Scrap the Visa Cap

Politicians are so fixated on illegal immigration, they've barely noticed that the U.S. is losing the race for the best high-tech minds.

Shikha Dalmia | April 7, 2008

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Shikha Dalmia advises Congress to pass pending legislation to scrap the cap on skilled worker (H1-B) visas. This cap is currently so low (65,000) that in April last year it got used up within a day of these visas becoming available, leaving thousands of left over engineers to be scooped up by America's competitors. America should worry less about keeping unskilled immigrants out—and more about keeping skilled immigrants in. Otherwise, it'll lose the race for the most crucial resource in the knowledge economy: intellectual capital.

Read this article at the Wall Street Journal.