Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Regarding Craig Barrett's Dec. 23 op-ed, "A Talent Contest We're Losing":

Mr. Barrett suggested that the United States could lose the competition for global talent because of the European Union's "Blue Card" plan to attract workers from abroad.

But the Blue Card that Mr. Barrett said would mean that the "next Silicon Valley will not be in the United States" does not even exist. It is just a proposal by the E.U. bureaucracy. Because this proposal would require the approval of all E.U. members, it is unlikely ever to become reality.

Mr. Barrett went on to assert that E.U. leaders recognize that foreign graduates can "reinvigorate European industry." In reality, there is widespread, high-level opposition to the proposal. At a December meeting to discuss the idea, Germany's employment minister said there is no need for it. Leaders from Britain, the Czech Republic, Austria and the Netherlands have been among those to criticize it.

We can only hope that U.S. immigration policy will not be influenced by hysteria from those seeing mere phantoms in Europe.

JOHN MIANO

Summit, N.J.

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Perhaps Craig Barrett, chairman of the multinational company Intel Corp., could rely on the L-1 visa, in addition to H-1Bs, since presumably his company is suffering so from a shortage of foreign labor. The L-1 allows for intracompany transfers, so Mr. Barrett could transfer employees around the world to the United States for up to five or seven years, depending on the type of worker. As a bonus, the company wouldn't have to go through all those pesky and inconvenient motions of trying to show that Americans aren't being displaced and wages aren't being depressed.

Although Mr. Barrett's open-borders brethren in Europe and the United States are experiencing some grief from us national-sovereignty types, the open-borders set far outguns the rest of us and will no doubt be able to conduct business as usual via such stealth guest-worker and Blue Card proposals.

JAN TOUMA

Durham, N.C.