Our immigration policy makers need to wake up and shape policy around what made this country great. Our country's innovative, entrepreneurial culture was built by immigrants that left their home countries for opportunity and a better life. It was not the lazy, comfortable bureaucrats that left, but the risk takers that had a vision for the future. There were no classes of people, everyone, for the most part was on a level playing field. Flash forward a few hundred years and we now are becoming what our fore fathers left. Our culture on the whole is at risk of losing the edge that made us great.
Students that come over on visas are much like our early forefathers; they are seeking education and skills to give them a better life. A large portion of our engineering students, PhD students are foreign, I have heard numbers like 40-45%. University's have limitless ability to issue visas to educate the world. Once these students graduate, many of them would like to stay and work. Unfortunately, our immigration policy does not allow this. It only allows 60,000 H1-b work visas and another 20,000 exemptions for PhD students. Every year around this time applications for H1-b visas are due. This year within the first day 120,000 foreigners applied for the 60,000 slots. So, we will send at least 60,000 foreign guests home. These are people that we educated and that have the spirit which made this country great. This make no sense. New start-up lose this most by this misguided policy. The Microsoft's and Google's of the world have a well oiled machines to suck up most of the available visas. New tech start-ups that are based on the unique expertise of a few, struggle because they can't keep critical employees in the country. One of my start-up had to send a key employee home to work from India because the H1 application process did not line up with the expiration of his student visa. These people are not taking jobs from US citizens, but rather posses unique, critical skills that our educational system gave them. We are in the midst of engineering shortage. Many of our largest engineering oriented companies like Boeing have testified so. As our world globalizes, customer service, manufacturing, and software programming will continue to go off shore. Our companies must continue to innovate to stay on top. The foreign engineering students that the US educates can fill that gap. Wake up policy makers and let them stay, maybe even require them to!
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