Give Us Your Tired, Your Energetic, Your Poor, Your Rich — Pretty Much Anyone Who’s Not a Criminal or Terrorist

On Wednesday I blogged about how, for the first time in many years — since the last recession — H-1B skilled worker visas remain available despite the hard cap on their number. In other words, even foreigners respond to market incentives: when there are no jobs, there are fewer immigrants.

I’ve gotten some interesting email in response to that little notice, one of which I post below, along with my paragraph-by-paragraph responses.

Just read your blog entry on the H-1b visa. The problem is that this visa
has been misused by sponsoring companies, suffering from high rates of
fraud. I find it strange that Cato supports (or appears to support) a
labor tool that is anything but free market. The H-1b visa is more of an
indentured servant visa program than anything else – where employees must be
sponsored by an employer. Since employees aren’t free to find new jobs or
start their own business, it results in a captive workforce who will do whatever
the employee asks, even beyond reason. They won’t bargain for higher
wages, quit if mistreated, join unions, or do anything that might result in
their immigration status being jeopardized.

Having myself been on H-1Bs with several employers, including Cato, I agree that the program is seriously flawed, in the ways this correpondent describes and in others. Ideally, people would be able to apply for a work permit — their application gaining more “points,” say, for language, youth, skills, the needs of the economy, or whatever other criteria the political process determines are important — and then not be tied to an employer and have an opportunity to receive permanent residence and eventual naturalization if they pay their taxes, stay out of jail, etc. Or, indeed, we could admit all people who want to come here (after screening for security, criminal, and health concerns), and give them the same opportunity. But until we get to that more perfect world, I see no conflict in advocating for a repeal of the H-1B cap or pointing out how this recession shows that immigrants come for jobs, not to leech off our welfare state (if that’s the concern, then wall off the welfare state, not the country) or commit crimes.

One thing not correct in your blog is that H-1b visa holders cannot get a
green-card. They can, unfortunately most of the workers are from India so
it is difficult for those workers to get the green-card because of how,
numerically, green-cards are issued. The H-1b visa is a “dual intent” visa
meaning there is a path to permanent residence and after 6 years on the visa
holders can extend 1 year until their green-card is processed. Indian
workers call it the “green carrot” and relate it to the picture of where the
mule driver holds a carrot on a stick in front of the mule to keep him
moving. No matter how hard the mule tries, the carrot gets no closer.

The H-1B’s “dual intent” provision is categorically not a path to a green card. All it does is, as the correspondent points out, allow the worker to stay in the country during the green card application process. That process, however, and the substantive requirements for obtaining a green card, is no different for H-1B holders than it is for anyone else. Indeed, spending five or six years on an H-1B with one employer can be a detriment, inasmuch as that employer’s sponsorship application cannot take into account the skills gained during that time of employment. And yes, the nationality-based restrictions are also obnoxious.

The primary sponsors of H-1b workers are Indian outsourcing firms. In
short, the visa is used as a tool to send jobs overseas. People from Cato
may not have a problem with that because of their own views on globalization and
free trade, but the majority of Americans do. You guys are notorious at
just looking at one half of the equation when it comes to free market practices
unfortunately – which is the corporate side. Yes, corporations can move
people around the world using a variety of immigration programs. But do
the people being moved around control their own destinies or are they at the
mercy of the corporations?

Cato is not a corporate shill. Plenty of what we advocate is counter to the expressed preferences of Big [fill in your preferred Villain] because the business community often prefers stability over liberty-enhancing volatility — smaller, secure profits over potentially larger but not-guaranteed ones — and a place at the government subsidies trough over a truly free market. Moreover, and with much irony, it is the H-1B’s cap and costly bureaucratic processing that has promoted outsourcing — which in and of itself is not problematic for the American economy as a whole — by preventing American firms from bringing Indian (and other) workers here. And people on H-1Bs are “at the mercy of corporations” precisely because this visa is tied to one employer, as mentioned in the first quoted paragraph above.

Liberty doesn’t just apply to corporations and the narrow objective of free
trade. I just don’t understand how the Cato Institute and all of your
intellectuals don’t see through this visa for what it is. It deprives
people of liberty. Many American workers don’t care that “an Indian” is
being deprived of their liberty, but they should if not for moral reasons than
for economic reasons. If I have a worker that I can exploit and pay less,
now I have a bargaining tool against the worker I previously could not.
When one man is deprived of their liberty, in a way we all are.

I couldn’t agree more that our current immigration regime benefits nobody — not big business, not small business, not skilled workers, not unskilled workers, not the American economy as a whole, not certain sectors of it — with the possible exception of populist demagogues of both the left and the right. The answer to that morass isn’t to attack globalization or free trade — which is not a “narrow objective” but a fundamental mechanism for enhancing peoples’ lives all over the world — but to reform our immigration system.

For more on these and related issues, check out these recent studies put out by my colleague Dan Griswold and his trade and immigration policy team:

On the fiscal impact of low-skilled immigration

On the economic benefits of immigration reform

On the influx of immigrants pushing Americans up the income scale

CP: Cato's blog

Immigrants Respond to Economic Incentives

As I blogged here, I got my green card in April — and am now counting down the days till I can naturalize (five years from the green card, though you can apply three months before that and processing takes a year or so). Because of my various travails over the years that led to that fortunate day this spring, I’ve learned quite a bit about immigration, both as a matter of policy and as a matter of law. Indeed, both before joining Cato and ever since, it’s been an area in which I’ve been writing and speaking — and I appreciate very much the synergy this work has had with my colleagues in the trade and immigration shop.

One oped I had in National Review Online dealt with H-1Bs, the temporary visas for highly skilled workers to work in the United States. One of the problems with H-1Bs is that they provide no path to a green card (meaning permanent residence) or citizenship — so just as hard-working, tax-paying professionals gain expertise in a particular American company or industry, just as they grow roots in an American community, they have to leave. Nevertheless, there have long been more H-1B applicants than available visas. The last few years, the annual 65,000 quota has been oversubscribed on the very first day of eligibility for each fiscal year!

Well, not any more. As this recent article points out, the recession has impacted our immigration system as well: “A coveted visa program that feeds skilled workers to top-tier U.S. technology companies and universities [the H-1B program] is on track to leave thousands of spots unfilled for the first time since 2003, a sign of how the weak economy has eroded employment even among highly trained professionals.”

This is just another indication that the free movement of goods, money, and people, will regulate even such perceived social ills as “foreigners taking American jobs.” There’s simply no need for “U.S. citizen only” provisions in (so-called) stimulus bills, or (further) immigration restrictions during bad economic times.

In other words, even foreigners respond to market incentives.

For more on Cato’s work on immigration policy, go here.

CP: Cato's blog

I Love You Too, America

People who don’t know me well don’t realize I’m not American. I have no accent, am among the most patriotic people you could meet, went to college and law school here, interned for a senator, clerked for a federal judge, worked on a presidential campaign, spent time in Iraq, and speak and write about the U.S. Constitution for a living. I was born in Russia, however, and immigrated to Canada with my parents when I was little. “We took a wrong turn at the St. Lawrence Seaway,” I like to joke.

The upshot is that, much as I’ve wanted to be American since about age eight — when I discovered that the U.S. governing ethos was “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” while Canada’s is “peace, order, and good government” — I am a Canadian citizen. And, because of this country’s perverted immigration system, none of the time I’ve spent in the United States (my entire adult life save a 10-month masters program in London) got me any closer to the unrestricted right to live and work here (a “green card”).

Don’t worry, I’ve always been legal, through a combination of student, training, and professional visas, but those were always tied to the school or employer, hindering the types of professional activities I could engage in hanging a sword of Damocles over my life. If I lost my job — as so many lawyers have, for example, in this economy — I would have to leave the country where about 95% of my personal and professional network is located.

When I came to Cato, the opportunity presented itself to finally be able to petition for a green card. (I’ll spare you the overly technical and exceedingly frustrating details.) Along the way, I even got a certificate saying that the U.S. government — or at least the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (what used to be the I.N.S.) — considered me an “alien of exceptional ability.” I didn’t let this go to my head; when lawyers and bureaucrats come up with a term of art, it means less in real life than, say, one of you readers emailing me that you liked something I blogged here.

Anyhow, not expecting any action on my green card petition for at least another year (based on the processing times posted at the USCIS website), last night I came home to an unmarked envelope in my mailbox. It was my green card! — complete with a little pamphlet welcoming me to America.

This is quite literally the key to the rest of my life in this wonderful country. Those who know me well know how huge a deal this is for me personally, how long it has taken, and how many arbitrary and capricious obstacles our immigration non-policy places in the way of “skilled workers.” (Three years ago I attracted media attention during the Senate immigration debate with the soundbite, “if this reform goes through, I’m giving up law and taking up gardening.”)

I’ve been very fortunate in the opportunities I’ve had and the people I’ve met — including, in significant part, through the big-tent movement for liberty — and I am eternally grateful that this day has finally arrived. Believe me that I will never take for granted the great privilege that is permanent residence in the United States. My sincere hope is that America remains a beacon of liberty and that shining city on a hill.

I may well blog or write more about this in the future, but for more on my personal story, see, e.g., here, here, and here. More importantly, check out Cato’s excellent immigration work here.

[Cross-posted at Cato's blog.]

April Fools for Skilled Workers

My latest oped is up on National Review Online today. I return to a theme I've often written about over the years, the inanities of U.S. immigration system:

Quite appropriately, today exposes another facet of the foolishness that is U.S. immigration policy. April 1st is the day each fiscal year when employers are allowed to begin filing petitions with the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS, formerly the INS) for highly skilled workers to be given what are known as H-1B visas.

H-1Bs allow employers to hire foreign workers in certain professional occupations. They are good for three years and can be renewed for another three. Though an H-1B cannot lead to a green card — so the foreign professional is tied to one employer and has to leave the country after a maximum of six years of being a productive member of society — it’s still a pretty good deal.

The problem is that, even in this apparent economic downturn, there aren’t enough of these visas: Congress limits the number of H-1Bs that can be granted each year, and that magic number has been set at 65,000 for five years now. Before that, and in response to the technology boom of the late ‘90s, Congress temporarily raised the H-1B cap to 195,000. But that expansion expired in 2004, and the cap has been reached earlier and earlier each year since.

As they say, read the whole thing.

I'd Rather Be Blogging

My new employer is gonna try to sponsor me for a green card, so I've gotten a lot of homework from the immigration lawyers to make this happen. Putting together a CV, documenting everything on it, soliciting letters from employers in just the right way, etc. It's like, everything I do at work, I'm thinking, I should be using this time to do green card stuff. But the green card stuff is so boring (and depressing -- what if it doesn't work, can't afford to get my hopes up when they've been dashed so many times before).

I wonder what my life would be like -- what I'd be like -- if I hadn't been dealing with this huge psychological hit all these years. And yet... maybe this time it will work. It would be awesome. And it would certainly take a lot of pressure off my dating life.

Marriage of Extreme Convenience

Related to my previous post, I coincidentally noticed in this morning's Stars and Stripes (the daily military newspaper) an ad for a marriage service. No, the Pentagon hasn't dreamed up a scheme a la Mario Vargas Llosa's Pantaleon y las Visitadoras, but rather I refer to the possibility, under the laws of certain states, of marrying someone while not physically being present at the ceremony. Instead, you witness the ceremony over video-link (or, sometimes, phone), while somebody stands in for you.

This is known as a "proxy" marriage, and the practice is popular in two segments of the population: the military and those trying to get their foreign fiance(e) into the country (foreigners married to Americans get provisional green cards).

And, as I deal with all the headaches caused by my having been naturalized on the wrong side of Lake Ontario, a proxy (if not "sham") marriage gains appeal. But my girlfriend would never go for it; she's such a traditionalist!