The driver of economic growth in the modern world is knowledge. Scientific discoveries spill over into related fields to fuel further discoveries. Scientists working in research teams can quickly share insights with each other, allowing greater output. Scientists and engineers working closely together increase the speed and scope of their research. When this brain power is geographically concentrated, it boosts economic growth and technological development.
America’s immigration laws artificially limit our capacity for technological advancement. The engineers and Ph.D.s driving much of the technological innovation in Silicon Valley are overwhelmingly Indian. A growing number of them are here illegally. According to the Department of Homeland Security, Office of Immigration Statistics, there are almost 300,000 illegal Indian immigrants in the United States. Many of them arrived here on H-1B or student visas and overstayed their legal residency in the hope of getting a greencard.
Indian immigrant workers are generally highly skilled and enjoy high incomes. Average Indian-American households have an income 62 percent greater than average. The skills, work ethic, and entrepreneurial spirit that make Indian immigrants such a successful group are remarkably constant throughout the community, regardless of legal status. Instead of making them jump through bureaucratic hoops, we should encourage them to live here peacefully and contribute to society.
Foreign graduate students also contribute to America’s ongoing technological success. A 2005 World Bank study found that foreign graduate student working in the United States file an enormous number of patents. Additionally, a quarter of international patents filed from the United States in 2006 named a non-U.S. citizen working in the United States as the inventor or co-inventor. Many of those immigrants whom our immigration bureaucracy refuses to recognize are responsible for the rapid technological advancement of recent decades.
Highly skilled immigration benefits the American economy. Counting just the value of patents, scientific discoveries, and firms started by immigrants, it is clear that their arrival has paid off handsomely for the United States. And rather than take jobs away from Americans, more people with wider skills and greater experience increase employment opportunities. The non-partisan National Foundation for American Policy reports that for every H-1B visa issued, U.S. technology firms increase their employment by five workers. Every day that almost 300,000 Indian immigrants spend in legal limbo represents a gargantuan waste of creativity.
And that doesn’t even count the millions of highly skilled individuals from China, Europe and elsewhere who would come seeking greater opportunity if the law would only let them. The five immigrant Nobel Prize winners came from Britain, Canada, Australia, China, and India.
The number of potential Nobel Prize winners who have lost their opportunity to do research in this country is unknown. What is known is that the U.S. government has kept out millions of the most inventive, brilliant and entrepreneurial people in the world for no good reason.
Alex Nowrasteh is a policy analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., and a contributor to OpenMarket.org.

[Source: Det News ]

A bill signed into law last week by US President Barack Obama will allow wealthy Irish people to get greencard to live in the United States in second homes provided they invest in projects that will provide 10 jobs in a high unemployment area.

The little-known programme, known as EB-5 regional centre programme, is a highly beneficial permanent residence option for the wealthy individual, according to Ron Klasko, who is chairman of the EB-5 committee of the American Immigration Lawyers’ Association.

The programme requires an investment of at least $500,000 (€336,000) in a high unemployment or rural area in a commercial enterprise that will employ 10 full-time US workers. The investor has to be able to document that the funds are legal, but does not have to be involved in day-to-day management.

Under the law, the permanent home obtained by the Irish investor is conditional for two years and can be made permanent upon satisfying the US Customs and Immigration Service at the end of the two years that the investment proceeds have not been withdrawn, and that the jobs have been created.

“What are the chances of a wealthy Irish national being able to spend his retirement years in the US? Surprisingly the chances may be very good using a vehicle entitled Regional Centre EB-5,” Mr Klasko’s website says.

“Although many people, especially from Asia, have found the $500,000 price tag to be a small price to pay for the US green card visa, for the ability to retire in the US and for the ability to have their children educated in the US, the programme has received a lot less publicity in Ireland.”

His company, Klasko, Rulon, Stock and Seltzer, with offices in New York and Philadelphia specialising in immigration law, said the visa programme allows the Irish retiree to work or not work as he pleases, to live anywhere he wants to in the US, to travel in and out of the country as frequently as he wishes, and to get greencard for his spouse and unmarried children under the age of 21.

He must invest a specified amount of money, $500,000 to $1m, in a US government-approved regional centre and the investment must be for a period of at least five years.

Read the full story at Independent