Today, highly skilled immigration reform ceases to be a policy debate and becomes a problem of simple math.
That’s because today is April 1, and like so many other April 1’s for the past quarter century, our immigration system will once again limit our nation’s opportunities for economic expansion and job growth. Highly skilled immigrants to America not only keep our fastest growing export industries competitive, they help keep and create jobs for Americans. In spite of the clear benefits they bring, our nation caps the availability of these job creators at 85,000 a year–well short of the U.S. market demand for qualified highly skilled workers. In fact, each year tens of thousands of applications for H-1B Visas are received, and yet the caps are met so fast that the process is closed in just days. In other words, less than a week for now, America’s most innovative businesses will no longer able to hire the talent they need to grow their companies this year.
