Skilled masses

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, May 7, 2007

THE immigration reform debate has largely revolved around immigrants who do jobs Americans are not willing to do. But what about immigrants who do the jobs Americans are not ABLE to do?

The H-1B visa, for "specialty occupation workers" in high-tech fields such as medicine, computers and engineering, is capped at 65,000 a year. Many of those industries face a shortage of skilled American labor. So, on April 2, the first day visa applications were accepted for fiscal 2008, few were surprised that the quota was hit within hours. By law, the 123,480 applications received in the first two days will be processed by lottery.

The tens of thousands of H-1B rejects will constitute some of the world's best and brightest, and America is foolish to block them from the U.S. economy. After all, according to the National Science Foundation, a third of all science and engineering doctorates awarded in the United States go to foreign students (whose numbers are not limited). And according to the National Venture Capital Association, over the past 15 years one out of every four public companies backed by venture capital was started by an immigrant (including Google and eBay). The current H-1B cap is outdated, having been set by Congress before the Internet boom and the related blossoming of high-tech companies. Recognizing the need for foreign talent to keep U.S. high-tech industries on the cutting edge, Congress temporarily raised the ceiling to 195,000 for fiscal 2001 through 2003, only to let it relapse out of neglect. Every year since, the cap has been reached well before the start of the fiscal year.

For those applicants not selected in this year's lottery -- or who were shut out of the process entirely because they had not graduated by April 3 -- the next opportunity to file an H-1B petition is not until April 1, 2008. If those applications are accepted, the applicants will be able to start work on Oct. 1, 2008. But by that time, immigration experts and leaders in high-tech industries fear, many of the workers will have returned home or moved to countries such as Australia that have recently changed their immigration regulations to attract highly skilled workers. It may not be long before U.S. companies follow the talent overseas.

Congress is considering several bills that address the need to reform the H-1B program, including two that would raise the cap to 115,000. If they want America's high-tech industries to stay innovative, members of Congress should address the labor problem -- and preferably before the class of 2007 heads home.

Washington Post

Editorial

Unmask the phantom

REPUBLICANS and Democrats may not agree on much when it comes to campaign finance. Yet there should be unanimity on one issue: the need to speed up disclosure of who is contributing big bucks to politicians seeking office.

Senators are considering legislation that would accomplish that goal in their clubby chamber. Yet a single unnamed senator -- call that senator The Phantom -- has put a hold on legislation that would require electronic filing of Senate campaign reports. Who is this masked senator?

In all likelihood, The Phantom is a supporter of the current Stone Age reporting requirements in the U.S. Senate. Unlike their counterparts running for the House or the White House, candidates for the Senate don't have to file their reports electronically.

First, candidates file paper copies of their reports with the Senate Office of Public Records, which scans them and sends them digitally to the Federal Elections Committee.

The FEC prints the reports and sends them to a vendor in Fredericksburg, Va., where the information is keyed in by hand and then transferred back to the FEC database.

This process costs taxpayers $250,000 yearly. More important, it often prevents voters from learning who has contributed to Senate candidates until the election is over.

Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin, and Sen. Thad Cochran,

R-Mississippi, are sponsoring S. 223, which would require the information to be filed electronically. The bill has the support of 36 other senators, including Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer of California.

Twice last month, Feinstein went to the Senate floor to obtain unanimous consent on the legislation, which sailed through committee without an objection. And twice, an unnamed GOP senator put what is known as "secret hold" on the bill under the Senate's arcane rules.

Who is this Phantom? Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, surely knows. He issued the first objection "on behalf of a Republican senator."

The Senate's Republican leadership should be ashamed. They are using shrouded methods to protect a shrouded system of campaign financing, and senators from both parties are providing protection.

Many of them presumably know the identity of The Phantom. But in the chummy world of the U.S. Senate, they refuse to unmask that senator or to renounce such devious ways.

Sacramento Bee

Editorial