04/01/2008

News / U.S. losing global fight for talent

Immigration phobia is slamming the door on high-skilled workers including a U of T grad

WASHINGTON–Arpit Guglani was speaking from Singapore, but on the whole, he'd rather be in Seattle.

Bill Gates wanted the 23-year-old University of Toronto graduate at his Microsoft headquarters as well, but not even Gates can move a U.S. immigration system in which prized, highly skilled workers are being side-swiped by prevailing political winds.

It is a country that does not differentiate between much-needed skilled workers educated in their country and illegal immigrants who have entered from its southern flank.

Gates tried twice to hire Guglani with a three-year H1-B visa, awarded to highly educated workers, but Guglani lost twice in the lottery system that has been instituted to award the visas, an annual long-shot lottery that begins here again today.

While Guglani may be disappointed and Gates may be frustrated, the real loser, experts say, is a U.S. high-tech sector that is losing talent and jobs to Canada, Australia, Japan and nations in Western Europe, and is falling further behind countries like China and India that are wooing their nationals back home in the global technology race.

"Other nations are benefiting from our misguided policies," Gates told a congressional hearing last month, citing Guglani.

"They are revising their immigration policies to attract highly talented students and professionals who would otherwise study, live and work in the United States for at least part of their careers.

"At a time when talent is the key to economic success, it makes no sense to educate people in our universities, often subsidized by U.S. taxpayers, and then insist that they return home."

Today, 65,000 visas for 2009 will be freed up. About three times that many applicants applied this year.

Another 20,000 are available to graduates with advanced degrees from American universities.

There are an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.

American companies are relocating to where the talent pool is, and Microsoft last year opened a software development centre in Vancouver that employs 150 people.

Lost to the U.S. were the estimated five spinoff jobs analysts say are created by every specialized high-tech position filled.

Guglani, a technology trend analyst for the Singapore government, has already lived a magical mystery tour when it comes to immigration policies in the U.S. and Canada.

So certain was he that Gates would hire him, he left Toronto for a visit home in New Delhi.

"Undergrad can't believe his luck," he wrote in his blog in March 2006. "A job that plays to his strengths, with an awesome fast-growing group, that pays well, with Microsoft taking care of relocation, with best friend along for the ride and in picturesque Seattle."

But not so fast. While in India, the H1-B lottery dealt him a losing hand and he stayed there too long under Canadian rules, forfeiting a solid job offer in Toronto because after three months away he needed a work permit to return.

"I do miss the opportunity I had until this year," Guglani said yesterday from Singapore.

"Legal immigrants are getting lost in the shuffle in the U.S. over the debate about illegal immigration."

Singapore, on the other hand, granted him permanent residency while he was still home in New Delhi and promises him a path to citizenship in two years.

"It's a strange thing, really, that you bring in people, educate them, and then in the prime of their life, you say goodbye, thank you very much, you're not needed and they go help a company in another country."

Economic experts agree.

They point to a U.S. education system that is not producing enough homegrown talent and they blame timid legislators for not bravely trying to buck public opinion in a country in which immigration is equated with the unskilled walking across the desert into Arizona.

"The high-skill immigrant has been taken hostage by the whole immigration argument in this country and the backlash against border security and the illegal immigrant question," said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, of the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics.

"It is devastating to the high-tech sectors in this country and the spinoff jobs they create."

Kirkegaard says the baby boomers retiring now have the same level of education as those entering the U.S. workforce today, a result of the stagnation of the U.S. education system.

It means that business must go to where the pool of high-tech workers exists, so while the U.S. falls behind, he says, other nations benefit because they have made it easier for skilled graduates to stay in the country or emigrate to the country.

"It is a misperception that all these jobs go to India and China," Kirkegaard says.

The United States, he adds, is losing on all fronts and if the country is to regain its global leadership it must quickly revamp its policy toward highly skilled workers.

Tim Harper

Source: http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/407789

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