No room at the inn

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. But you can keep your scientists, engineers, and other skilled workers, cause we don’t want ’em!”

That’s what I imagine Emma Lazarus would write if she were composing lines for “The New Colossus” today. Her famous sonnet, originally written in 1883 and engraved at the base of the Statue of Liberty, has welcomed new immigrants from afar for over a century. But now the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is putting the kibosh on H-1B visas. The agency began accepting applications on Monday for the coveted temporary visas—which are designated for foreign workers with hi-tech or other specialized skills—for the 2008 fiscal year, which starts on October 1. By mid-afternoon, it had already received 150,000 petitions. Now the government is saying that it won’t accept any more requests. Congress caps the number of H-1B visas at 65,000 per year, plus an additional 20,000 for workers who have an advanced degree from an American university. The government is going to use a computer program (undoubtedly developed by some people who were in the country on H-1B visas) to conduct a lottery of eligible applicants. Tech companies are crying foul. One-third of Microsoft’s U.S.-based employees are in the country on H-1B visas. The rate is similar at other hi-tech companies, where foreign expertise is highly valued. Accordingly, executives at tech companies are lobbying Congress to raise the caps. 

In the meantime, a bipartisan bill was introduced in the Senate last week that would curtail the use of H-1B visas by companies, requiring them to make greater efforts to hire American workers. That’s all nice and good in theory, but let’s face reality. There simply aren’t enough qualified Americans with the necessary engineering skills. As Robert Hoffman, vice president at Oracle, says: 

Our broken visa policies for highly educated foreign professionals are not only counterproductive, they are anticompetitive and detrimental to America’s long-term economic competitiveness.”