Monday, April 27, 2009

A good justification for high-end immigration and then a non sequitur.

http://tinyurl.com/calx6q
We Need an Immigration Stimulus WSJ By L. GORDON CROVITZ * APRIL 27, 2009
A recession is exactly when we want innovative outsiders.
At the dawn ...Which brings us to our...era, and the debate on immigration reform ...skeptical about immigration reform, given the alliance between nativists and labor unions for tighter borders. Still, an economic downturn is the right time to move on immigration, one of the few policy tools that could clearly boost growth.... lower-skilled migration has slowed due to higher unemployment.... could make it less contentious to ease the path to legalization for the 12 million undocumented workers... It's also a good time to ask why we turn away skilled workers, including the ones earning 60% of the advanced degrees in engineering at U.S. universities....Immigrants have had a disproportionate role in innovation and technology. Companies founded by immigrants include Yahoo, eBay and Google. Half of Silicon Valley start-ups were founded by immigrants, up from 25% a decade ago. Some 40% of patents in the U.S. are awarded to immigrants. A recent study by the Kauffman Foundation found that immigrants are 50% likelier to start businesses than natives. Immigrant-founded technology firms employ 450,000 workers in the U.S. And according to the National Venture Capital Association, immigrants have started one quarter of all U.S. venture-backed firms. ****It's hard to see how one can later conflate unskilled workers with this group, clearly HIGH-SKILLED. ****... saddled with new hurdles to get visas for skilled workers. The wait for H-1B visas for skilled people from countries such as China and India is now more than five years, with only 65,000 visas granted annually among 600,000 applications. But countries such as Canada and Singapore actively recruit technologists and scientists.... instead of sending the half million higher-education students from overseas home when they graduate, we should "staple a green card to their diplomas."...New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg ... launched a business-plan competition targeting business and engineering students...
There's a strong case that we need both more skilled and unskilled immigrants...****NO!! If there is a case for "both", it certainly has NOT been made here ( or anywhere else. ) ****...Much of this activity is being done by foreigners who want to become economically successful Americans. This makes more open immigration one of the few stimulus packages Washington can deliver with confidence that it would help. ****Open immigration should be restricted to high-skilled workers as below. After making a compelling case for increasing immigration of skilled workers, the author blithely adds the non sequitur "There's a strong case that we need both more skilled and unskilled immigrants." This extension to unskilled immigrants is done without the slightest justification. In fact, bringing in H1-B types is so unexceptionable it should be expanded without limit but bringing in low-skill (or worse, unskilled), and hence low-productivity, workers is not good for the economy or the country. ( The article certainly does NOT present an argument for legalizing the present illegal, largely unskilled, populaton.)
A prime measure of the standard-of-living is the GNP per capita which means the productivity per capita. As an example, even U.S. agriculture is not internationally competitive because of the availability of stoop labor: it is because of innovation and the capital and technological intensivity of American industry. That can be enhanced by bringing in immigrants who are inventive and entrepreneurial and who add to the average productivity, not detract from it.

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