TNN[ FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2007 05:16:01 PM]
WASHINGTON: The Terminator wants the United States to increase the availability of green cards and H1-B visas to enhance American competitiveness.
In a morale-boosting lift for thousands of high skilled foreign workers who are gathering in Washington DC next week for a rally, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and 12 other governors have written to the Bush administration seeking more foreign skilled workers for their states.
In a letter to Congressional leaders released by Schwarzenegger’s office, the governors said the United States faced a critical shortage of highly skilled professionals in math and science to fill current needs and “until we are able to address this workforce shortage, we must recognise that foreign talent has a role to play in our ability to keep companies located in our state and country”.
Therefore, they said, there is need “to ensure the increased availability of temporary H1-B visas and permanent resident visas (green cards)”.
The letter did not quantify the increase they sought but pointed out that the “current base cap of 65,000 was arbitrarily set in 1990, and today bears no relation to our economy and our states demand for skilled professionals.”
In fact, in the 2007 fiscal, the supply of H1-B visas did not last eight weeks into the filing period; in 2008, the supply ran out on the first day of the filing period.
The green card system, also last devised in 1990, faces severe shortage that most heavily impacts the high technology industry, forcing some of the most innovative contributors to our economy to wait well in excess of five years for a green card, they said.
Because of these delays, they wrote, “we are seeing more and more of these talented individuals leave their US jobs and return home”. The letter builds on a recent study by
Duke and Harvard researchers led by Delhiborn Vivek Wadhwa that said the United States was facing a reverse brain drain because of restrictive and misplaced visa and immigration policies.
India and China were beneficiaries of these policies, they said. Nearly 60,000 Indian highskilled professionals are said to have returned home in recent years, according to some estimates.
The 13 governors, many of them from techheavy states such as California, Washington and Massachusetts, said “if states like ours are to remain world leaders in innovation and intend to continue to see the job growth that is so vital to our economies, we must keep our employers in our states and ensure there is a skilled workforce in this country to fill their immediate needs.”
Their letter came ahead of a September 18 rally in Washington DC organised by Immigration Voice, a lobby group that is calling for streamlining of green card and skilled worker visa procedures.
Nearly a million skilled foreign worker’s, are believed to be stuck in an “immigration limbo” that has put their professional careers and personal decisions on hold.
