Legal immigrants who play by the rules to get to the United States often find it difficult to stay here.
People from around the world come to study in U.S. universities on temporary visas. [Just so. What about "temporary" is hard to understand. They are granted student visas exactly so they can study here and return home. Are our universities now tasked with training our replacements?] They often excel in their studies and earn their degrees with ease. [Because they're so much smarter than we are? Are there any statistics to back this up?] After graduation, many of them beat a path back to their home countries to help improve the lives of the people who live there. [As it should be. If these people are so brilliant then their hellhole countries will benefit from their massive intellects, won't they.] There's nothing wrong with that. What's wrong is that, for those who want to find a legal way to remain in the United States and earn a living here, the deck is stacked against them. [See current unemployment numbers - the deck is stacked against a lot of us] Just when these individuals are about to enter their high-productivity years — when they generate income, consume goods and pay taxes — the United States ships them home.
According to a recent article in USA Today, only about 65,000 H-1B visas are granted to allow high-skilled foreigners to come legally each year. Not only is that number pathetically low [How so? How high is high enough?], considering the demand [what demand? Engineering unemployment is heading up - past 7% by some accounts], but the quota is also filled on a first-come, first-served basis without so much as a nod to what jobs need to be filled. Those who oppose increasing the cap on visas for foreign professionals often do so in the name of preserving well-paying jobs for American workers. [God forbid we have well-paid American workers. After reading this, I don't feel so bad when I read that more and more newspaper reporting and editing is being off-shored.]
That makes no sense. These jobs may be on U.S. soil, but they are not an entitlement for U.S. workers. In the international marketplace, American workers have to compete for jobs with the international community. [So we should look forward to a Third World standard of living in order to compete. And Third World overpopulation and environmental damage. And Third World labor regulations. Next, the U-T will come out in favor of child-slave labor and sweat shops.]
As the article points out, employers in the United States have been saying this for some time. High-tech companies have been pleading with Congress for many years to raise the number of H-1Bs to meet increased demand. [Asinine. Trans-national companies want cheap labor. By this logic, we can ask what can be done to satisfy the demand for luxury homes that everyone can afford... I'd like a new Lexus for $10,000. So as companies throw away more STEM workers, the remaining taxpayers can look forward to bearing the social costs imposed by rising unemployment and lower job quality. Socialize the cost, privatize the profit - that's now the American Way] That cause has been taken up by Microsoft co-founder, Bill Gates, who has made many trips to Washington to ask lawmakers to let in more software engineers. [Who cares what Bill Gates thinks? What - he wants more money? The US market made him wealthy and this is the thanks we get? M$ is already replacing US workers with imports (several thousand this year). I wonder if that has anything to do with the number of bugs in their software.]
Closer to home, the issue is on the mind of Paul Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm. In a recent meeting with the Union-Tribune editorial board, Jacobs suggested that, aside from raising the cap on H1B visas, the U.S. government — as an additional enticement to get highly skilled foreigners to stay — could also speed up the process for some these individuals to become U.S. citizens. It's a great idea. Local members of Congress should take it up. [Greedy SOB. Did anyone at the Union-Tribune ask him how many US workers he's fired in the last few years? Did they bother to see if he's made any real effort to recruit US workers? There's a whole industry that exists to assist companies in skirting the law. There's a notorious YouTube video where a law firm boasts of helping companies hire imports even when qualified US workers are available.]
Globalization is a fact of life for the United States. So is the idea of competition. If we don't find new ways to update the current immigration system, we can expect to keep up this foolish trend of losing the most-highly skilled immigrants in the world to other countries. And if that happens, we stand to lose much more than that in the years to come. [What would that be?]
