Immigration Politics – Cal 2013 – Starter Packet

Ext. Skilled Labor IL

The deal’s key to skilled labor and innovation

Mobarak 2-12

[Mushfiq. Prof Econ Yale School Management. “Immigration and Innovation” The New York Times, 2/12/13 ln//GBS-JV]

The United States economy has a comparative advantage in science and innovation. The country of Apple, Google, Facebook, Ford, General Motors, Boeing, Microsoft and FedEx thrives by creating new products and introducing entirely new markets. The American economy is innovation-driven, and such innovation requires, first and foremost, people with good ideas and skilled workers who can transform those ideas into marketable products. Where does all this talent that our economy is built on originate? Are we the innovation leaders because we have a monopoly on talent in the world?¶ The basic data suggest otherwise. American secondary school students consistently rank toward the bottom among their counterparts in other countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in tests measuring science and mathematics aptitude. The United States has sustained its primary position as developer of new scientific knowledge and product innovations, despite the deficiencies in math and science training, with the immigration of skilled workers.¶ Talented people across the world are attracted to the institutions that the United States has carefully cultivated to support innovation. By any reasonable assessment, a clear majority of the world’s top universities are in the United States. These universities attract talent from all over the globe. Most engineering Ph.D.’s granted at American universities now go to people born abroad. In a recently published paper, my colleagues and I show that these foreign-born doctoral students create new scientific knowledge and fuel innovation at science and engineering labs at American universities. In that paper, increases in the supply of foreign students subsequently result in significantly greater publications and citations from science and engineering departments in the United States. Many of those students remain in the country after graduation and contribute to the innovations produced by American companies.¶ Such data on the contributions of foreign students to American innovation strongly support the spirit and the central provisions of immigration reform proposals offered by the White House and by Senators Orrin Hatch, Marco Rubio, Amy Klobuchar and Chris Coons. (Three of the senators are members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will take up the issue of comprehensive immigration reform at a hearing on Wednesday.) If talented foreigners want to study and work in the United States, economic logic and the data suggest that we should welcome them. American companies working in the very sectors where our comparative advantage lies benefit from their presence. Such a policy also creates other rare but significant benefits for the future of the nation. A typical profile of a recent Nobel laureate is a United States citizen or someone trained or teaching at an American university, but who was born in a foreign country.¶ One might be tempted to conclude from this narrative that our immigration system is working well, but this conclusion is premature and dangerous for two reasons. First, the United States is not the only country in the market for that talent. Three of the five most recent Nobel laureates from Britain were not born there. Australian and British educators were overjoyed with the quality of their international student applicant pool when the United States instituted restrictions on student visas after 9/11. Other countries deliberately pursue immigration policies to spur innovation.¶ Second, it’s impossible to know the counterfactual: how much better off we would have been had our immigration policies been more welcoming to skilled people? American citizens like Bill Gates, Sergey Brin and Mark Zuckerberg made brave decisions to drop out of school and start some of the most successful companies in the history of the planet. As a former foreign doctoral student, I can attest that under current immigration policies, such decisions are not easy to make for foreign students. For noncitizens trying to create a foothold in this country, it is virtually impossible to take the risks that these remarkable people took. With no clear path to citizenship, talented entrepreneurs who are foreign-born find it very risky to start businesses. Their options are limited to taking a salaried position with an employer who could sponsor their visa, or to marry an American. Our policies could be revised to promote entrepreneurial risk-taking by the top talent regardless of their country of origin, because just one Microsoft, or a Google or a Facebook, can change the world.¶ The blueprint offered by Senator Hatch and colleagues is full of sensible provisions, including work permits for spouses of H-1B workers. Talented people often meet and marry other educated, talented people, and having those productive spouses sit at home is a dead-weight loss to the United States economy. Residents at any major university town in the country will recognize ads from over-qualified babysitters “informally” willing to look after your children.¶ This bill will receive predictable pushback with simplistic arguments from special interest groups worried about skilled migrants undercutting American wages. But as other research has shown, immigrants make a net positive contribution to the United States economy, as they create more jobs than they take away, and their presence increases income per worker in the United States. Arguments that skilled immigrants will displace American workers, and thereby prevent young Americans from pursuing degrees in science, fail to recognize that entrepreneurs and innovators start new companies and invent new products that employ more skilled workers. Do we really believe that people like Sergey Brin or Albert Einstein took away more jobs than they created? Or that Facebook, Instagram or exciting new product lines from Google or Microsoft do not attract more young Americans to science¶ If skilled foreigners getting stuck to their visa sponsors in indentured low-wage work is a concern, then visa policies should be reformed to allow foreign-born entrepreneurs the flexibility to start their own businesses, not to pursue policies that keep them from our shores. Indeed, the White House’s proposal for immigration reform includes such a provision for a “start-up visa” for foreign-born entrepreneurs.¶ Another counterargument to high-skilled immigration involves the concept of “brain drain” – worries that by attracting talent here, we are taking away the best and the brightest from other countries that have greater need for that talent. The fact is, these immigrants typically contribute more to their countries of origin than people who are prevented from leaving at all. This is because of the tremendously higher productivity of workers educated in the United States. Labor is the second largest export from Bangladesh, the country where I was born, and remittances account for over 10 percent of our gross domestic product. I, like many other first-generation immigrants, have continued contributing to the development of my country of birth, by combining the skills I acquired in the United States with my context-specific knowledge to pursue research and policies that address some of the key public health and development challenges in Bangladesh. One project demonstrates, for example, that promoting internal (rural to urban) seasonal migration is a very cost-effective way to counter a recurring pre-harvest famine.¶ The internal migration strategy works because it creates a better match between where people are and where the complementary inputs (capital, jobs) are during certain seasons, and this leads to enhanced efficiency and productivity. Attracting talented people to the United States and allowing them to interact with the innovative universities and companies creates similar efficiency gains that can be a win-win for the source countries and for the United States.

More ev deal solves skilled labor and reverses the brain drain

Weihua ’13

(Chen, “US immigration reform a challenge for China”, China Daily, 2-8-2013)

The proposed immigration reform, which has sparked a heated debate across the United States, has not only raised hopes for the 11 million illegal immigrants in the country, it has also thrilled Chinese students now studying in American colleges and universities.¶ According to the proposals put forward by some Democrat and Republican senators as well as President Barack Obama, the US will offer more work visas and green cards to high-level professionals and foreign students with advanced degrees, especially STEM students, that is, those in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.¶ Washington has been tightening its immigration policy since the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, making it more difficult for foreign professionals and students to find jobs and live in the US. But the policy has been criticized by many and described by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg as "national suicide".

Deal’s key to High-Skilled – Current items don’t thump

Preston 1-12

[Julia Preston, Obama Will Seek Citizenship Path in One Fast Push, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/us/politics/obama-plans-to-push-congress-on-immigration-overhaul.html?_r=0]

Even while Mr. Obama has been focused on fiscal negotiations and gun control, overhauling immigration remains a priority for him this year, White House officials said. Top officials there have been quietly working on a broad proposal. Mr. Obama and lawmakers from both parties believe that the early months of his second term offer the best prospects for passing substantial legislation on the issue.¶ Mr. Obama is expected to lay out his plan in the coming weeks, perhaps in his State of the Union address early next month, administration officials said. The White House will argue that its solution for illegal immigrants is not an amnesty, as many critics insist, because it would include fines, the payment of back taxes and other hurdles for illegal immigrants who would obtain legal status, the officials said.¶ The president’s plan would also impose nationwide verification of legal status for all newly hired workers; add visas to relieve backlogs and allow highly skilled immigrants to stay; and create some form of guest-worker program to bring in low-wage immigrants in the future.¶ A bipartisan group of senators has also been meeting to write a comprehensive bill, with the goal of introducing legislation as early as March and holding a vote in the Senate before August. As a sign of the keen interest in starting action on immigration, White House officials and Democratic leaders in the Senate have been negotiating over which of them will first introduce a bill, Senate aides said.¶ “This is so important now to both parties that neither the fiscal cliff nor guns will get in the way,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, a Democrat who is a leader of the bipartisan discussions.¶ A similar attempt at bipartisan legislation early in Mr. Obama’s first term collapsed amid political divisions fueled by surging public wrath over illegal immigration in many states. But both supporters and opponents say conditions are significantly different now.¶ Memories of the results of the November election are still fresh here. Latinos, the nation’s fastest-growing electorate, turned out in record numbers and cast 71 percent of their ballots for Mr. Obama. Many Latinos said they were put off by Republicans’ harsh language and policies against illegal immigrants.¶ After the election, a host of Republicans, starting with Speaker John A. Boehner, said it was time for the party to find a more positive, practical approach to immigration. Many party leaders say electoral demographics are compelling them to move beyond policies based only on tough enforcement.¶ Supporters of comprehensive changes say that the elections were nothing less than a mandate in their favor, and that they are still optimistic that Mr. Obama is prepared to lead the fight.¶ “Republicans must demonstrate a reasoned approach to start to rebuild their relationship with Latino voters,” said Clarissa Martinez de Castro, the director of immigration policy at the National Council of La Raza, a Latino organization. “Democrats must demonstrate they can deliver on a promise.”¶ Since the election, Mr. Obama has repeatedly pledged to act on immigration this year. In his weekly radio address on Saturday, he again referred to the urgency of fixing the immigration system, saying it was one of the “difficult missions” the country must take on.

More ev – they deal’s key to retain the best & brightest

ADS 2-10

[Arizona Daily Sun 2-10-13. azdailysun.com/news/opinion/editorial/cooperation-on-immigration-reform-only-way-forward/article_c5b261e3-e267-566f-a235-3de051bdce57.html]

And what does reform look like? Both the bipartisan Senate package and President Obama's plan start with even more border security and better enforcement of the federal employment verification system and temporary visas that are overstayed. These are just as important to border security as any 20-foot-high fence -- would-be migrants who have heard they cannot find work and who know they will be tracked down once their visas expire will think twice before leaving Mexico for Arizona.¶ LET SCIENCE GRADUATES STAY¶ For those illegals already here, a system of registration, payment of fines, the requirement to learn English, and a waiting period for green cards and citizenship that likely will be at least 10 years doesn't sound like amnesty to us. The devil, of course, is in the details, but the principles of reform should be clear: Bring millions of undocumented aliens out of the shadows, allow them to work legally and pay taxes, and bring them into the mainstream of American culture.¶ Flagstaff, as a university city, has a stake in the part of the reform package that calls for an immediate increase in the number H-1B visas for foreign workers skilled in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). NAU is attracting hundreds of foreign students in those fields, some of whom would gladly stay past graduation if they could obtain visas. Based on the number of foreign-born U.S citizens who start businesses, obtain patents and even win Nobel Prizes, this is just the kind of immigration reform that Flagstaff, a self-declared STEM city, needs.

More ev

Redorbit 8

(Science, Tech, and Space News Agency, "Aerospace Industry Faces Coming Worker Shortage", 3-4, http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1281235/aerospace_industry_faces_coming_worker_shortage/) Kerwin

As the large baby boom generation retires over the next decade, the aerospace and defense industries will be particularly hard hit, and industry officials worry there are not enough qualified young Americans to take the place of these retiring Cold War scientists and engineers. As of last year, nearly 60 percent of U.S. aerospace workers were 45 or older, according to an Associated Press report. The problem could carry national security implications, and significantly reduce the number of commercial product developments that begin with military technology. Although there are two-and-a-half times the number of engineering, math and computer science graduates as there were 40 years ago, there is also more competition for these graduates. Defense companies must now compete with leading technology companies such as Google, Microsoft and Verizon. "It’s about choices," said Rich Hartnett, director of global staffing at Boeing Co., in an Associated Press interview. "There are so many more options today with a proliferation in the kinds of degrees and career paths that people can follow." But despite the industry’s efforts to emphasize the appeal and growing importance of careers involved in national defense, Aerospace Industries Association Chief Executive Marion Blakey is concerned the U.S. could be facing a "wake-up call," similar to the 1957 Soviet launch of Sputnik, the world’s first satellite. Blakey said China’s recent success in shooting down one of its own satellites last year, combined with the upcoming retirement of the U.S. space shuttle fleet, demonstrate that the U.S. can no longer afford to take its technological and military superiority for granted. Blakey formerly served as head of the Federal Aviation Administration. In addition to fierce competition for a limited number of technical experts from all corners of corporate America, contractors working on classified government projects are further held back due to restrictions on hiring foreigners or off-shoring work to other countries. "The ability to attract and retain individuals with technical skills is a lifeblood issue for us," said Ian Ziskin, corporate vice president and chief human resources and administrative officer for Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman Corp. Ziskin told AP that he estimates roughly half of Northrop Grumman’s 122,000 workers will be eligible to retire in the next five to 10 years. Similar trends exist at Lockheed Martin Corp., of Bethesda, Md., which could lose up to half of its 140,000 workers to retirement over the next decade.