George Rebane
It seems that when it rains it pours (see also Reading at Risk - Nation at Risk). This morning the Wall Street Journal’s lead editorial highlighted the insanity that continues in our land with the handling of wealth generating intellectual talent. Our laws and regulations make it easy for foreigners to get their education here after which they are forced/encouraged to go back to their home countries to compete against our industries. Moreover, when US companies need to hire foreign talent, the feds make that double difficult through the dysfunctional H-1B visa program and other regulations. And because this is an issue beyond the ken of most voters, the system remains broken under the mantra that ‘we must protect American jobs’.
Here are some specific quotes from the 30nov07 editorial.
• One myth dogging the immigration debate is that employers are fibbing (or grossly exaggerating) when they claim that hiring foreign professionals is unavoidable because U.S.-born Ph.D.s are hard to come by. But a new report on doctorates from U.S. universities shows they're telling the truth, and then some.
• Foreign-born students holding temporary visas received 33% of all research doctorates awarded by U.S. universities in 2006, according to an annual survey by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. That number has climbed from 25% in 2001. But more to the point of business competitiveness, foreign students comprised 44% of science and engineering doctorates last year.
• "China was the country of origin for the largest number of non-U.S. doctorates in 2006," says the report, followed by India, Korea, Taiwan and Canada. "The percentage of doctorates earned by U.S. citizens ranged from lows of 32% in engineering and 47% in physical sciences, to highs of 87% in education and 78% in humanities." Given this reality, is it any wonder that 40% of Ph.D.s working in U.S. science and engineering occupations are foreign-born?
• Immigration opponents still claim that the likes of Intel and Oracle merely want to hire Chinese engineers on the cheap. In fact, U.S. law already prohibits companies from paying these foreign nationals less than natives. And all other things being equal, the American job applicant has an advantage because employers are required to pay an additional $4,000-$6,000 in taxes and fees on every H-1B visa holder they hire.
• A mere 65,000 H-1B visas for foreign professionals are allocated each year. And this year, as in the previous four, the quota was exhausted almost as soon as the applications became available in April. This effectively means that more than half of all foreign nationals who earned advanced degrees in math and science in 2007 have been shut out of the U.S. job market.
• Economic protectionists oppose lifting the visa cap to meet demand. But it makes little sense for our universities to be educating these talented foreign students, only to send them packing after graduation. Current policies have MIT and Stanford educating the next generation of innovators -- and then deporting them to create wealth elsewhere.
The bottom line here is that “Closing the door to foreign professionals puts U.S. companies at a competitive disadvantage and pushes jobs out of the country. Worse, it does so at a time when other nations are rolling out the welcome mat.” Canada and the EU have the biggest welcome mats.
The overwhelming fraction of humanities and education PhDs wind up in state-funded jobs. Our diminishing fraction of wealth creating technical PhDs face punishing tax burdens for their high paying jobs and entrepreneurial enterprises. The inevitable conclusion is that “If the U.S. spurns this human capital, it will find a home somewhere else. And that will be America's loss.” And dear Reader, this has been going for many years and is now accelerating.
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