Keep out those high skilled workers...

Let this guy in our country...click to see his website, he's awesome...

Congress is set to begin arguing over increasing the number of H1-B visas. This is a piece of legislation of monumental importance, something that the President and the Dems agree on. We need more skilled engineers and science people in this country. There is a talent war going on around the world and by restricting entry to the most sought after skilled people, we are only shooting ourselves in the foot.

The United States is the most hated country in the world and the country where most people want to live. We have the advantage of being the best place in the world to live right now and we have to leverage that as much as possible. That advantage may not last.

Bill Gates was recently quoted saying that he would rather be a smart middle class kid in China than a poor not intelligent kid in the US. He said that ten years he thought that even the poor kid in the US would be better off. The world is changing and the only types of currency are knowledge, intelligence, hard work and entrepreneurship.

I find the anti immigration arguments in this country incredibly ridiculous.

ARGUMENT #1. Politicians and border nazis bring up the issue of terrorists entering our countries under the guise of these programs, whether H1-visas or other illegal immigrants crossing our border, but I think the more people we get under the scope of law, the more difficult it will be for the few to hide among the many. There is no question that the US should be concerned about letting Iranian and other nuclear seeking countries send the engineers and scientist to MIT to study nuclear physics, but those H1-B visas are already unlimited at Universities and the FBI is already on those guys like crazy...We have to worry about the terrorists that are hiding among the undocumented workers, not the ones that are trying to build software in Silicone Valley.

ARGUMENT #2.
Other politicians and left wing hypocrites say that these people are being brought over to take the jobs of highly qualified American engineers and scientists for a lower price and point to a ridiculous statistic that the salary of tech workers hasn't gone up since 1999. Wait, you mean at the height of the tech bubble...I hope it hasn't gone up since then...those numbers were crazy. Norman Matloff a Prof from the University of California on Marketplace on NPR who made this argument, check out the story here.

As a disclaimer, I have to mention that my parents are Russian Jewish immigrants to this country, and my father is a small business owner who built his business from scratch, so there is some bias here...but come on, I think Americans are out of their mind to keep their borders closed. Not only do immigrants come to America seeking better jobs, better employment, and a better way of life, they are willing to work for it, something that other people don't always do. Granted there is not the same sense of entitlement as in European social democracies, but some of the same arguments are rearing their ugly heads into our lives as well. Let's remember something very important...

"The H-1B visa category is controversial. Advocates say the program (and similar ones operated by other technologically-advanced countries)helps the host country maintain its technological as well as economic superiority by providing a steady flow of highly skilled professionals who may be short in supply domestically. It also provides an incentive for companies not to move their operations abroad.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H1B_visa)"

Wow that sounds horrible. Please, right your congressman or do whatever, scream from the rooftops, keep these people into our country. Who knows they may help us maintain our techonological or economic superiority and that would be just awful.