineering in U.S. universities are foreign-born. But only 140,000 employment-based green cards are available annually, and 1 million educated professionals are waiting — often five or more years — for cards. Congress could quickly add a zero to the number available, thereby boosting the U.S. economy and complicating matters for America's competitors.

~George Will

4 Comments:

At 6/26/2008 11:08 AM, Blogger OBloodyHell said...

Yeah, and it's made it so it is very, very difficult for a company to actually hire a worker who has a Masters degree or better but does not yet have a green card.

The hoops that you have to jump through to hire such a worker are insane enough that no smaller, startup company would bother.

The number of policies implemented in this country in the last 50 years which manage to be designed to shoot us in the ass (or have the same defacto effect) is amazing.

I wish we could pass a law which eliminated all state, local, and federal regulations, organizations, and departments instituted since 1955. Then let the various governments scramble to re-enact the ones which actually make sense and have any real validity. I can think of few things which actually would need to be recreated or reinstituted. Maybe 10% of all current laws, including environmental regs, would probably do the job.

 
At 6/26/2008 12:03 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Dr.Goodstein's take

 
At 6/27/2008 12:42 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Fine enough to deport them. It would be better to help citizens get to that point, first.

That is, develop our own first before we even think about importing.

 
At 6/28/2008 8:05 PM, Blogger OBloodyHell said...

> That is, develop our own first before we even think about importing.

Seth, when we actually HAVE people trying to get such degrees, that would be one thing. I don't necessarily agree but I'll grant the argument has merit.

It's quite another when they (US workers) aren't getting pushed out at all but the workers in question actually supplement the need for talented tech work all around.

As far as I'm concerned, if you have a BS or better in a useful skill (i.e., excluding "Medaeval Poetry" and the like), anyone who does not welcome you to this country with open arms is just flat-out stupid. We should allow them to immediately take the existing tests for citizenship, if they want to, and certainly let them stay here if they have jobs and pay taxes.

Anything which raises the average IQ of an entire nation is not a negative meme.

All the justifiable complaints about illegals center far more on low-end workers and failure to assimilate the culture. College educated tech people are less prone to the latter and almost never the former.

 

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