The great uncertainty these waits create lead some to give up and leave the United States and others to not even begin the process. The current long waits “cause a reverse brain drain affecting American competitiveness and innovation,” according to Aman Kapoor, executive director of the group Immigration Voice. “At the same time, these green card backlogs create severe quality of life issues for the applicants and their families.”
Those who understand markets realize that there is no such thing as a fixed number of jobs, as critics of high skill immigration maintain. A 2008 National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) study found that for every skilled foreign national requested (for H-1B visas) with the Department of Labor, U.S. technology companies increase their employment by 5 workers. Many U.S. executives confirm this experience at their firms. Looking to America’s next generation of scientists and engineers, a 2004 NFAP study found more than half of the finalists for the Intel Science Talent Search, the leading contest for top U.S. high school science students, were the children of skilled immigrants.
In addition to the reduced waiting times for green cards from H.R. 5882, Congress can take other steps. It can fix the labor certification process for skilled immigrants under which the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) requires companies to engage in expensive and time-consuming advertisements to show no qualified Americans are available for certain jobs. Neither the law nor the original DOL regulations required such advertisements. Yet DOL is using its questionable authority to, among other things, audit thousands of green card cases from the nation’s largest immigration law firm, Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy. The Fragomen firm has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court alleging DOL has exceeded its authority. Congressional oversight is warranted.
Congress can also eliminate the per country limit for skilled immigrants, which pushes back wait times for Indian and Chinese professionals, exempt from green card quotas those who earn a master’s degree or higher, and increase the quotas for H-1B temporary visas.
While H.R. 5882 will not solve all our immigration problems, it represents an important effort to retain talented individuals in America so they can help create jobs and innovation in the United States.
Stuart Anderson is a former Staff Director of the Senate Immigration Subcommittee and now Executive Director of the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonpartisan policy research group based in Arlington, Va.