Vivek Wadhwa in Business Week

Date: Wednesday, February 14, 2007 8:24 PM

<<<<< JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER No. 1641 -- 2/14/2007 >>>>>

Vivek Wadhwa is held up a visionary because he is an Indian who speaks out
against H-1B. So what's the big deal about that?

Wadhwa's position on H-1B isn't too much different than ImmigrationVoice
and a host of other advocates of open immigration. He speaks out against
H-1B but for some weird reason nobody seems to notice that his alternative
is to hand out unlimited numbers of green cards for what he considers the
"world's best and brightest".

Wadhwa's Business Week column has the requisite sob story about the PhD
that can't stay in the U.S. More tears are spilled over the fact that his
wife can't get a social security number and drive a car. He whines that we
need to keep these skilled people here, but doesn't seem at all concerned
about the vast numbers of unemployed or underemployed PhDs we have in the
U.S.

Like many advocates of employment based green cards Wadhwa never quantifies
how many permanent residents he wants to let into the U.S. Of course that's
because he doesn't want limits.

Allowing foreign workers into the country permanently has one major problem
-- the mistakes are permanent! Wadhwa in effect is telling us to leap off a
cliff without looking where we are going.

Without doubt there are many bright people in the world, and without doubt
there are enough of them to overwhelm the entire workforce of the United
States. Wadhwa, like many rich businessmen, assumes that a foreign
scientist will benefit the economy but never says who reaps the profits. He
totally ignores the catastrophic damage done to the American workers who
are forced into global labor arbitrage.

If we truly want to have more entrepreneurs, scientists, and engineers then
we should be willing to educate Americans and be committed to giving them
good job opportunities. Using employment based visas to circumvent the free
market allows an infinite pool of foreign workers to displace our workers.
While doing so may be great for the bottom line of the CEOs like Wadhwa
it's destructive to our great middle class.

Replacing H-1B with unlimited green cards is a national cop-out. Nobody
seems to have the courage to discuss how many foreign workers should be
allowed into this country.

The web page has a comments section, but apparently Wadhwa is censoring his
detractors because I couldn't get my opinion posted.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/feb2007/sb20070208_968450.htm

Viewpoint February 8, 2007, 1:55PM EST text size: TT
Let's Keep Skilled Immigrants in the U.S.
In order to stay on top of the rapidly changing global economy, the U.S.
needs to make it easier for foreign talent to stay in the country
by Vivek Wadhwa

Here's a story about an immigrant realizing the American Dream -- well,
almost. In 1996, Denis Kholodar won first prize in a national engineering
contest in Russia and came to the U.S. to complete a PhD in aerospace
engineering. His professor and adviser at Duke University, Earl Dowell, who
describes Kholodar as one of the brightest students he has ever worked
with, took him under his wing. Together, they pioneered new techniques in
aerodynamic modeling to reduce wing flutter in jet aircraft.

After earning his PhD, Kholodar landed a fellowship with the U.S. Air
Force. For eight years, he didn't leave the U.S. out of fear of not being
able to re-enter -- he says re-entry background checks on Russian
scientists can take as long as six months. Though Kholodar wanted to remain
in the U.S. and make it his home, he had to leave when his visa expired
last year. His trajectory illustrates one of the problems being overlooked
in the immigration debate -- the U.S.is losing out on the formidable
contributions of legal, skilled immigrants.

Executives of companies like Boeing (BA) and Lockheed Martin (LMT) often
raise the alarm about their aging workforce and the shortage of engineers
(see BusinessWeek.com, 7/10/06, "Engineering Gap? Fact and Fiction"). Yet
Kholodar says both companies wouldn't interview him when he applied for a
job because he wasn't a permanent resident. (Both declined to comment.)
Kholodar points out that hiring a nonresident requires extensive paperwork.
And the U.S. Air Force couldn't hire him because he wasn't a citizen.

Global Edge
The easiest path Kholodar saw to citizenship was to marry an American, but
he couldn't bring himself to wed someone he didn't love. So he looked
outside the U.S., and Canadian jet manufacturer Bombardier readily snapped
him up. Professor Dowell, who just won a prize known as the Nobel of the
aerospace industry from the American Institute of Aeronautics &
Astronautics for his research, says America's loss ended up being Canada's
gain.

In a previous column, I wrote about research completed by my students that
shows skilled immigrants give the U.S. a greater global edge (see
BusinessWeek.com, 1/3/07, "Open Doors Wider for Skilled Immigrants"). They
contribute to the economy, create jobs, and lead innovation. Immigrants are
fueling the creation of high-tech businesses across our nation and creating
a wealth of intellectual property.

Our research received extensive media coverage because it was one of the
first studies to quantify the contribution of legal, skilled immigrants at
the national level. Most commentators agreed that bringing in the best and
brightest from all over the world is good for the U.S.

Laying Roots
Unfortunately, some commentators used our research as fodder to recommend
lifting the caps on a work-visa category called the H-1B. They missed the
point. Our research didn't advocate lifting the H-1B caps -- it highlighted
the benefits of a workforce that's entrepreneurial and well educated in
math and science, common qualities in skilled immigrants who start
engineering and technology companies (see BusinessWeek.com, 2/6/07, "The
Impact of Immigrant Entrepreneurs").

What I have said repeatedly is that we want to attract the world's best and
brightest and bring them to stay permanently. H-1Bs are temporary work
visas with a six-year time limit and that impose many restrictions. H-1B
holders can only work for their sponsoring employers -- they can't start
new businesses. Their spouses aren't even allowed to work or obtain Social
Security numbers -- which are usually needed for things like drivers
licenses and bank accounts. Thus, it's pretty hard to lay deep roots.

Our research showed that the percentage of foreign nationals contributing
to U.S. international patent applications -- the ones that give us a global
edge -- increased 331% in eight years. This is a welcome contribution to
U.S. intellectual property. The problem is that many of the engineers and
scientists filing these patents, like Kholodar, may have to leave the
country -- and take their knowledge and experience with them. In 2006, one
in four U.S. international patent applications had foreign national authors
or co-authors. The increases correspond to the increasing numbers of
foreign students here on visas that expire shortly after graduation and
H-1B-holding workers in the U.S.

Peculiar Quotas
Immigration data show another brewing problem. The current wait time for
skilled immigrants from India and China to be granted permanent residence
stands at nearly six years. In other words, U.S. Citizenship & Immigration
Services is backlogged, currently processing applications for those who
applied for permanent residence in 2001. Additionally, there's a yearly
limit of around 140,000 employment-based permanent-resident visas for
skilled workers. And to further complicate things, no more than 7% of the
visas are allowed to be allocated to immigrants from any one country.

Immigration attorney Murali Bashyam of lawfirm Bashyam & Spiro explains
that the per-country limitation serves to avoid monopolization of visa
numbers by applicants from any one country. Under current law, no more than
9,800 permanent resident visas can be issued to employment-based immigrants
(including their spouses and children) from any single country.

However, he says this policy bears no relation to demand: Countries with
large populations or a large number of emigrants have the same quota as
countries with small populations or low emigration rates. We allow as many
skilled immigrants from Russia and India as we do from Iceland and Senegal.

So, we're now setting the stage to force those we've educated in our
universities and trained in our corporations to return home or go to other
countries where they could become our competitors. This is despite the fact
that we still need their skills, and that most of them desperately want to
stay.

Powerful Incentive
Economist and 1992 Nobel laureate Gary Becker says "it is simply foolish
for the U.S. to keep out the skilled immigrants we badly need". He
prescribes increasing annual quotas for highly skilled professionals by
many multiples, with no per-country limits. He advocates the elimination of
the H-1B program so that all such visas become permanent. Becker believes
current limits place the many skilled applicants from India and China at an
unfair disadvantage, while the U.S. gains nothing from the policy.

Robert Litan, vice-president of research and policy at the Kauffman
Foundation, suggests we grant automatic citizenship to students who
complete degrees in mathematics, engineering, and science from qualified
institutions of higher learning. These are precisely the individuals we
should be seeking to attract and retain, and the promise of citizenship
upon satisfactory completion of their studies would be a powerful incentive
for many to come, he says.

I believe the U.S. needs to be very selective in who it admits and should
screen immigration applicants very carefully. But I agree with both Becker
and Litan -- let's attract the best from our competition and get them here
to stay permanently.

Vivek Wadhwa, the founder of two software companies, is an
Executive-in-Residence/Adjunct Professor at Duke University. He is also the
co-founder of TiE Carolinas, a networking and mentoring group.

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