Since the early 20th century, the US has been a world leader in innovation and technical progress. In recent decades, however, some experts have worried that the country’s performance on these fronts has been slowing, even stalling. There are many possible explanations for this phenomenon, but one has seemed especially salient in recent years: an immigration system that discourages, and often turns away, the most highly skilled and talented foreign workers. Historically, immigrants have played a vital role in American innovation. As Jeremy Neufeld, an immigration policy fellow with the Institute for Progress, a new innovation-focused think tank, remarked to me, “It’s always been the case that immigrants have been a secret ingredient in US dynamism.” Robert Krol, a professor of economics with California State University Northridge, describes it this way: “The bottom line is that when you look at the impact of immigrants — whether you think about starting businesses or innovating patents — they have a large, significant impact.” Multiple analyses of historical immigration patterns show that more migrants to a region correlates with a higher rate of innovation and related economic growth. By contrast, when immigration is more restricted, companies — especially tech companies and those that conduct innovative R&D work — are less successful, and growth in jobs and wages slows. Studies have also shown that immigrants tend to be entrepreneurial: Based on survey data between 2008 and 2012, 25 percent of companies across the US were founded by first-generation immigrants. Other research shows that immigrants are more likely than native-born US citizens to register patents. As Neufeld points out, the Covid-19 pandemic might have gone much worse if immigration had always been as restrictive as it is now. A number of co-founders and critical researchers with Moderna are immigrants, as is Katalin Karikó, a pioneer of mRNA research — who, if she had tried to immigrate after the 1990 H-1B reforms to the skilled guest worker program, might not have been able to come to the US at all. Those H-1B guest visas are at the center of the issue today, some experts say. Designed in 1990 to bring in skilled professionals to meet labor market shortages, visas through the H-1B guest workers program are sponsored by employers, who submit petitions to bring in particular foreign professionals appropriately qualified for specific, highly skilled roles. Guest workers generally need at least a bachelor’s degree in a relevant field. According to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), there are about 580,000 foreign workers currently on H-1B visas, a small percentage of the US workforce and immigrant population. But they are disproportionately concentrated in STEM, particularly computer-related occupations, often in fields where cutting-edge technologies are being developed. Unfortunately, the H-1B process is falling increasingly out of date and badly failing to serve its original purpose of turning on the talent tap for top innovative companies. Congress sets an annual cap on how many H-1B visa holders can come in, and that cap is now far below what the labor market demands. The crush of applications once the window opens for a given year on March 1 is so intense that, in every year since 2014, USCIS has resorted to a lottery system instead of a first-come, first-serve process. That means that year in and year out, hundreds of thousands of high-skilled workers from abroad try to come to the US and ultimately fail, so that both the prospective employee and the company hoping to hire them end up losing out on their preferred option. That shortfall is a policy problem. The US has long been a desirable destination for young, highly educated foreign workers eager to seek out the best career opportunities. Facing a longstanding shortage of skilled STEM workers, US companies and the overall US economy stand to benefit. But the country risks losing its position to others like the UK or Canada, which have made recent immigration reforms aimed at attracting and retaining high-skilled young people, if the US continues to restrict skilled immigration so heavily. As with many policy problems, there are some nuances here to pay attention to, not least the potential effect any policy changes might have on native-born US workers. And this discussion doesn’t touch on the debate over lower-skill guest workers vital to the US economy and the policies surrounding them. (That’s related, but beyond the scope of this story.) But there is little doubt that from the perspective of speeding innovation, the US system needs fixing. “The big picture is that our ability to recruit talent is directly related to our economic success as a country,” economist David Bier, associate director of immigration studies with the libertarian Cato Institute, told me. “We don’t know which immigrant is going to have the brilliant insight that totally transforms the economy over the next 20-30 years.” Why the H-1B System is FailingThe H-1B visa is a three-year temporary work visa that is generally renewable once for three years. It’s not in itself a path toward permanent residency. (H-1B holders, however, can begin the process of getting a green card to stay in the US for good while already in the country as a guest worker.) Currently, the annual cap is set at 65,000 visas, with an additional 20,000 slots allocated for workers with graduate degrees from US universities. That’s significantly down from the cap set in the early 2000s of 195,000 annually. In the 1990s and early 2000s, USCIS accepted petitions on a first-come, first-serve basis until the annual cap was met. In most years, when the total applications eventually maxed out the cap, it inevitably left out many highly valuable potential immigrants or delayed their visa by a year, but at least the process allowed companies some opportunity to prioritize applying earlier in the annual window for employees they saw as more critical. In 2014, the annual H-1B applications began spiking and the volume of applications received just in the first few days of the window prompted USCIS to switch to a lottery system. For fiscal year 2023, only 26 percent of the 483,000 applications received — more than double the 201,000 petitions submitted for 2020 — were chosen for processing. The Downsides of the H-1B System One unintended consequence of the current H-1B system that experts have flagged is the massive success of a particular business model: offshore “outsourcing” companies, mainly based in India. Outsourcing companies can put in thousands of H-1B petitions for workers they consider interchangeable, mainly junior programmers, and profit by sending the applicants who win the lottery to work for US-based companies as agency contractors. This model is popular enough that outsourcing companies make up a substantial percentage of all H-1B petitions filed. According to Ron Hira, a research associate with the progressive Economic Policy Institute (EPI), 17 of the top 30 companies by annual H-1B applications are outsourcing firms. There are several ways this could harm US workers, US companies, or innovation overall. One concern is that the “outsourcing” firms hold enormous leverage over their employees, effectively having a monopoly on their employment, and could thus exploit and underpay them, potentially undercutting US workers’ salaries. There is an ongoing debate about whether this is happening. According to EPI, the local median wage for an occupation should be a minimum bound for H-1B workers, and with two of the wage tiers below the median, companies can use the H-1B for “wage arbitrage” and hire lower-paid foreign employees at the expense of US citizens. Can Incremental Change Fix a Broken System?How then to create that mechanism and reconstruct the US’s high-skilled immigration system to bring in the world’s top talent while also minimizing potential harms to US workers? The Biden administration has promised to reform the system, and policy thinkers have proposed solutions, none of them perfect.
One idea came from the Trump administration. In 2020, then-President Trump proposed replacing the lottery with a salary-based ranking system. That is, rather than using a lottery to select candidates, USCIS would rank the petitions based on the salary offered by the employer, and start processing at the highest-salary end until the cap was reached. Such a system would in theory prioritize the most skilled and qualified candidates over the more junior workers. That would help innovative companies bring in the most valuable domain experts who play critical roles in their cutting-edge research, rather than being pushed out by outsourcing companies’ huge numbers of applicants. However, Zavodny told me she’s concerned this system would disproportionately disadvantage young recent graduates, many of whom are very driven to come to the US. Some other concerns include the fact that pay gaps along racial and gender-based lines are still a problem in the US; a salary-based system could risk disproportionately shutting out those groups affected by salary bias. And as the cost-of-living gap between regions in the US continues to increase, a system that failed to adequately correct for this in the salary ranking might make it difficult for companies in areas with a lower cost of living to get petitions approved. In any case, the rule was struck down by a federal judge before it came into effect. LOS ANGELES (AP) — A sprawling, privately run detention center in the wind-swept California desert town of Adelanto could house nearly 2,000 migrants facing the prospect of deportation. These days, though, it’s nearly empty.
The Adelanto facility is an extreme example of how the U.S. government’s use of guaranteed minimum payments in contracts with private companies to house immigrant detainees might have a potential financial downside. In these contracts, the government commits to pay for a certain number of beds, whether they’re used or not. The government pays for at least 1,455 beds a day at Adelanto, but so far this fiscal year reports an average daily population of 49 detainees. Immigrant advocates say the number of detainees at Adelanto is currently closer to two dozen because authorities can’t bring in more migrants under a federal judge’s 2020 pandemic-related ruling. The U.S. government pays to guarantee 30,000 immigration detention beds are available in four dozen facilities across the country, but so far this fiscal year about half, on average, have been occupied, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement data. Over the past two years, immigration detention facilities across the United States have been underutilized as authorities were forced to space out detainees — in some cases, such as at Adelanto, by court order — to limit the spread of COVID-19. “The government is still paying them to keep the facility open,” said Lizbeth Abeln, deportation defense director at the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice in Southern California. “It’s really concerning they’re still getting paid for all the beds every single day. It’s empty.” At a facility in Tacoma, Washington, the guaranteed minimum is 1,181 beds and the average daily population so far this fiscal year is 369, according to official data. A detention center in Jena, Louisiana, has a minimum of 1,170 beds, with an average daily population of 452. ICE currently reports 23,390 detainees in custody, official data shows. The agency has long spent money on unused detention space by including guaranteed minimum payments in its contracts, according to a Government Accountability Office report focused on the years before the pandemic. The minimum number of beds the government paid to guarantee rose 45% from the 2017 fiscal year to May 2020, the report said. Officials at ICE’s headquarters were asked to comment and initially did not. On Monday, an agency spokesperson said in an email that ICE doesn’t comment on pending litigation and is complying with the court’s order regarding Adelanto. In annual budget documents, officials said the agency aims to use 85% to 90% of detention space generally, and pays to have guaranteed minimum beds ready to go in case they’re needed. Officials wrote that they need flexibility to deal with emergencies or sudden big increases in border crossings. They said safety and security are the top priority at the detention centers, while acknowledging the pandemic “greatly decreased bed utilization.” The average cost of a detention bed was $144 each day during the last fiscal year, the documents show. Immigrant advocates say the pandemic is proof that the U.S. doesn’t need to detain immigrants as much as authorities have claimed. Deportation agents have ramped up use of a monitoring app to keep tabs on immigrants heading for deportation hearings instead of locking people up, they said. As of June, the agency was tracking more than 200,000 people using the SmartLink app, the government’s data shows. “The federal government, probably like all of us, didn’t think COVID would go on this long,” said Michael Kaufman, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, which sued for the release of detainees in Adelanto. “This has been an accidental test case that shows they don’t need a detention capacity anywhere near what they’re saying.” The Adelanto facility — which is run by Boca Raton, Florida-based The Geo Group — is one of the biggest in the country and often houses immigrants arrested in the greater Los Angeles area. It has long been subject to complaints by detainees of shoddy medical care, and on a 2018 visit to the facility inspectors also found nooses in detainees cells and overly restrictive segregation. In 2021, Ontario welcomed 198,000 new permanent residents, or nearly 49% of all new permanent residents in Canada. This is not surprising as Ontario boasts Canada’s largest population as well as its largest city. Many newcomers chose to settle in Ontario due to its strong economy, well-developed support systems, and already-established immigrant communities. Those who wish to settle in Ontario have nine pathways to choose from through Ontario’s Immigrant Nominee Program (OINP). What is a Provincial Nomination? The Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) is designed to help provinces attract immigrants who can support local labour force needs. If a candidate meets pathway specific criteria and is nominated by a province, they can add this to their permanent residence application to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). Why Does Ontario need a Provincial Nominee Program? Due to its already large immigrant population, Ontario was the last province to introduce a PNP in 2007. The introduction of the system created more opportunities for newcomers to Canada to economically establish themselves within the province and gave Ontario the ability to select individuals who would be a good fit and fill gaps in the workforce. Each Canadian province and territory (except for Quebec and Nunavut) operate their own PNPs. What Categories Does Ontario Offer?Ontario has four streams of provincial nomination and within each category there are sub-streams, adding up to a total of nine provincial immigration pathways in Ontario.
Employer Job Offer Category If you are not eligible for Express Entry, you can submit an Expression of Interest (EOI) to the province through nomination in other categories. An Expression of Interest is applicable only when applying directly to the provincial government for nomination. An EOI tells the government of Ontario that you wish to be invited to apply. If choosing these pathways, you may only apply to OINP if you have received an invitation to do so. To submit an EOI, you must complete an attestation form the same day that states you meet the criteria for your chosen program and everything in your EOI is true. From here, you must wait for the province to invite you to apply for nomination.
Master and PhD Categories The remaining two programs are designed specifically for master’s students and PhD students who graduate from Ontario universities and plan to stay in the province. The Masters Graduate Stream requires at least one year of study at an eligible Ontario university and graduation from the program. PhD students must complete at least two years of their PhD in Ontario. For both streams, candidates must have lived in Ontario for at least one year over the past two years. Entrepreneur CategoryThe Entrepreneur Category works somewhat differently. Candidates for this category must also submit an EOI, but if they are invited to apply, they are required to attend a mandatory interview and sign a performance agreement. If they are successful, they will be issued a temporary work permit to move to Canada and then 20 months upon arrival to implement a business plan and submit a final review. If the candidate has met business requirements, they will be asked for documentation that proves they are eligible for permanent residence.
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