A Self-Inflicted Wound

The U.S. is blocking the best and brightest immigrants.

ONE OF the more self-defeating aspects of this nation's immigration policy is its insistence on denying work visas to thousands of the world's most sought-after doctors, scientists, engineers and technical specialists, including those finishing their degrees at American universities. Understandably, U.S. technological corporations, which, unlike Congress, live in the real world of innovation and cutthroat competition for skilled workers, are furious that their own government's visa policies give foreign firms a leg up. As Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corp., told a Senate committee last week, "America will find it infinitely more difficult to maintain its technological leadership if it shuts out the very people who are most able to help us compete."

That, unfortunately, is precisely the effect of current policy, which for the past few years has limited the number of visas reserved for skilled workers to 65,000 annually -- many fewer than American firms would like to hire. The immigration legislation passed by the Senate last year would have increased that number to 115,000, but the bill died in the House. As a result, it is a certainty that thousands of highly trained workers, their hopes of staying and working in America dashed, are now giving firms in Europe or Japan a competitive advantage in some of the world's most cutting-edge industries.

The lunacy of the current state of affairs is exposed by the fact that from 2001 to 2003, Congress raised the number of visas for skilled workers to 195,000 annually, in recognition of marketplace realities, then allowed it to revert back to 65,000 through what amounted to inattention. At this point, with the demand for skilled workers soaring, the 65,000 cap is so inadequate that every single such visa is snapped up by skilled workers who apply each spring, before the federal government's fiscal year even begins in October. The system's dysfunction has been recognized by Congress, which felt compelled to make some exemptions to its own cap. That eased but did not solve the problem.

Entangled in the broader debate about immigration, the skilled-worker visa problem has been neglected for too long. Tighter immigration curbs imposed after the terrorist attacks of 2001 may have been an understandable reaction at the time.

But there's no excuse for the current logjams, particularly since a legislative fix is relatively simple: increase the number of visas. And while Congress is at it, it should also raise the woefully inadequate annual cap on green cards, which are needed for permanent residency status. Just 140,000 are granted annually, and the backlog in applications now requires a waiting period of about five years.

America's knowledge-based economy is increasingly dependent on the best and brightest immigrants, who account for a quarter of the nation's doctorates and a third of its engineering professors. Foreign-born entrepreneurs were among the founders of Sun Microsystems Inc., Intel Corp., Google Inc. and other leading firms. To educate the next generation of them in America, only to export them to foreign universities and corporations, is foolish in the extreme.