A Talent Contest We're Losing - 海外工作

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/21/AR2007122101919.html

A Talent Contest We're Losing

By Craig Barrett
Sunday, December 23, 2007; Page B07

The European Union took a step recently that the U.S. Congress can't seem to
muster the courage to take. By proposing a simple change in immigration policy,
E.U. politicians served notice that they are serious about competing with the
United States and Asia to attract the world's top talent to live, work and
innovate in Europe. With Congress gridlocked on immigration, it's clear that
the next Silicon Valley will not be in the United States.

European politicians face many of the same political pressures surrounding
immigration as their U.S. counterparts, and they, too, are not immune to
those pressures. Nationalist and anti-immigrant factions in several Western
European countries have made political gains in recent elections and are
widely viewed as mainstream. Despite the hot-button nature of immigration
issues, though, E.U. politicians advanced the "Blue Card" proposal in late
October.

The plan is designed to attract highly educated workers by creating a
temporary but renewable two-year visa. A streamlined application process
would allow qualified prospective workers to navigate the system and start
working in high-need jobs within one to three months.


This contrasts starkly with the byzantine system in place in the United
States, which increasingly threatens America's long-term competitiveness.

The United States relies primarily on two programs to augment its workforce
with highly educated, highly skilled foreign professionals. The H-1B visa
is a three-year temporary visa that can be renewed once. The employment-based
(EB) green card is the program for permanent residency. Both programs serve
the needs of U.S. employers seeking to fill job vacancies in highly skilled
professions. Extreme shortages of visas in both these programs are well
documented.

H-1B visas, which are capped at 85,000 per year, are now gone in one day,
with the "winners" determined by lottery.

The EB green card program has an annual allotment of 140,000 visas; these
are allocated equally across all countries around the world, regardless of
population. The inflexible country quotas mean that professionals from
countries such as China and India are almost always at a disadvantage,
finding themselves stuck in a system -- often for five to 10 years -- in
which they cannot seek promotions and raises. Spouses and children count
against the quota, which has not been raised since 1990. And even though
they count against the quota of foreign workers allowed to come here,
spouses are inexplicably forbidden to work, no matter their level of
education and skill.

The U.S. system forces thousands of valuable foreign-born professionals --
including badly needed researchers, scientists, teachers and engineers --
into legal and professional limbo for years. Not surprisingly, many are
considering opportunities in competitor nations -- even those who have lived
in the United States for years and have graduated from American universities.

To be competitive in the global economy, U.S. companies depend on specialized
talent coming out of U.S. graduate schools. These scientists and engineers are
often foreign-born, as more than half of U.S. engineering master's students
and PhD recipients are international students. Yet America shuts the door on
many of these highly educated graduates, forcing them to look abroad for
opportunities -- and our competitors are capitalizing on our failed policies.

E.U. leaders recognize that the top minds coming out of universities in the
United States and other countries can help to reinvigorate European industry
and enable it to create the next wave of businesses that drive innovation and
economic growth.

While its Blue Card proposal still requires approval by member countries, Europe
has sent a message. It intends to aggressively pursue the professional talent
necessary to compete on the global stage. The United States, on the other hand,
seems intent on driving away the very same talent the European Union is rolling
out the red carpet to welcome.

The writer is chairman of Intel Corp., which employs about 2,000 employees with
H-1B visas among its 86,000 workers worldwide.

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