OBAMA OBJECTING TO STEM BILL - HIGH TECH VISA REFORM

Bad move by President Obama on immigration - the White House just opposed the STEM immigration reform bill backed by many technology companies to allow U.S. educated graduates in science, including computer science, engineering and mathematics to have a faster route to a green card or permanent residence in the U.S.

The White House just announced today that it is objecting to the Republican-backed STEM Jobs Act of 2012, which proposed to add 55,000 immigrant visas available to foreigners who earned a master's or doctoral degree in certain science or technology area from a U.S. university. The STEM bill has been supported by Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, Cisco, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, Qualcomm, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The reason for the White House objection is that the Obama administration wants an overhaul of the immigration system by enacting a Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR). 

While it is true that CIR is badly needed for the country, the President should focus on fixing the problem in smaller steps and not object to any measure that would alleviate visa backlogs and hardship to people. Passing smaller measures  like the STEM bill would still help tens of thousands of immigrants achieve permanent status. 

DOCTOR SHORTAGE COULD WORSEN

A recent article by USA today talks about the fact that the U.S. suffers from a significant Doctor shortage and it is about to get much worse.
The Association of American Medical Colleges predicts that by 2020, the shortage will amount to more than 90,000 doctors, including 45,000 patient care physicians. The shortage is expected to worsen as the boom generation is getting older and will require more medical care in the near future and the new healthcare mandate would add more people to the patient pool. To make matters worse, a third of all doctors plan to retire this decade.
Generally, the states with high median incomes tend to have more doctors per capita, while poorer states tend to have substantially fewer because they are less attractive to doctors.
This is why expanding immigration programs for foreign doctors is a key in alleviating this shortage. Expanding the Conrad 30 program (where more than double the spaces are needed in most states), creating more federal programs (such as the USDA had but closed) and increasing the H-1B quota will help make the U.S. more attractive for foreign doctors.
Read the full article at: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2012/10/20/doctors-shortage-least-most/1644837/

U.S. IMMIGRATION POLICY STIFLES IMMIGRANT ENTREPRENEURSHIP

A new study by the Kauffman Foundation indicates that since 2005, less U.S. companies were founded by immigrants or foreign-born entrepreneurs, with the most significant drop in the state of California within technology firms.
The Kauffman Foundation is right on the money. Our immigration system is more and more unwelcoming to immigrant entrepreneurs. Coupled with a recession and more difficult business environment in the U.S. in the past few years, less immigrant entrepreneurs are finding the U.S. an attractive place.
The Kauffman Foundation report shows that the proportion of companies founded by immigrants nationwide has dropped to 24.3 percent from 25.3 percent in the past five years. In Silicon Valley, the decline was worse: dropping to 43.9 percent from 52.4 percent.
This is alarming for anyone who cares about innovation, job creation or U.S. competitiveness in the global marketplace. This is what we have been telling everyone for years, that we have a broken immigration system that needs to be fixed and welcome entrepreneurs.
The U.S. can reverse the trend of declining immigrant entrepreneurship with changes in policies and opportunities. We really ought to have start-up business visas for these entrepreneurs and expand the number of green cards for skilled foreigners to work in these start-ups in order to make the U.S. more attractive.
USCIS has started taking encouraging steps like their entrepreneurs in residence program, which had little effect so far. What we need is opening doors and our immigration system for entrepreneurs who bring innovation, investments and jobs to the U.S.
Hopefully the new elections will bring a different Congress which will actually do something about the problems in this country, instead of the “do nothing” mode we have endured so far.

MICROSOFT OFFERS BIG MONEY FOR MORE H-1B VISAS

While Congress is not increasing the H-1B visa cap and USCIS undercuts the few visas that are left, the Seattle Times reports that Microsoft Corp. is offering to pay millions of dollars to the U.S. government for the right to hire more foreigners, with the money going for educational training to eventually fill those jobs with Americans.
Microsoft has said over the years routinely that they have thousands of high-tech job openings that it can't fill, and by expanding the H-1B program and by greatly increasing the fees charged for those visas, the country could use that money to train Americans to eventually fill those jobs.
Money paid from H-1B visa fees have already gone to train hundreds of thousands U.S. workers with employers paying from $750 to $1,500 per employee at least twice which goes to a fund to train U.S. workers.
Microsoft is offering the government $10,000 per worker - which is a lot more than many smaller businesses can afford - but I doubt Congress will do anything even with this lucrative incentive. Read more at:
http://seattletimes.com/html/microsoft/2019276648_microsoft28m.html

Aging Baby Boomers Face Losing Care as Immigrant Healthcare Providers Go Home

The United States, which is among the developed countries that rely on Philippine nurses and Indian doctors to hold down costs in the $6.5 trillion global health-care industry face greater competition for talent just as baby boomers in the U.S., Europe and Japan reach the prime age for medical care. Economic growth in emerging economies, despite some signs of recent slowing, is causing foreign doctors and nurses to stay at home or go somewhere else.

There has been a great imbalance that has caused a severe shortage of healthcare workers in developing nations. For example, Japan had 2.2 doctors and 9.5 nurses per 1,000 people in 2009, while the U.S. had 2.4 doctors and 10.8 nurses, according to the OECD. In India it was 0.7 and 0.9 during the same time. It is going to get much, much, worse as baby boomers age and an entire generation of doctors and nurses will retire over the next decade.

The Philippines for example plans to build and rehabilitate more than 2,700 hospitals, clinics and community health centers next year as part of $9.7 billion investment in infrastructure. The nation’s $225 billion economy expanded 6.1 percent in the first half, and the peso is the best performer against the dollar among Asia’s 11 most-traded currencies this year, advancing about 5.5 percent. Better jobs are available for its citizens so some of them choose to stay home.

Save the Children, an organization based out of Westport, Connecticut, said recently that there is a world shortage of more than 3 million healthcare workers, including at least 1 million community nurses and doctors.

In New Zealand, 34 percent of doctors and 21 percent of nurses are from abroad, the highest among developed countries, while in the U.S. 27 percent of doctors and 5 percent of nurses are foreign, the WHO said in its 2006 World Health Report. Philippine and Indian nationals lead the supply, each making up 15 percent of all immigrant nurses and doctors respectively in the 34-member Organization for Co-operation and Development.

The cost of healthcare workers is likely to rise, which is good new for immigrant doctors also. But other countries compete with the U.S. For example, a full-time registered nurse in the U.S. makes about $57,000 a year, while in Australia they earn as much as A$75,000 ($78,000). If the U.S. does not ease its immigration requirements for doctors and nurses, they will stay behind with shortages that are about to get much, much worse. 

USCIS SYSTEMATICALLY UNDERCOUNTING H-1B CAP USAGE

News from Greg Siskind: 

Attorney David Rubman in Chicago, Illinois has just shared with me the answer to a Freedom of Information Act request which definitively shows that USCIS has been undercounting H-1B usage by nearly 15% over the last five years. Approximately 45,000 too few H-1Bs have been approved between fiscal year 2008 and 2012. USCIS is required to approve 65,000 H-1B visas per year. They determine when the H-1B cap is hit each year based on their estimate of how many cases will be denied. They also are supposed to add withdrawn H-1Bs back to the total. USCIS has had wildly inaccurate estimates of their denial rates which has resulted in the undercounting. For example, for the current fiscal year, USCIS stopped accepting applications last January. But their data shows only 55,706 applications were approved and 1,820 cases were withdrawn. That means 11,000 more applications should have been approved.

This is an extremely serious failure on the part of USCIS and the employer community deserves an explanation. Right now, we're in a 13 month blackout with no H-1Bs available. The cap for the coming fiscal year was reached last June. USCIS more than likely has undercounted again and they need to reopen the application process. Furthermore, USCIS needs to add back cap numbers to account for the undercounting.

Here are the numbers for each of you to see. Now let us see how USCIS responds.

(follow this link): http://www.docstoc.com/docs/130551432/H-1B-FOIA

SCHUMER PROPSES 55,000 MORE VISAS FOR STEM GRADS

New York Senator Charles Schumer is releasing information about a bill he plans to introduce before the Senate tomorrow. The bill calls for the creation of a two-year pilot program that would allow 55,000 additional green cards each year for foreign-born graduates with master's degrees or higher from American universities in science, math, technology or engineering (STEM) fields. This would be wonderful.
This bill is substantially similar to the one introduced by Texas Representative Lamar Smith in the House except that Smith's bill would eliminate the Diversity Visa (DV) Lottery altogether.
Schumer's office has reportedly already been reaching out to businesses in the high-tech community to rally support for his measure. Of course, it remains to be seen whether either Mr. Schumer's bill or Mr. Smith's will ever even be voted upon, as there is very limited time remaining in this session of Congress; perhaps both of these bills are just political maneuvers, attempting to cull additional business support before the election without intending to provide any real change.
Good news, let's see the language and whether this gets voted on.