Path to legal status is key to advanced and high tech jobs and R&D
Fabian, 13 – BA in history from Cornell University (Fabian, “Rubio: Immigration Reform Can Keep Tech Jobs in U.S.”, Fusion, 1/23/13, http://fusion.net/leadership/story/marco-rubio-immigration-reform-tech-jobs-us-12280)//EX
Rubio told a gathering of educators at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C., that high-tech companies estimate they cannot fill tens of thousands of jobs in the U.S. in part because of an immigration system that does not provide enough visas for foreigners who earn advanced degrees here and want to remain to work. As a result, those jobs are being filled overseas, Rubio said. "In some instances, this is no joke, we are graduating kids with these degrees and these skill sets. We are then forcing them to leave the country and the jobs are following them over there," he said. "This is crazy." Rubio later added: "That obviously speaks to the need for immigration reform." Lawmakers in both political parties have long agreed on the need to expand the number of visas for those in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. But Congress has been unable to agree on a means to do so. STEM visas, however, are expected to be a part of a broader immigration reform effort in Congress this year. Rubio, one of three Cuban-Americans in the Senate, has begun to float his own immigration plan, which would increase the amount of visas available to highly skilled graduates and professionals. That wouldn't necessarily come at the expense of reducing the amount of visas in other areas, he recently told The Wall Street Journal. "I don't think there's a lot of concern in this country that we'll somehow get overrun by Ph.D.s and entrepreneurs," Rubio said in an interview with the paper. The GOP-controlled House recently passed a bill that would have granted 55,000 new STEM visas, but the effort was opposed by Democrats and did not advance in the Senate because it took visas away from the so-called "diversity lottery" that grants visas to people from countries underrepresented in the U.S. immigration system. High-tech visas are one of the least controversial elements of comprehensive immigration legislation, but it's an area that has been critical in getting business groups on board with a reform push. The U.S. Chamber, where Rubio spoke, has voiced support for legalizing undocumented immigrants and expanding the number of visas for highly-skilled workers as part of immigration reform. Lobbyists from the tech industry have joined business groups in calling for expanding STEM visas. Rubio did not reference DREAMers, undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. at a young age who are seeking higher education, in his remarks. But his immigration outline includes a way to naturalize them "in a more expedited manner than the rest of the population," he told the Wall Street Journal. Rubio said that immigration reform is only one way for the U.S. to staff up its high tech firms. The other problem, he said, is that there isn't enough skilled laborers among the American population. To address that, Rubio called on education reforms that include extending federal student aid to online courses and other non-traditional educational institutions. "It speaks even more to the need to produce those workers" in the United States, Rubio said. "That skills gap is a real threat to our future."
That’s uniquely key in this instance – advanced R&D spills over to effective manufacturing
Lind ’12 - Policy director of New America’s Economic Growth Program and a co-founder of the New America Foundation (Michael, “Value Added: America’s Manufacturing Future,” http://growth.newamerica.net/sites/newamerica.net/files/policydocs/Lind,%20Michael%20and%20Freedman,%20Joshua%20-%20NAF%20-%20Value%20Added%20America%27s%20Manufacturing%20Future.pdf )
Manufacturing, R&D and the U.S. Innovation Ecosystem Perhaps the greatest contribution of manufacturing to the U.S. economy as a whole involves the disproportionate role of the manufacturing sector in R&D. The expansion in the global market for high-value-added services has allowed the U.S. to play to its strengths by expanding its trade surplus in services, many of them linked to manufacturing, including R&D, engineering, software production and finance. Of these services, by far the most important is R&D. The United States has long led the world in R&D. In 1981, U.S. gross domestic expenditure on R&D was more than three times as large as that of any other country in the world. And the U.S. still leads: in 2009, the most recent year for which there is available data, the United States spent more than 400 billion dollars. European countries spent just under 300 billion dollars combined, while China spent about 150 billion dollars.14 In the United States, private sector manufacturing is the largest source of R&D. The private sector itself accounts for 71 percent of total R&D in the United States, and although U.S. manufacturing accounts for only 11.7 percent of GDP in 2012, the manufacturing sector accounts for 70 percent of all R&D spending by the private sector in the U.S.15 And R&D and innovation are inextricably connected: a National Science Foundation survey found that 22 percent of manufacturers had introduced product innovations and the same percentage introduced process innovations in the period 2006-2008, while only 8 percent of nonmanufacturers reported innovations of either kind.16 Even as the manufacturing industry in the United States underwent major changes and suffered severe job losses during the last decade, R&D spending continued to follow a general upward growth path. A disproportionate share of workers involved in R&D are employed directly or indirectly by manufacturing companies; for example, the US manufacturing sector employs more than a third of U.S. engineers.17 This means that manufacturing provides much of the demand for the U.S. innovation ecosystem, supporting large numbers of scientists and engineerswho might not find employment if R&D were offshored along with production. Why America Needs the Industrial Commons Manufacturing creates an industrial commons, which spurs growth in multiple sectors of the economy through linked industries. An “industrial commons” is a base of shared physical facilities and intangible knowledge shared by a number of firms. The term “commons” comes from communallyshared pastures or fields in premodern Britain. The industrial commons in particular in the manufacturing sector includes not only large companies but also small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), which employ 41 percent of the American manufacturing workforce and account for 86 percent of all manufacturing establishments in the U.S. Suppliers of materials, component parts, tools, and more are all interconnected; most of the time, Harvard Business School professors Gary Pisano and Willy Shih point out, these linkages are geographic because of the ease of interaction and knowledge transfer between firms.18 Examples of industrial commons surrounding manufacturing are evident in the United States, including the I-85 corridor from Alabama to Virginia and upstate New York.19 Modern economic scholarship emphasizes the importance of geographic agglomeration effects and co-location synergies. 20 Manufacturers and researchers alike have long noted the symbiotic relationship that occurs when manufacturing and R&D are located near each other: the manufacturer benefits from the innovation, and the researchers are better positioned to understand where innovation can be found and to test new ideas. While some forms of knowledge can be easily recorded and transferred, much “know-how” in industry is tacit knowledge. This valuable tacit knowledge base can be damaged or destroyed by the erosion of geographic linkages, which in turn shrinks the pool of scientists and engineers in the national innovation ecosystem. If an advanced manufacturing core is not retained, then the economy stands to lose not only the manufacturing industry itself but also the geographic synergies of the industrial commons, including R&D. Some have warned that this is already the case: a growing share of R&D by U.S. multinational corporations is taking place outside of the United States.21 In particular, a number of large U.S. manufacturers have opened up or expanded R&D facilities in China over the last few years.22 Next Generation ManufacturingA dynamic manufacturing sector in the U.S. is as important as ever. But thanks to advanced manufacturing technology and technology-enabled integration of manufacturing and services, the very nature of manufacturing is changing, often in radical ways. What will the next generation of manufacturing look like? In 1942, the economist Joseph Schumpeter declared that “the process of creative destruction is the essential fact about capitalism.” By creative destruction, Schumpeter did not mean the rise and fall of firms competing in a technologically-static marketplace. He referred to a “process of industrial mutation— if I may use that biological term—that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating the new one.” He noted that “these revolutions are not strictly incessant; they occurred in discrete rushes that are separated from each other by spaces of comparative quiet. The process as a whole works incessantly, however, in the sense that there is always either revolution or absorption of the results of revolution.”23 As Schumpeter and others have observed, technological innovation tends to be clustered in bursts or waves, each dominated by one or a few transformative technologies that are sometimes called “general purpose technologies.” Among the most world-transforming general purpose technologies of recent centuries have been the steam engine, electricity, the internal combustion engine, and information technology.24 As epochal as these earlier technology-driven innovations in manufacturing processes and business models proved to be, they are rapidly being superseded by new technologydriven changes as part of the never-ending process of Schumpeterian industrial mutation. The latest wave of innovation in industrial technology has been termed “advanced manufacturing.” The National Science and Technology Council of the Executive Office of the President defines advanced manufacturing as “a family of activities that (a) depend on the use and coordination of information, automation, computation, software, sensing, and networking, and/or (b) make use of cutting edge materials and emerging capabilities enabled by the physical and biological sciences, for example, nanotechnology, chemistry, and biology. It involves both new ways to manufacture existing products and the manufacture of new products emerging from new advanced technologies.”25 Already computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) programs, combined with computer numerical control (CNC), allow precision manufacturing from complex designs, eliminating many wasteful trials and steps in finishing. CNC is now ubiquitous in the manufacturing sector and much of the employment growth occurring in the sector requires CNC skills or training. Information technology has allowed for enterprise resource planning (ERP) and other forms of enterprise software to connect parts of the production process (both between and within a firm), track systems, and limit waste when dealing with limited resources. Other areas in which advanced manufacturing will play a role in creating new products and sectors and changing current ones are: Supercomputing. America’s global leadership in technology depends in part on whether the U.S. can compete with Europe and Asia in the race to develop “exascale computing,” a massive augmentation of computer calculating power that has the potential to revolutionize predictive sci ences from meteorology to economics. According to the Advanced Scientific Computing Advisory Committee (ASCAC), “If the U.S. chooses to be a follower rather than a leader in exascale computing, we must be willing to cede leadership” in industries including aerospace, automobiles, energy, health care, novel material development, and information technology.26 Robotics: The long-delayed promise of robotics is coming closer to fulfillment. Google and other firms and research consortiums are testing robotic cars, and Nevada recently amended its laws to permit autonomous automobiles.27 Amazon is experimenting with the use of robots in its warehouses.28 Nanotechnology may permit manufacturing at extremely small scales including the molecular and atomic levels.29 Nanotechnology is also a key research component in the semiconductor indusmanutry, as government funding is sponsoring projects to create a “new switch” capable of supplanting current semiconductor technology.30 Photonics or optoelectronics, based on the conversion of information carried by electrons to photons and back, has potential applications in sectors as diverse as telecommunications, data storage, lighting and consumer electronics. Biomanufacturing is the use of biological processes or living organisms to create inorganic structures, as well as food, drugs and fuel. Researchers at MIT have genetically modified a virus that generates cobalt oxide nanowires for silicon chips.31 Innovative materials include artificial “metamaterials” with novel properties. Carbon nanotubes, for example, have a strength-to-weight ratio that no other material can match.32 Advanced manufacturing using these and other cuttingedge technologies is not only creating new products and new methods of production but is also transforming familiar products like automobiles. The rapid growth in electronic and software content in automobiles, in forms like GPS-based guidance systems, information and entertainment technology, anti-lock brakes and engine control systems, will continue. According to Ford, around 30 percent of the value of one of its automobiles is comprised by intellectual property, electronics and software. In the German automobile market, electronic content as a share of production costs is expected to rise from 20-30 percent in 2007 to 50 percent by 2020.33
Advanced manufacturing technology makes war obsolete – it’s the ultimate deterrent
Paone ’09 - 66th Air Base Wing Public Affairs for the US Air Force (Chuck, 8-10-09, “Technology convergence could prevent war, futurist says,” http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123162500)
The convergence of "exponentially advancing technologies" will form a "super-intelligence" so formidable that it could avert war, according to one of the world's leading futurists. Dr. James Canton, CEO and chairman of the Institute for Global Futures, a San Francisco-based think tank, is author of the book "The Extreme Future" and an adviser to leading companies, the military and other government agencies. He is consistently listed among the world's leading speakers and has presented to diverse audiences around the globe. He will address the Air Force Command and Control Intelligence, Survelliance and Reconnaissance Symposium, which will be held Sept. 28 through 30 at the MGM Grand Hotel at Foxwoods in Ledyard, Conn., joining Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz and a bevy of other government and industry speakers. He offered a sneak preview of his symposium presentation and answered various questions about the future of technology and warfare in early August. "The superiority of convergent technologies will prevent war," Doctor Canton said, claiming their power would present an overwhelming deterrent to potential adversaries. While saying that the U.S. will build these super systems faster and better than other nations, he acknowledged that a new arms race is already under way. "It will be a new MAD for the 21st century," he said, referring to the Cold War-era acronym for Mutually Assured Destruction, the idea that a nuclear first strike would trigger an equally deadly response. It's commonly held that this knowledge has essentially prevented any rational state from launching a nuclear attack. Likewise, Doctor Canton said he believes rational nation states, considering this imminent technology explosion, will see the futility of nation-on-nation warfare in the near future. Plus there's the "socio-economic linking of the global market system." "The fundamental macroeconomics on the planet favor peace, security, capitalism and prosperity," he said. Doctor Canton projects that nations, including those not currently allied, will work together in using these smart technologies to prevent non-state actors from engaging in disruptive and deadly acts. As a futurist, Doctor Canton and his team study and predict many things, but their main area of expertise -- and the one in which he's personally most interested -- is advanced and emerging technology. "I see that as the key catalyst of strategic change on the planet, and it will be for the next 100 years," he said. He focuses on six specific technology areas: "nano, bio, IT, neuro, quantum and robotics;"those he expects to converge in so powerful a way. Within the information technology arena, Doctor Canton said systems must create "meaningful data," which can be validated and acted upon. "Knowledge engineering for the analyst and the warfighter is a critical competency that we need to get our arms around," he said. "Having an avalanche of data is not going to be helpful." Having the right data is. "There's no way for the human operator to look at an infinite number of data streams and extract meaning," he said. "The question then is: How do we augment the human user with advanced artificial intelligence, better software presentation and better visual frameworks, to create a system that is situationally aware and can provide decision options for the human operator, faster than the human being can?" He said he believes the answers can often be found already in what he calls 'edge cultures.' "I would look outside of the military. What are they doing in video games? What are they doing in healthcare? What about the financial industry?" Doctor Canton said he believes that more sophisticated artificial intelligence applications will transform business, warfare and life in general. Many of these are already embedded in systems or products, he says, even if people don't know it.
Manufacturing and defense capabilities control conflict-escalation — makes war obsolete.
O’Hanlon 12 — Michael O’Hanlon, is a senior fellow with the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence and director of research for the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, where he specializes in U.S. defense strategy, the use of military force, and American foreign policy. He is a visiting lecturer at Princeton University, an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, and a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. O’Hanlon is a member of the External Advisory Board at the Central Intelligence Agency (Michael O’Hanlon, Brookings, January 2012, “The Arsenal of Democracy and How to Preserve It: Key Issues in Defense Industrial Policy,” http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2012/1/26%20defense%20industrial%20base/0126_defense_industrial_base_ohanlon, Accessed 09-18-2013)
The current wave of defense cuts is also different than past defense budget reductions in their likely industrial impact, as the U.S. defense industrial base is in a much different place than it was in the past. Defense industrial issues are too often viewed through the lens of jobs and pet projects to protect in congressional districts. But the overall health of the firms that supply the technologies our armed forces utilize does have national security resonance. Qualitative superiority in weaponry and other key military technology has become an essential element of American military power in the modern era—not only for winning wars but for deterring them. That requires world-class scientific and manufacturing capabilities—which in turn can also generate civilian and military export opportunities for the United States in a globalized marketplace.
Warming
Skilled workers solve warming
Herman and Smith, 10 (Richard T. Herman is the founder of Richard T. Herman & Associates, an immigration and business law firm in Cleveland, Ohio which serves a global clientele in over 10 languages. He is the co-founder of a chapter of TiE, a global network of entrepreneurs started in 1992 in Silicon Valley. He has appeared on National Public Radio, FOX News, and various affiliates of NBC, CBS, and ABC. He has also been quoted in such publications as USA Today,InformationWeek, PCWorld, ComputerWorld, CIO, Site Selection and National Lawyers Weekly, Robert L. Smith is a veteran journalist who covers international cultures and immigration issues for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Ohio’s largest newspaper. Bob grew up in Cleveland, where he lives with his wife, Cleveland Orchestra violinist Chul-In Park, and their two children, Jae, 5, and Sun-Hee, 3. He has written extensively about immigration issues and has interviewed people at all points of the immigrant experience, from undocumented field workers to hugely successful entrepreneurs, Parts of this paper were excerpted from the book “Immigrant Inc.: Why Immigrant Entrepreneurs are Driving the New Economy (and how they will save the American worker)” (John Wiley & Sons, 2009) by Richard T. Herman & Robert L. Smith. Available wherever books are sold, “Why Immigrants Can Drive the Green Economy,” Immigation Policy Center, http://immigrationpolicy.org/perspectives/why-immigrants-can-drive-green-economy)
Raymond Spencer, an Australian-born entrepreneur based in Chicago, has a window on the future—and a gusto for investing after founding a high-technology consulting company that sold for more than $1 billion in 2006. “I have investments in maybe 10 start-ups, all of which fall within a broad umbrella of a ‘green’ theme,” he said. “And it’s interesting, the vast majority are either led by immigrants or have key technical people who are immigrants.” It should come as no surprise that immigrants will help drive the green revolution. America’s young scientists and engineers, especially the ones drawn to emerging industries like alternative energy, tend to speak with an accent. The 2000 Census found that immigrants, while accounting for 12 percent of the population, made up nearly half of the all scientists and engineers with doctorate degrees. Their importance will only grow. Nearly 70 percent of the men and women who entered the fields of science and engineering from 1995 to 2006 were immigrants. Yet, the connection between immigration and the development and commercialization of alternative energy technology is rarely discussed. Policymakers envision millions of new jobs as the nation pursues renewable energy sources, like wind and solar power, and builds a smart grid to tap it. But Dan Arvizu, the leading expert on solar power and the director of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy in Golden, Colorado, warns that much of the clean-technology talent lies overseas, in nations that began pursuing alternative energy sources decades ago. Expanding our own clean-tech industry will require working closely with foreign nations and foreign-born scientists, he said. Immigration restrictions are making collaboration difficult. His lab’s efforts to work with a Chinese energy lab, for example, were stalled due to U.S. immigration barriers. “We can’t get researchers over here,” Arvizu, the son of a once-undocumented immigrant from Mexico, said in an interview in March 2009, his voice tinged with dismay. “It makes no sense to me. We need a much more enlightened approach.” Dr. Zhao Gang, the Vice Director of the Renewable Energy and New Energy International Cooperation Planning Office of the Ministry of Science and Technology in China, says that America needs that enlightenment fast. “The Chinese government continues to impress upon the Obama administration that immigration restrictions are creating major impediments to U.S.-China collaboration on clean energy development,” he said during a recent speech in Cleveland. So what’s the problem? Some of it can be attributed to national security restrictions that impede international collaboration on clean energy. But Arvizu places greater weight on immigration barriers, suggesting that national secrecy is less important in the fast-paced world of green-tech development. “We are innovating so fast here, what we do today is often outdated tomorrow. Finding solutions to alternative energy is a complex, global problem that requires global teamwork,” he said. We need an immigration system that prioritizes the attraction and retention of scarce, high-end talent needed to invent and commercialize alternative energy technology and other emerging technologies. One idea we floated by Arvizu was a new immigrant “Energy Scientist Visa,” providing fast-track green cards for Ph.D.s with the most promising energy research, as reviewed by a panel of top U.S. scientists. Arvizu enthusiastically responded, “Wow, that’s a brilliant idea.” As the recent submission of the Startup Visa Act bill suggests, there’s really no shortage of good ideas of leveraging immigration to jumpstart the economy. The challenge is getting the American people to understand that high-skill immigration creates jobs, that the current system is broken, and that action is required now. Suffering an Antiquated System▲ While unlimited H1-B visas are available to foreign workers at U.S. government and university research labs, the antiquated green-card system creates a disincentive for immigrant researchers who seek a more permanent stay and status in the U.S. Anyone coming to America from a foreign land experiences the U.S. immigration system. They seldom forget the experience. This vast bureaucracy, with tentacles reaching into myriad federal agencies, wields enormous power over the lives of people trying to follow its directives. Federal immigration authorities decide if a persecuted family can escape Congo, if a prospective college student from Germany will start the school year on time in Cleveland, or if a Honduran family separated for years will be reunited in Miami. U.S. immigration law dictates who can enter America and how long they can stay. Congress can enact new immigration policies as it deems fit—and it did so in 1986 and in 1990. But the foundation of the system remains the Federal Immigration and Nationality Acts of 1965 and 1952. The 1965 act diversified America by opening immigration to new parts of the world, but it also levied restrictions that soon become dated and counterproductive. In a manufacturing era, the act made family reunification an overarching goal, while paying relatively little attention to the migration of highly skilled workers. In fact, it imposed rigid nationality quotas on skilled immigrants. The result, critics say, is a dinosaur of a system ill-equipped to deal with the demands of a fast-changing, global economy. [CONTINUED] “Our immigration laws discriminate pretty heavily against highly talented scientists and engineers who want to come to this country and be part of our technological establishment,” Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told a Congressional panel in May 2009. Of particular concern to employers and economists are two sets of quotas: one that limits the number of visas available to skilled workers, and another that limits the visas available to a nationality. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) issues about 1 million green cards per year. Also known as immigrant visas, green cards bestow permanent residency, or the right to live and work permanently in America. A green card puts one on the path to citizenship. In a typical year, the vast majority of green cards go to people sponsored by a family member already here. There is no limit to the numbers of green cards that can be issued to the spouses, parents, and unmarried children of naturalized U.S. citizens. America accepts far fewer people whose main reason for coming is to practice a profession, to pursue science, or to start a company—even if that person possesses extraordinary ability. The government is restricted by law to issuing 140,000 employment or skill-based green cards each year to applicants and their immediate family members. That’s about 15 percent of the immigrant visa pool. A chunk of green cards are set aside for religious workers and wealthy investors, so the United States actually offers 120,000 employment-based green cards each year. Within the employment visa categories, known as EB visas, are several subcategories that acknowledge skill levels. For example, 40,000 visas are designated for persons of extraordinary ability—outstanding professors, researchers, and multinational executives. Another 40,000 visas are designated for professionals with advanced academic degrees whose work will serve U.S. national interests. And another 10,000 visas are available for wealthy people who commit to investing in a U.S. enterprise and creating jobs. So, out of 1 million green cards issued in an average year, 90,000, or about 9 percent, are reserved for persons with advanced degrees, exceptional skills, or capital to create jobs. Put another way, about 9 percent of immigrant visas are reserved for high-skill immigrants—the people driving the New Economy. It’s a scant amount in the context of a U.S. labor force of 154 million people. Should those exceptional immigrants hail from a nation whose workers are in high demand—for example, India and China—they face delays imposed by a nationality quota system. The 1965 immigration law sets per-country limits on employment visas. People from any one nation cannot use more than 7 percent of the visas available that year. This means that workers from large sending countries are forced to wait, sometimes more than 8 years, because their visa allotment has been “oversubscribed” by their fellow citizens. The 7 percent quota applies equally to every nation on Earth, regardless of its size or the potential number of immigrants it sends to America. For example, Malawi, which has a population of 10.5 million people, is allocated the same amount of employment visas as India, which has a population of over 1 billion. In any given year, only 5,600 green cards are reserved for Indians with advanced academic degrees or extraordinary ability, the same number available to nationals of Malawi. Congress has sought to circumvent the quotas and respond to industry demands—especially in high technology—with guest worker visas like the H1-B, a source of some controversy. The H-1B is a temporary visa for a professional offered a job by a U.S. company that agrees to pay the prevailing market wage. Only 65,000 regular H-1B visas are available each year, a quota set in the early 1990s and temporarily increased to 195,000 from 2001 to 2003. Many employers say the cap is set too low to meet their needs, especially as they seek to staff engineering and software positions. Some lawmakers would like to help them with a higher quota. These skilled immigrants often come to America as students, then go to work in growing industries. A 2008 study by the National Foundation for American Policy found that for each worker hired on an H-1B visa, at least five new jobs were created. But many labor groups argue that the cap is already set too high. Only a bachelor’s degree is required to qualify for this visa, and critics charge the H-1B visas crowd skilled Americans out of the workplace, suppress wages, and make it easier for employers to outsource jobs to low-cost countries like India. Even immigrant advocates criticize the H-1B as a second-class visa that produces an anxious life. Tied to their employers, the guest workers cannot switch jobs unless their new employer is willing to sponsor their visa, and their spouses are not allowed to work. The three-year visa can be renewed once. But after six years, the visa holder must go home unless he or she is able to get a green-card sponsor. The national-origin quotas, coupled with a limit of 90,000 immigrant visas reserved for highly skilled professionals or investors, helps to explain why so many talented immigrants—many of them H-1B visa holders—wait in vain for permission to live and work in America. Many are now leaving the U.S., or simply not coming to study or work on an H1B. After revealing the high-skill visa backlog in 2007, Vivek Wadhwa and his researchers at Duke University began to examine the impact. With the support of the Kauffman Foundation, they surveyed about 1,200 Chinese and Indian professionals who had studied or worked in America and returned home. The returnees were an impressive bunch, overwhelmingly young, smart, and ambitious, as described in the March 2009 report, “America’s Loss is the World’s Gain.” Nearly 90 percent held master’s or doctorate degrees. Many said they expected to start their own companies. Homesickness was common among the immigrants who went back, and many expressed frustration with the U.S. immigration system. But even more said the home country suddenly offered good jobs and bright career prospects. That is the new reality that demands a response, Wadhwa argues. Foreign-born mathematicians, engineers, and chemists can now find world-class companies in Bangalore, Beijing, Tel Aviv, Seoul, and Singapore. With high-tech opportunities blossoming elsewhere, and anti-immigrant attitudes hardening in America, Wadhwa said his adopted homeland faces a crisis. “The United States is no longer the only place where talented people can put their skills to work,” he writes. “It can no longer expect them to endure the indignities and inefficiencies of an indifferent immigration system, and it must now actively compete to attract these people with good jobs, security and other amenities.” The competition is heating up. In an earlier study, Wadhwa pointed out that most high-skilled immigrants obtained their primary education before coming to America, meaning that the United States inherited the benefits of schooling that was paid for elsewhere. Some countries are looking to recoup that investment and attract their diasporas back home. Alberta, Canada, sensing an opportunity to snatch talent from America, is sending recruiting teams to U.S. cities to lure disgruntled foreign professional workers on temporary H-1B visas. The province is offering expedited permanent-residency cards and quicker pathways to entrepreneurship. Many researchers believe these immigrant-attraction strategies will show results. “The reality of the global economy is that employers and their capital will follow the talent—wherever that talent is permitted to work and flourish,” Stuart Anderson, executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy, wrote in 2007. “While members of Congress often talk about ‘protecting’ American jobs, those who persist in pursuing restriction on hiring skilled foreign nationals unfortunately are inhibiting creation and innovation in the United States.” In 2007, Microsoft opened up a research and development facility in Vancouver, Canada, just over the border from its Seattle headquarters. Microsoft defended its decision by citing U.S. immigration restrictions on high-skilled talent. Perhaps no country understands better the role of foreign talent in creating jobs for its people than Singapore. In July 2008, Singapore’s Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong, declared that Singapore must be open to foreign talent to achieve a “critical mass” for innovation and entrepreneurship. Even with the global recession in full swing, Singapore Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng announced that restricting the entry of high-skill immigrants would be “short sighted” and “could ultimately lead to more job losses for Singaporeans.” America loses more than innovation if newly minted graduates go elsewhere; it loses tax dollars. A 2009 report by the respected Technology Policy Institute found that immigration restrictions cost billions in lost opportunity, taxes, and wages. The institute concluded that legislation considered by Congress to loosen green-card and H-1B visa restrictions could reduce the federal deficit on the order of $100 billion across 10 years. In short, fantastic opportunities are being lost as high-skill immigrants are steered elsewhere. We need to polish our welcome. For starters, Wadhwa argues, the United States could reduce the huge backlog of visa requests simply by making more visas available to skilled immigrants and by accelerating the processing times. His is one voice in a growing chorus that hopes to wrest the spotlight from illegal immigration and illuminate the larger wave, its potential, and the consequences of inaction. But the academic studies, while critically important, do not seem to cut through the noise and connect with the American people. The American people are not demanding high-skill immigration reform. They don’t see it as a job-creation opportunity. The word “immigrant” almost automatically summons an angry response that immigrants “take jobs.” Something else is needed. Time for a New Narrative ▲ Stories connect us to each other. Drawing from the same well of human aspiration, triumph and failure, our personal stories create an emotional bond that transforms strangers into familiar faces. As America once again struggles with the question of whether and how to welcome the immigrant stranger, the telling of new immigrant stories is needed to help heal the chasm between “us” and “them,” and between our personal immigrant past and our nation’s immigrant present and future. During this Great Recession, with unemployment near 10%, the immigration narrative also needs to offer hope for Americans—hope that tomorrow will be better. Hope today comes in the form of good old American jobs. We have been told that maybe 4 million blue and white-collar jobs may be created by advances in alternative energy technology, and that wind, solar, thermal, and other sources of energy will move us closer to energy independence, greater national security and a healthier planet. But so far, we haven’t been that interested in asking the question, “who will create and commercialize this new green technology? Much like the role that immigrants played, in partnership with American-born colleagues, in the information technology revolution and the elevation of Silicon Valley to almost mythical status, immigrants are now emerging as key drivers of America’s quest for world-class clean energy technology. A glance at recent research on the contributions of immigrants supports the expectation that immigrants are helping to lead the green economy and other emerging industries: Immigrants are nearly twice as likely as native-born Americans to start a business. Immigrants are filing patents at twice the rate of the American-born. Immigrants founded more than half of the high-tech companies in Silicon Valley. Immigrants are much more likely to earn an advanced degree than the native-born. (Continued……. (Feel Free to ask for the deleted text) Throughout Michigan and the Midwest, civic and union leaders cheered the made-in-America strategy. U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan told the national media that a company founded by immigrants was moving the country in the right direction. “We need a twenty-first century manufacturing strategy in this country,” she said. “Companies like A1234 are not only creating quality, good-paying jobs in Michigan, but are insuring that we do not move from a dependence on foreign oil to a dependence on foreign technology.” John Dingell, a member of Congress from Michigan, called the A123-Chrysler partnership momentous on two levels. “The future of this country is dependent upon addressing two vital challenges—stopping the spread of global warming, and creating the next generation of manufacturing jobs here in the United States,” he said. “This project gets us closer to achieving both of those goals.”
Warming is real, anthropogenic, and will cause extinction
Terry Deibel, Professor of IR at National War College, 2007, “Foreign Affairs Strategy: Logic for American Statecraft” pg 387-389
Finally, there is one major existential threat to American security (as well as prosperity) of a nonviolent nature, which, though far in the future, demands urgent action. It is the threat of global warming to the stability of the climate upon which all earthly life depends. Scientists worldwide have been observing the gathering of this threat for three decades now, and what was once a mere possibility has passed through probability to near certainty. Indeed not one of more than 900 articles on climate change published in refereed scientific journals from 1993 to 2003 doubted that anthropogenic warming is occurring. “In legitimate scientific circles,” writes Elizabeth Kolbert, “it is virtually impossible to find evidence of disagreement over the fundamentals of global warming.” Evidence from a vast international scientific monitoring effort accumulates almost weekly, as this sample of newspaper reports shows: an international panel predicts “brutal droughts, floods and violent storms across the planet over the next century”; climate change could “literally alter ocean currents, wipe away huge portions of Alpine Snowcaps and aid the spread of cholera and malaria”; “glaciers in the Antarctic and in Greenland are melting much faster than expected, and…worldwide, plants are blooming several days earlier than a decade ago”; “rising sea temperatures have been accompanied by a significant global increase in the most destructive hurricanes”; “NASA scientists have concluded from direct temperature measurements that 2005 was the hottest year on record, with 1998 a close second”; “Earth’s warming climate is estimated to contribute to more than 150,000 deaths and 5 million illnesses each year” as disease spreads; “widespread bleaching from Texas to Trinidad…killed broad swaths of corals” due to a 2-degree rise in sea temperatures. “The world is slowly disintegrating,” concluded Inuit hunter Noah Metuq, who lives 30 miles from the Arctic Circle. “They call it climate change…but we just call it breaking up.” From the founding of the first cities some 6,000 years ago until the beginning of the industrial revolution, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere remained relatively constant at about 280 parts per million (ppm). At present they are accelerating toward 400 ppm, and by 2050 they will reach 500 ppm, about d’ouble pre-industrial levels. Unfortunately, atmospheric CO2 lasts about a century, so there is no way immediately to reduce levels, only to slow their increase, we are thus in for significant global warming; the only debate is how much and how serious the effects will be. As the newspaper stories quoted above show, we are already experiencing the effects of 1-2 degree warming in more violent storms, spread of disease, mass die offs of plants and animals, species extinction, and threatened inundation of low-lying countries like the Pacific nation of Kiribati and the Netherlands at a warming of 5 degrees or less the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets could disintegrate, leading to a sea level of rise of 20 feet that would cover North Carolina’s outer banks, swamp the southern third of Florida, and inundate Manhattan up to the middle of Greenwich Village. Another catastrophic effect would be the collapse of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation that keeps the winter weather in Europe far warmer than its latitude would otherwise allow. Economist William Cline once estimated the damage to the United States alone from moderate levels of warming at 1-6 percent of GDP annually; severe warming could cost 13-26 percent of GDP. But the most frightening scenario is runaway greenhouse warming, based on positive feedback from the buildup of water vapor in the atmosphere that is both caused by and causes hotter surface temperatures. Past ice age transitions, associated with only 5-10 degree changes in average global temperatures, took place in just decades, even though no one was then pouring ever-increasing amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. Faced with this specter, the best one can conclude is that “humankind’s continuing enhancement of the natural greenhouse effect is akin to playing Russian roulette with the earth’s climate and humanity’s life support system. At worst, says physics professor Marty Hoffert of New York University, “we’re just going to burn everything up; we’re going to heat the atmosphere to the temperature it was in the Cretaceous when there were crocodiles at the poles, and then everything will collapse.” During the Cold War, astronomer Carl Sagan popularized a theory of nuclear winter to describe how a thermonuclear war between the Untied States and the Soviet Union would not only destroy both countries but possibly end life on this planet. Global warming is the post-Cold War era’s equivalent of nuclear winter at least as serious and considerably better supported scientifically. Over the long run it puts dangers form terrorism and traditional military challenges to shame. It is a threat not only to the security and prosperity to the United States, but potentially to the continued existence of life on this planet