Problems with our Immigration Policies
There has been a lot of discussion over the past dozen years of the problems associated with US immigration policy. Some, including myself, have been accused of being soft on immigration because of our pro-business and pro-economic development growth positions.
I have been consistent in my statements that we need to control and monitor immigration and keep the bad guys out, but that we need to do it in such a way that we don’t ruin the economy in the process. In reviewing history, there was a period of time that the US did not have any immigration problems. If we want to stop immigrants from coming to the US we can just re-create the economic conditions that kept people from immigrating: we can have another depression just like we did in the 1930s. If there is not economic demand, people won’t come. However creating a depression to keep people from immigrating is the wrong step to take to solve this problem.
Let me share my personal recent experience in dealing with US immigration policy.
I am the president of an internet technology company. I employ some of the best and brightest mind in my industry. Let me tell you about one of my employees. He is a BYU graduate. He is an absolute genius. He knows Internet marketing, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), keyword campaigns, Omniture, and other key technologies better than almost everyone on the planet. He is amazing. He is a soft spoken guy that we can bill out at his time at over $100 per hour. He is extremely valuable to us and we consider him part of our competitive advantage in our industry.
Oh, did mention that he is from Spain. His wife if from Japan and they have 3 small children. Both he and his wife came to the USA legally on their appropriate education visas. They are law abiding citizens and have spent countless hours and thousands of dollars to make every attempt to be legal and law abiding residents while here in the US. My company has spent thousands of dollars to make sure that we are also legal and law abiding as an employer.
Now that my employee from Spain has graduated he has applied for a worker visa that would allow him to work in the United States and contribute to our economy. Unfortunately, he has been denied a worker visa that would allow him to continue to work in the United States. I will explain the process that he went through to try to get a worker visa below. However, US immigration policy has just denied a valuable and brilliant person from contributing to our economy and to my company specifically.
He came in ‘through the front door’ and now being asked to leave. He did not cross our borders illegally, he did not sneak to get in, he did not use fake documents, he is not posing as someone else, he has done everything the right way, legally, and completely above board. He has been educated in our university system, he has learned a great deal about our internet technology industry, he is extremely valuable to my company and our economy, and now he is being told to leave our country and go provide a benefit to another country’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product).
I know that there is a considerable amount of political energy focused on immigration. There are some that say send them all back where they came from. There may be some that say that my employee is taking the job of a US citizen. The reality is that it will be a hardship on my company to find and train some else with his specializations. My company will probably miss opportunities because he is no longer allowed to work for us in the US.
One of the most absurd events in this process of my employee trying to get an H1b visa was ‘the lottery.’ An H1b visa is the visa that allows people from foreign countries to work in the US. There were approximately 160,000 foreign nationals that applied for an H1b visa. The requirements for these visas are very high and include a college degree. However the number of H1b visas that are allowed has been reduced to 65,000. Therefore, only 1/3 of the applicants were selected by the random selection process. This means that there were about 100,000 foreign nationals with college degrees that have been told to leave our country.
It is a sad state of affairs when we are exporting some of our best and brightest to other countries so they can compete against us on both a company and country level.
I will soon be in the Washington DC area on business. While I am there I will take the time to talk to my elected representatives to request that we improve our immigration policy so that we are not hurting ourselves in an effort to solve the immigration problem.
I have been consistent in my statements that we need to control and monitor immigration and keep the bad guys out, but that we need to do it in such a way that we don’t ruin the economy in the process. In reviewing history, there was a period of time that the US did not have any immigration problems. If we want to stop immigrants from coming to the US we can just re-create the economic conditions that kept people from immigrating: we can have another depression just like we did in the 1930s. If there is not economic demand, people won’t come. However creating a depression to keep people from immigrating is the wrong step to take to solve this problem.
Let me share my personal recent experience in dealing with US immigration policy.
I am the president of an internet technology company. I employ some of the best and brightest mind in my industry. Let me tell you about one of my employees. He is a BYU graduate. He is an absolute genius. He knows Internet marketing, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), keyword campaigns, Omniture, and other key technologies better than almost everyone on the planet. He is amazing. He is a soft spoken guy that we can bill out at his time at over $100 per hour. He is extremely valuable to us and we consider him part of our competitive advantage in our industry.
Oh, did mention that he is from Spain. His wife if from Japan and they have 3 small children. Both he and his wife came to the USA legally on their appropriate education visas. They are law abiding citizens and have spent countless hours and thousands of dollars to make every attempt to be legal and law abiding residents while here in the US. My company has spent thousands of dollars to make sure that we are also legal and law abiding as an employer.
Now that my employee from Spain has graduated he has applied for a worker visa that would allow him to work in the United States and contribute to our economy. Unfortunately, he has been denied a worker visa that would allow him to continue to work in the United States. I will explain the process that he went through to try to get a worker visa below. However, US immigration policy has just denied a valuable and brilliant person from contributing to our economy and to my company specifically.
He came in ‘through the front door’ and now being asked to leave. He did not cross our borders illegally, he did not sneak to get in, he did not use fake documents, he is not posing as someone else, he has done everything the right way, legally, and completely above board. He has been educated in our university system, he has learned a great deal about our internet technology industry, he is extremely valuable to my company and our economy, and now he is being told to leave our country and go provide a benefit to another country’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product).
I know that there is a considerable amount of political energy focused on immigration. There are some that say send them all back where they came from. There may be some that say that my employee is taking the job of a US citizen. The reality is that it will be a hardship on my company to find and train some else with his specializations. My company will probably miss opportunities because he is no longer allowed to work for us in the US.
One of the most absurd events in this process of my employee trying to get an H1b visa was ‘the lottery.’ An H1b visa is the visa that allows people from foreign countries to work in the US. There were approximately 160,000 foreign nationals that applied for an H1b visa. The requirements for these visas are very high and include a college degree. However the number of H1b visas that are allowed has been reduced to 65,000. Therefore, only 1/3 of the applicants were selected by the random selection process. This means that there were about 100,000 foreign nationals with college degrees that have been told to leave our country.
It is a sad state of affairs when we are exporting some of our best and brightest to other countries so they can compete against us on both a company and country level.
I will soon be in the Washington DC area on business. While I am there I will take the time to talk to my elected representatives to request that we improve our immigration policy so that we are not hurting ourselves in an effort to solve the immigration problem.
posted by David at 12:49 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home