Nbadan
07-10-2006, 06:36 AM
I'm still not sure how letting in more skilled immigrants to take high paying American jobs helps our national interests, but if the Express-News says it, it must be true...
Editorial: Raising the H1-B quota serves national interest
Web Posted: 07/10/2006 12:01 AM CDT
San Antonio Express-News
While the debate about illegal immigration has careened off the political tracks, an equally important discussion about legal immigration has actually generated some progress in Washington.
Both the Senate and the House have advanced bipartisan legislation that would raise the quota on H-1B visas for highly skilled workers.
The top three categories for H-1B applicants are information system analysts and programmers, computer-related occupations and college professors and researchers. H-1B visas allow U.S. businesses, universities and other research institutions to draw on an international talent pool of the best and the brightest.
But H-1B visas are now capped at an unrealistically low level. In 2004, Congress reimposed a limit of 65,000 H-1B visas annually.
For fiscal year 2006, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services announced it had received enough applications to meet the quota more than a month before the year began. For fiscal year 2007, which begins Oct. 1, USCIS received enough applications to fill the allotment last month.
The legislation under consideration in Congress would lift the cap from 65,000 to 115,000 H1-B visas annually. That's a very modest increase of only 50,000 skilled job seekers in an economy that employs nearly 150 million. But those immigrants are critical for keeping the nation's competitive edge in science, technology and medical research.
Creating rational policies for legal immigration is one part of a solution to the illegal immigration problem. Raising the H1-B quota serves the national interest and is the unimaginably — for this Congress — pragmatic thing to do.
Editorial, Express-News (http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/editorials/stories/MYSA071006.01O.visas2ed.4ed0be.html)
Most of these skilled immigrants live 10 to an apartment until they can get on their feet and they send a great deal of their money back to their home countries, thus draining local and state economies of future taxes. Besides, if we really wanted to keep our National competitive edge we would support things like stem cell research and the government would be looking for ways to make American automobiles more reliable and fuel efficient, like Japan did for decades with it's auto industry.
The U.S. has one of the highest per capita degree and graduate degree ratios in the world, so bringing in foreign workers just to save a few dollars benefits mostly the employer's bottom-line, but it also undermines the potential earning capability of all higher wage earners in the U.S. because of the monetary multiplication effect that we lose when dollars leave the U.S. system.
Editorial: Raising the H1-B quota serves national interest
Web Posted: 07/10/2006 12:01 AM CDT
San Antonio Express-News
While the debate about illegal immigration has careened off the political tracks, an equally important discussion about legal immigration has actually generated some progress in Washington.
Both the Senate and the House have advanced bipartisan legislation that would raise the quota on H-1B visas for highly skilled workers.
The top three categories for H-1B applicants are information system analysts and programmers, computer-related occupations and college professors and researchers. H-1B visas allow U.S. businesses, universities and other research institutions to draw on an international talent pool of the best and the brightest.
But H-1B visas are now capped at an unrealistically low level. In 2004, Congress reimposed a limit of 65,000 H-1B visas annually.
For fiscal year 2006, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services announced it had received enough applications to meet the quota more than a month before the year began. For fiscal year 2007, which begins Oct. 1, USCIS received enough applications to fill the allotment last month.
The legislation under consideration in Congress would lift the cap from 65,000 to 115,000 H1-B visas annually. That's a very modest increase of only 50,000 skilled job seekers in an economy that employs nearly 150 million. But those immigrants are critical for keeping the nation's competitive edge in science, technology and medical research.
Creating rational policies for legal immigration is one part of a solution to the illegal immigration problem. Raising the H1-B quota serves the national interest and is the unimaginably — for this Congress — pragmatic thing to do.
Editorial, Express-News (http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/editorials/stories/MYSA071006.01O.visas2ed.4ed0be.html)
Most of these skilled immigrants live 10 to an apartment until they can get on their feet and they send a great deal of their money back to their home countries, thus draining local and state economies of future taxes. Besides, if we really wanted to keep our National competitive edge we would support things like stem cell research and the government would be looking for ways to make American automobiles more reliable and fuel efficient, like Japan did for decades with it's auto industry.
The U.S. has one of the highest per capita degree and graduate degree ratios in the world, so bringing in foreign workers just to save a few dollars benefits mostly the employer's bottom-line, but it also undermines the potential earning capability of all higher wage earners in the U.S. because of the monetary multiplication effect that we lose when dollars leave the U.S. system.