North Carolina schools, industries need high-skilled immigrants

Immigration has long been our country’s greatest competitive advantage in a global economy. As the owner of a start-up business in the Triangle, I often had the chance to interact with students, tech professionals and brilliant entrepreneurs from all over the world who came to North Carolina to help fuel our academic institutions and bolster our economy.

As the world economy shifts toward a greater demand for science, technology, engineering and mathematics educated professionals and high-skilled workers in specialized roles, it becomes more important than ever that our country allows for tools to supplement our work force. While border security is a topic of great concern these days, it is important to understand that an immigration system that keeps us safe, protects American jobs and still provides American universities and firms the ability to recruit the best and brightest immigrants is possible.

When highly skilled immigrants move to the United States, often with their families in tow, they tend to stay. Many start businesses that grow local economies and create jobs in our communities. We do ourselves a disservice by making it harder for these individuals to come and make a life here. Our goal should be to actively recruit them to North Carolina, so that we may add their skills to our collective.

Competition is only growing, and while countries like India and China may always outpace us in terms of sheer man-power, it is our welcoming of the world’s best that keeps us ahead and at the cutting-edge of research and innovation. Diversity and commitment to recruiting the very best is what our schools and businesses strive for and what needs to be replicated across the rest of the country. We cannot afford to lose ground in the global race for talent.

There are three main avenues for achieving this: make green cards easier to obtain, create a new category of visas to encourage the best foreign-born entrepreneurs and innovators to start businesses in the United States and reform and expand the nation’s H-1B visa program, which focuses on high-skilled foreign professionals with at least a bachelor’s degree.

Recently, this H-1B program has fallen into disarray given its extremely low cap on visas issued annually despite the ever-increasing demand from American employers – in effect the program has become a lottery for applicants and subject to abuse by the largest multi-national firms that can flood the program with their application requests. Raising the 85,000 yearly cap would be a start and would help to reduce abuses in the system.

As a consequence of the outdated and archaic immigration system – unchanged in any significant way since the early 1990’s – international entrepreneurs are often left frustrated by delays, which has only been further compounded by the increase of anti-immigrant sentiments in the national dialogue of late.

Nevertheless, the United States remains the pinnacle of opportunity for talented immigrants – as we have always been and will remain. But right now, it is up to Congress to make sure that we continue to compete in the 21st century and continue to attract the very best to our schools and companies.

It is time for Congress to act. We must continue to strengthen our labor force with the world’s best in order to compete on a global scale. It is what is best for all sectors of our economy. Congress must stop stalling and find a way to make meaningful, bi-partisan reforms to a broken immigration system.

This story was originally published March 31, 2017 at 6:28 PM with the headline "North Carolina schools, industries need high-skilled immigrants."