H-1B Visas Essential to Attracting and Retaining Talent in America

H-1B temporary visas have been an essential avenue for allowing high-skilled foreign nationals to work in America. The "Gang of 8" Senate immigration bill would dramatically change employment-based immigration policy, attempting through a variety of means to discourage or, in some cases, prohibit the use of H-1B visas, while providing more employer-sponsored green cards (for permanent residence). Research indicates measures to restrict the use of H-1B visas are not based on sound evidence and would represent a serious policy mistake that would shift more work and resources outside the United States and harm the competitiveness of U.S. employers

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Sale of visas: a smuggler's final song?

Is there a way of eliminating human smuggling? We set up a model to simultaneously determine the provision of human smuggling services and the demand from would-be migrants. A visa-selling policy may be successful at eliminating smugglers by eroding their profits but it also increases immigration. In contrast, repression decreases migration but fuels cartelized smugglers. To overcome this trade-off we show that legalisation through selling visas in combination with repression can be used to eliminate human smuggling while controlling migration flows. Simulations of the policy highlight the complementarities between repression and selling visas and call into question current policies

Foreign Students in the United States: Policies and Legislation

[Excerpt] Five years after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks by foreign nationals — including several terrorists on students visas — the security concerns over foreign student visas are being supplanted by competitiveness concerns. Potential foreign students, as well as all aliens, must satisfy Department of State (DOS) consular officers abroad and immigration inspectors upon entry to the United States that they are not ineligible for visas under the so-called “grounds for inadmissibility” of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which include security and terrorist concerns. The consular officers who process visa applicants are required to check the National Counterterrorism Center’s (NCTC) automated lookout systems before issuing any visa. In part because of these security measures, student visa debates have shifted from security to market-based discussions

How to Make Guest Worker Visas Work

President Obama and a bipartisan group of eight senators have begun to push for immigration reform. Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) likewise said he supports an immigration overhaul as a "top priority" for 2013. The Texas Republican Party even called for an expanded and effective guest worker visa program to link American employers with skilled and low-skilled foreign workers. The three components of politically feasible immigration reform are legalization for some unauthorized immigrants, border and workplace enforcement to impede the entry and hiring of unauthorized immigrants, and increased numbers of guest workers and legal immigrants. The costs and benefits of legalization, security, and employee verification have been debated elsewhere in detail but the costs and benefits of guest worker visas and how to create them have not been similarly explored. An expanded and lightly regulated guest worker visa program is an essential part of any immigration reform proposal. A guest worker visa program should efficiently link foreign workers with American employers and function with a minimum of government interference. Market forces as well as security, criminal, and health concerns should be the factors that determine which workers acquire visas. A successful guest worker visa would also divert most unauthorized immigration into the legal system, shrink the informal economy, be easily enforceable, support economic growth in the United States, and narrow the government's role in immigration. Below are numerous suggestions that would achieve such reform and expand America's current guest worker visa programs

Diversity Immigrant Visa Lottery Issues

[Excerpt] The purpose of the diversity immigrant visa lottery is, as the name suggests, to encourage legal immigration from countries other than the major sending countries of current immigrants to the United States. Current law weights the allocation of immigrant visas heavily toward aliens with close family in the United States and, to a lesser extent, toward aliens who meet particular employment needs. The diversity immigrant category was added to the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) by the Immigration Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-649) to stimulate “new seed” immigration (i.e., to foster new, more varied migration from other parts of the world). To be eligible for a diversity visa, the INA requires that the foreign national must have a high school education or the equivalent, or two years experience in an occupation that requires at least two years of training or experience. The foreign national or the foreign national’s spouse must be a native of one of the countries listed as a foreign state qualified for the diversity visa lottery. Diversity lottery winners, like all other aliens wishing to come to the United States, must undergo reviews performed by Department of State consular officers abroad and Department of Homeland Security immigration officers upon entry to the United States. These reviews are intended to ensure that the aliens are not ineligible for visas or admission under the grounds for inadmissibility spelled out in the INA. The diversity lottery currently makes 50,000 visas available annually to natives of countries from which immigrant admissions were lower than a total of 50,000 over the preceding five years. The formula for allocating visas is based upon the statutory specifications; visas are divided among six global geographic regions according to the relative populations of the regions, with their allocation weighted in favor of countries in regions that were under-represented among immigrant admissions to the United States during the past five years. The INA limits each country to 7%, or 3,850, of the total and provides that Northern Ireland be treated as a separate foreign state. The regional distribution of the source countries for diversity immigrants has shifted over time in the four years selected for comparison (FY1994, FY1999, FY2004, and FY2009). Foreign nationals from Europe garnered the overwhelming share of the diversity visas in FY1994 and maintained a plurality share in FY1999. By FY2004, foreign nationals from Africa received a share comparable to those from Europe. In FY2009, foreign nationals from Africa gained the plurality share. Some argue that the diversity lottery should be eliminated and its visas used for backlog reduction in other visa categories. Supporters of the diversity visa, however, argue that the diversity visa provides “new seed” immigrants for an immigration system weighted disproportionately to family-based immigrants from a handful of countries. Critics of the diversity lottery warn that it is vulnerable to fraud and misuse and is potentially an avenue for terrorists, citing the difficulties of performing background checks in many of the countries eligible for the diversity lottery. Supporters respond that background checks for criminal and national security matters are performed on all prospective immigrants seeking to come to the United States, including those winning diversity visas

The American Dream Up for Sale: A Blueprint for Ending International Labor Recruitment Abuse

Each year, hundreds of thousands of people from around the world are recruited to work in the united states on temporary work visas. Internationally recruited workers are employed in a wide range of u.s. industries, from low-wage jobs in agriculture and landscaping to higher-wage jobs in technology, nursing and teaching. They enter the United States on a dizzying array of visas, such as H-1B, H-2A, H-2B, J-1, A-3, G-5, EB-3, B-1, O-1, P-3, L, OPT and TN visas, each with its own rules and requirements. this report will demonstrate two key findings regarding the current u.s. work visa system:Regardless of visa category, employment sector, race, gender or national origin, internationally recruited workers face disturbingly common patterns of recruitment abuse, including fraud, discrimination, severe economic coercion, retaliation, blacklisting and, in some cases, forced labor, indentured servitude, debt bondage and human trafficking. Disparate rules and requirements for workers, employers and recruiters, as well as lax enforcement of the regulations that do exist, allow and even incentivize recruiters and employers to engage in abuses

Give Me Your Entrepreneurs, Your Innovators: Estimating the Employment Impact of a Startup Visa

The idea of visas for immigrant entrepreneurs has bounced around the country for many years, and even has been introduced into Congress on more than one occasion. The most recent is Startup Act 3.0, a bipartisan bill recently introduced into the U.S. Senate that, among other things, includes a Startup Visa. In this current incarnation, the new Startup Visa would make available a fixed pot of 75,000 visas for individuals who start companies. Initial eligibility would be restricted to individuals who already are in the United States on either H-1B visas or F-1 student visas. Once the Startup Visa is issued, further requirements are imposed in the first year. During that time, the entrepreneur must register a business, employ at least two full-time, non-family employees, and invest or raise an investment of at least $100,000. If, after one year, those requirements are met, the entrepreneur gets three additional years on the visa. During that three-year period, the entrepreneur must employ at least five full-time, non-family employees. The original two employees count toward these five, which means the business essentially must hire one person per year after the first year of operation. At the end of three years, the entrepreneur may apply to have the conditional status removed.This report attempts to estimate the impact on job creation that enactment of such a Startup Visa would have. Calculations suggest that a Startup Visa could create anywhere from 500,000 to 1.6 million jobs over the next ten years. Because of the assumptions and methods used, these estimates are considered very conservative, low-end estimates