Gates muddled and incoherent testimony that US universities are not producing enough STEM graduate was pure perjury: studies by Rand, AP Soan, Urban Institute has shown that there is a glut of STEMs and no shortage. Gates testimony that he pays most of his H1Bs over $100K/year is also a lie: according the LCA database 85% of H1Bs employed by MS are paid

You may have read somewhere in the transcript of Bill Gates’ testimony that innovation “is not a game played only in the US”. In order to compete with the best in the world, the US *needs* the best in the world. Period.

It is true that the H1B program has long been misused and requires to undergo rigorous reforms at the earliest. However, shutting the doors to the world’s brightest hardly qualifies as an immigration reform especially when these highly skilled immigrants have so much to contribute to the US economy [Immigrants in Silicon Valley fuel the entrepreneur culture — http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4176/is_20070105/ai_n17107434].

>> “is not a game played only in the US”.

Then why do they HAVE to come here? Do all the Olympic athletes from the various other countries spend their careers living and training in the US? Of course not! This is why Bill Gates analogy is so poor. MS has major operations in India, Asia and Europe. Wouldn’t it be better with they stayed in their home countries with their family and friends! I would!

>>In order to compete with the best in the world,
>> the US *needs* the best in the world. Period.

Unfortunately, most of the H1Bs being imported are not the “best and brightest” as based on their wages. For example, according to the LCA database, 85% of the H1Bs working at MS earn less than $50K/year - not the +$100K/year for the best and brightest with most of them NOT doing technical work. Many are for example are doing clerical work like legal, accounting and business stuff not math and science. [ I’ve hear a story that one H1B was operating a cookie dough mixing machine! LOL ;) ] Everyone wants to bring over the best and brightest; however, the H1B program right now is not doing that. It’s displacing native born workers so that our kids no longer want to go into math and science. That has to be changed! Google: Ron Hira or Norman Matloff for more info.

>> It is true that the H1B program has long been misused and requires to undergo rigorous
>> reforms at the earliest.

There is such a reform bill authored by Senators Durbin and Grassely and supported by Rohrbacker called “The H1B and L3 Visa Fraud Prevention Act of 2007″. Unfortunately Compete American does not support it just confirming that tech business is just interested in cheap labor not pricey quality workers.

>> especially when these highly skilled immigrants have so much to contribute
>> to the US economy

Statements like this are misleading: H1Bs are not immigrants they are NIV(Non Immigrant Visa) holders. They are not the same thing; naturalized citizens do contribute but H1Bs don’t leave much of footprint. H1Bs are largely used as cheap labor to outsource jobs. The top nine users of H1B are Indian outsourcing companies that move jobs off-shore. These H1Bs are not starting fortune 500 companies. Currently there are estimated to be over 700K visa over stayers from China and India in the US who didn’t go home when their visa expired. The fastest growing group of illegal immigrants in the US are from India. We need to reform H1B and deport all these poor people before American innovation can start up again.

>> Immigrants in Silicon Valley fuel the entrepreneur culture

With regards to the specific article, it is true that many of the founding EMPLOYEES of “tech” companies were foreign born BUT none of the big fortune 500 tech companies were founded by H1Bs from China or India - that’s propaganda created by lobbyist to keep the cheap labor coming. The Washington political pimps are deliberately trying to confuse the issue by substituting the word immigrant for H1B in statements trying to make what is true for one class true for the other - when if fact it isn’t. Fortunately, the devastating consequences that H1B has had American innovation are coming out and cannot be ignored by the politicians anymore.

He rightly points out that we spend tons of taxpayer money on foreign graduate students in math, science, and engineering and then send them to other countries where their innovations benefit those foreign countries after their 12 months of OPT expires. Many of these foreign grad students use the OPT over the summer to do basic research. Even those who save their OPT, no company is willing to hire them with the huge attached risk they do not acquire an H1B visa in those 12 months.

So these Ph.D students (or research master’s) have spent 5-6 years (2-3) in the United States studying at our institutions (partially paid for with our tax dollars), perhaps having married in that time frame, having done research for the US for 5-6/2-3 years (partially paid for with our tax dollars), leave, not for their home country, but for Australia, Ireland, the UK, Dubai, Singapore, and Canada (countries which use a points based system taking into account education), taking along their knowledge, innovating in those countries, and paying taxes in those countries. There is a ton of talk about job displacement but when you look at the composition of electrical engineering, computer science, physics, math, chem engineering, etc… it’s overwhelmingly foreign students, because Americans do not even bother to apply to many of these programs. The GRE exam is not particularly overwhelming, it tests junior high school level math, high school level reading, and college level vocabulary (actually disfavors foreigners). These are the people who should receive H1B, not Wipro’s job stealing outsourcing workers.

What Congress should be doing: Reserve the H1B’s primarily for foreign students who have graduated from US University graduate research programs (2-3 year master’s, or 4-6 year Ph.D programs), and are already using their OPT time in a high paying job facing shortage of qualified workers, plus require a tax-deductible sponsorship fee of $10,000 per year per H1-B for the companies.

This prevents the abuse that is currently taking place in the H1-B system: right now the H1B system is used by Indian outsourcing companies such as Wipro to send over their India Institute of Technology trained graduates to the United States to learn an American’s job and then transfer the job back to India via the H1B user.

By linking H1B to the graduate school system we

1) ensure that we have H1B employees who are acclimated to US working environs, US cost of living, and US wages (e.g. understanding they have certain rights as employees since they’ve used some OPT time to work over summers, had the opportunity to see what’s available in the entire US industry (informational awareness), etc..), and who are likely to STAY in the United States.

2) Since OPT is now 29 months long, the student is already likely to be in their job for a certain number of months before their H1B application is reviewed, an earnings history has been established so immigration can see if their working as an a) a lowly paid administrative assistant or as b) a highly paid electrical engineer

3) If the job is indeed ~$100k+ a year, as Bill Gates claims, then the $10,000/year won’t be of consequence. If you’re hiring Wen Wen to do clerical work for $35k a year, the $10k becomes important. Most Ph.D’s in these high tech areas which are experiencing a shortage (comp sci, electrical engineering, biomedical engineering, chemical engineering) should be earning ~$100k after two years of work experience (24 months of OPT). Earnings history during OPT should catch H1B abusing companies, like WiPro, but this is an added deterrent.

What we need to do is attract the top global talent through our graduate educational institutions and then keep them in the United States. This will prevent or at least deter high tech companies from outsourcing the high-paying tech jobs, they physically can’t, since nearly all the best talent is stateside.