The phrase “brain drain” is widely used. Smart people leave their countries when opportunities are few and migrate to nations where they’re rewarded for their skills and make meaningful contributions to a growing economy.
But for every brain that goes down the drain, some country gains a brain. America should not be timid about being a receptacle for sharp minds and eager workers. This doesn’t mean that everyone who wants in has a free pass; A nation has the right to control its borders. There are highly desirable immigrants, though, especially in the technology sector, and Washington should give these minds special attention.
The tech boom of the 1990s would not have been possible without the flow of skilled workers into this country. Cypress Semiconductors President and CEO T.J. Rodgers, and other tech-sector executives, have complained that their firms have had trouble finding enough homegrown engineers to keep their companies expanding at the rate they otherwise could. So they are forced to search outside the country.
The immigrants who best fill the needs of the tech sector typically come to America on temporary H1B and L1 visas. But Washington has not always been as cooperative as it should. It has limited these visas with quotas (65,000 H1B visas a year that are sometimes filled immediately) as if it were protecting the country from deadbeats who would drain the system, not productive workers who are key to economic expansion.
Congress recently passed a budget bill that would boost the quota, but only by 20,000 a year. Current employer requests for H1B visas for fiscal 2005 have already outstripped the quota. And the Labor Department estimates that by 2010 nearly 1.7 million computer-related jobs in the U.S. will go unfilled because of the skills shortage.
As the tech industry rebounds, it will need access to lots of highly qualified workers. Until we find a way to fix the broken U.S. public school system’s inability to produce well-trained scientists and mathematicians, we will need a “brain gain” from other countries.