Wednesday, September 12, 2012

If You Want More Jobs, You Should Want More Immigrants

When Poyan Rajamand completed his degree from Stanford University's Graduate School of Business in 2008, he faced a choice. Would the Swedish-born Rajamand look for work in the United States or relocate abroad? As he explained in a report written by the Partnership for a New America Economy and the Partnership for New York City, Rajamand and his fiancé arrived at their decision easily: move to Singapore, where obtaining a visa was simpler for high-skilled immigrants than here in the United States. In his new home, Rajamand has founded a startup called Barghest Partners that invests in new businesses.
Imagine the lost job creation, innovation, and economic output if the same visa challenges that bedeviled Rajamand had bedeviled the immigrant founders of AT&T, Kraft Foods, Honeywell, US Steel, and DuPont? In more recent years, what would have happened to whole new industries had the immigrant founders of Google, Intel, and eBay set up shop abroad?
For a country trying to recover from the deepest recession in generations, we're undermining our economic competitiveness when we make it harder, not easier, for talented immigrants to stay here and contribute to our economy. This has to change.

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