An Immigration Attorney’s Prospective on Comprehensive Immigration Reform

A commentary entitled U.S. Immigration Law – A News Blog By Ashwin Sharma, Esq. contends that:

The United States economy has shifted significantly over the past fifty years. We are no longer the blue collar nation that we once were. The transformation of our economy from a manufacturing economy to a knowledge-based economy has created a growing demand for highly skilled technical workers. This demand has been accompanied by a decline in the number of native-born students seeking degrees in the fields of science, engineering and technology. Our prestigious graduate institutions currently train more foreign nationals than U.S. citizens in these important fields. These U.S trained specialists, both native and foreign-born, cannot fill the demand for highly-skilled workers in key occupations. U.S. businesses must be able to recruit and hire additional foreign-born professionals to alleviate temporary labor shortages in specific occupations. To keep America competitive, we must increase the number of specialized worker visas awarded. H-1B visas, or temporary skilled worker visas, are currently capped at only 65,000 annually. Yet in recent years, this “cap” is reached in a couple of months and U.S. businesses are barred from hiring foreign-born professionals for the remainder of the fiscal year. In order to increase the number of highly skilled professionals in this country, we must reform the employment based immigration system and provide a sufficient amount of avenues through which U.S. businesses can legally employ specialized workers. At the same time, we must increase recruitment and training of U.S. students as well – in order to accelerate this process, a hefty portion of the processing fees for the H visas are directed to the education and training of U.S. students in science and technology.

For the full commentary, click here.

KJ