In his July 10 column, "U.S. building a wall against talent," George Will recalls the story of Jack Kilby, who invented the first electronic circuit on a silicon chip. Then, incredibly, Will cites the example of this outstanding American scientist to argue that America needs more foreign scientists and therefore should drastically relax immigration restrictions.
When Will suggests "adding a zero" to the American quota of 140,000 immigrant scientists and engineers per year, he is not talking about relief for individual hardship cases. He is talking about the wholesale importation of large numbers of scientists and engineers for the convenience -- specifically the economic convenience -- of large corporate employers.
Most congressmen today are not, as Will seems to imply, interested in seeing America become a technologically backward country. The quota was imposed in response to urgent pleas for relief from highly qualified Americans who found themselves passed over or forced out of their fields.
Although Japan is not quite as closed to foreigners as it was until a few years ago, Japanese employers still make substantial investments to train or retrain unqualified Japanese rather than hire more specifically qualified foreigners who could become productive more quickly. Japanese employers also invest heavily to provide advanced training to employees who join the company directly out of university rather than attend graduate school.
One suspects that it would cost only a fraction of what Japanese employers spend to train their personnel for Microsoft and other American employers to retain or reinstate mid-career Americans by providing the modest support they need to update and upgrade their skills.
But short-term, bottom-line economics dictates replacing them with relatively inexpensive young immigrants, fresh out of school, while more experienced Americans languish for the latter half of their adult lives. The number of scientists and engineers who are working is determined by the number of jobs, not the number of visas.
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