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Internal – I-squard specificFailure to pass will kill competitivenessBenner ’15 [Katie, 1/22, Bloomberg View, Obama, Immigration and Silicon Valley. [online] Available at: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-01-22/obama-immigration-reform-h-b1-visas-and-silicon-valley [Accessed 27 Jun. 2015]. The U.S. technology industry might finally get the immigration reform that it wants. Bipartisan Senate groups introduced two tech-focused bills this month. The Immigration Innovation Act - which increases the cap on H-1B Visas from 65,000 to 115,000, eliminates per-country limits on visa petitioners and lets spouses of H-1B visa holders work - came out of conversations with corporate tech leaders. The Startup Act, which already has been introduced on three earlier occasions, creates a new visa category for foreign entrepreneurs. It also seeks to change the tax code to benefit startups. It was co-sponsored by six Senators including Democrat Mark R. Warner, who himself was a venture investor before he turned to politics. Should these tech-related measures die, companies like Facebook say they’ll face a talent shortage. The situation could endanger U.S. competiveness as Canada, Germany, South Africa and China attempt to woo engineers from abroad too. Chinese companies have recently made huge venture investments in entrepreneurs around the world and the Silicon Dragon is seen as a serious threat to Silicon Valley. Springboards more reformsSchwartz ’15 [Eric, 1/14, Why the New Tech-Focused Immigration Bill Could Actually Succeed. [online] DC Inno. Available at: http://dcinno.streetwise.co/2015/01/14/immigration-bill-tech-companies-seeking-more-h-1b-visas/ [Accessed 27 Jun. 2015].] "This bill is a common sense approach to ensuring that those who have come here to be educated in high-tech fields have the ability to stay here with their families and contribute to the economy and our society," said Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Ut.) who introduced the bill with a bipartisan group of co-sponsors including Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-Mn.), Marco Rubio (R-Fl.), Chris Coons (D-De.), Jeff Flake (R-Az.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Ct.). "I’m calling on everyone – from the President and both sides of the aisle in Congress to the tech and business industries – to get behind this bill and use it as a launching for more progress on immigration reform." MPX – leadershipHigh-skilled immigration is key to US technological competitiveness, which is the largest internal link to US leadershipAlden, Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow, 2010 (Edward, “U.S. Losing Ground in Competitive Immigration,” World Politics Review, 7/27/10, http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/6142/u-s-losing-ground-in-competitive-immigration, IC) In the contemporary world, no country has done this better than the United States. The U.S. remains more successful than any other nation in recruiting and retaining talented individuals from around the world -- in sports, in entertainment, and most importantly in the scientific and technological fields that drive modern economies. But that lead has shrunk significantly over the past decade, with potentially serious implications for U.S. global leadership. The best university students, who once flocked to the United States, are finding other attractive options in the U.K., Australia and Canada -- and even in long-closed Japan. Skilled workers, frustrated by the tight U.S. quotas on work visas and the long waits for permanent residency, a[re being lured by other countries that have overhauled their immigration laws and promise a smoother transition to a new life. And Chinese and Indians, the two largest groups of skilled migrants, have seen new job possibilities emerge in their own fast-growing economies, leading more to stay put or to come back home. These trends have alarmed U.S. businesses, and some political leaders as well. Michael Bloomberg, the media magnate and outspoken mayor of New York, has warned that restrictive laws and a stifling immigration bureaucracy that drive away immigrant entrepreneurs and other skilled migrants are a policy of "national suicide." He added, "I can't think of any ways to destroy this country quite as direct and impactful as our immigration policy. We educate the best and the brightest, and then we don't give them a green card." But that urgency has yet to be shared in Washington. Rhetorically at least, President Barack Obama understands what is at stake. "To this day, America reaps incredible economic rewards because we remain a magnet for the best and brightest from across the globe," he said in his first big speech on immigration at American University in Washington in early July. "In an increasingly interconnected world, the diversity of our country is a powerful advantage in global competition." But that conviction has not been matched by action. Instead, the question of what to do for high-skilled immigrants remains trapped in the larger debate over whether Congress should offer a legalization program for the roughly 11 million immigrants living illegally in the United States, most of whom work in lower-skilled occupations like agricultural, construction, gardening, housekeeping and food services. Obama has repeatedly promised to move ahead on comprehensive immigration reform legislation. But it has not been his highest priority, and currently not a single Republican is ready to stand with the president on the issue. Instead of finding new ways to welcome immigrants, both the U.S. federal and state governments have been focused on ever-tougher enforcement designed to keep out illegal immigrants and deport those already inside the United States. The United States has been called the "accidental empire," and its emergence as the strongest magnet for talented and ambitious immigrants that the world has ever known was in many ways accidental as well. The great wave of European immigrants in the early 20th century was composed primarily of unskilled laborers filling a seemingly insatiable demand for manufacturing and agricultural workers. When the United States largely closed its doors to immigrants in the 1920s and 1930s, no exception was made for skilled immigrants, even many of those fleeing Nazi persecution. The landmark 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act that reopened the doors was almost willfully dismissive of the economic role of immigration. The bill championed the principle of reunifying families as the primary basis for U.S. immigrant admissions, and sought to be even-handed by setting quotas that would give an equal opportunity to immigrants from all parts of the world. The legacy of that legislation is still felt today. Of the roughly one million legal immigrants admitted to the United States each year, about two-thirds are relatives of U.S. citizens or permanent residents, admitted without regard to their educational attainments, work history, language skills or any other predictors of labor market success. The comparatively smaller programs for recruiting skilled immigrants without family ties were not expanded until quite recently. The EB visa for permanent residence for so-called "priority workers" was introduced by Congress in 1990, and the H-1B visa that offers temporary residence for skilled foreign workers was established that same year with a quota of 65,000 annually. Notwithstanding the relatively low priority the United States government has given to attracting them, skilled immigrants have continued to come in large numbers. Among immigrants in OECD countries, more than half of those who have at least a high school diploma are living in the United States. Adjusting for population size, only Canada has a higher percentage of at least high-school educated immigrants. The percentage of immigrants with a university education is lower in the U.S. than in countries like Canada, the U.K. and Australia, but even here the U.S. has done surprisingly well in the absence of a focused policy for attracting high-skilled immigrants. The main reason has been a job market that, until the recent financial crisis, was far more robust than America's competitors, especially in Europe. Skilled immigrants came to the United States for the simple reason that it was easier to find a good, well-paying job or start up a new company there than anywhere else in the world. Immigrants have been especially important in high-technology fields, and the work of Vivek Wadhwa and others builds a convincing case that Silicon Valley as we know it would not have emerged without immigrant entrepreneurs, particularly from India and China. Immigrants, for instance, generate some 25 percent of all patents awarded to U.S. scientists, which is more than twice their representation in the population. The quality of America's universities is similarly an advantage that other countries have not been able to overcome. In the latest rankings from Times Higher Education in the U.K., 13 of the world's top 20 schools were in the United States. Foreign science and engineering students in particular have favored the U.S. Currently, some 40 percent of doctoral degrees in science and engineering are awarded to foreign students, as are 65 percent of those in computer science. Historically, the large majority of these graduates have stayed and built their careers in the U.S. The success of American higher education was symbolized by last year's Nobel Prizes in the sciences and medicine: All nine of the prizes went to individuals who had either been educated or were currently working at an American university. Such an overwhelming advantage is hard to lose, but over the past decade the signs of slippage are rather ominous. The problems have arisen from three main sources: mistakes in U.S. policy (including the reaction to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks); the growing efforts by other countries to recruit and retain skilled immigrants; and, finally, the increased economic opportunities in the biggest immigrant-sending countries, particularly China and India. In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, in which all of the attackers had managed to enter the United States on valid visas, the U.S. government set about tightening its border and immigration regime in an effort to prevent similar mistakes in the future. Some of the measures were implemented with minimal disruption to travelers and immigrants, and have been copied by some other countries, such as the new fingerprint requirements for most visitors to the United States. But other initiatives -- in particular the intensive background checks required for most students and other visitors from Muslim countries, and for most of those with scientific expertise -- have been far more disruptive. Long delays for visa applications became chronic after Sept. 11, and despite some improvements, such delays have re-emerged periodically. As recently as early 2009, many Indians and Chinese with engineering or scientific backgrounds were facing waits of several months or more for these security checks to be completed. The message sent to the highly skilled was that immigrating to the United States has become a very uncertain proposition. The disruptive response to Sept. 11 came on top of longstanding problems in the U.S. immigration system that have only worsened over the past decade. In particular, the national quotas set for green cards in an effort to ensure that potential immigrants from different parts of the world would have an equal shot at U.S. residence have had a particularly hard impact on China and India, which are by far the world's largest source-countries for skilled emigrants. Depending on their education and skill levels, green card applicants from those countries face waits of four to eight years before their applications are considered. For those already living in the United States on temporary visas -- such as an H-1B -- that normally tie them to a single employer, that waiting period results in huge uncertainty, frustration, and the loss of opportunities for career advancement. Other countries have seized on those delays to try to lure skilled workers away from the United States. Canada, for instance, has an open door for applicants with advanced degrees and experience in fields such as healthcare, engineering and construction, and promises permanent residence in eight to 12 months. The Canadian province of Alberta, which faces critical labor shortages in the energy sector, has offered an even faster track for temporary visa holders with needed skills who are currently working in the United States. Canada's initiative is one of many under way in OECD countries to try to attract skilled migrants. All the advanced developed countries are facing serious demographic problems from a combination of aging workforces and low birth rates. For countries with less of an immigrant tradition than the United States, opening the door to educated immigrants is the least controversial politically, and promises the greatest short-term economic returns. Over the past decade, a number of countries have overhauled their immigration systems to offer preference to skilled migrants. The United Kingdom, for instance, recently established a new points system that gives strong preferences to highly skilled migrants, entrepreneurs, investors and foreign graduate students who want to remain and work in the country. There is no quota, and those who meet the criteria do not need a job offer or other sponsor. Others with more specialized skills can be admitted with a job offer. The European Union has adopted and will fully implement next year a new "blue card" scheme that will open the door for those with professional credentials and experience to work anywhere within the EU. Australia was the first country to introduce a points system in which the government gives preference to skilled migrants who meet certain criteria, such as language skills and educational attainment, and has seen a steady rise in both the educational levels and the labor market success of recent immigrants. Other countries, including Singapore, New Zealand, and even Japan and Korea have taken new steps to lure skilled immigrants. The challenge to the traditional U.S. dominance in attracting skilled immigrants is most apparent in foreign student numbers. While not all university students who study abroad remain in the countries where they are educated, university education is the best pipeline to permanent immigration of high-skilled workers. Numerous studies have shown that foreign students who are educated abroad and remain in those countries tend to do much better in the workforce than those emigrating with foreign credentials. Many countries are now emulating the U.S. practice of allowing foreign students to remain and work in the country for periods of a year or more after graduation without having to seek a new work visa. The United States had seen steady, nearly uninterrupted growth in the number of foreign students for most of the post-World War II period. After Sept. 11, however, enrollment of foreign students fell for several years and has only fully recovered to pre-Sept. 11 levels in the past year. More worrisome, new enrollment of foreign graduate students fell sharply and has still not fully recovered despite stronger growth in the past few years. What is striking about these numbers is that the decline came during a decade when the international student population soared. The U.K. nearly doubled its inflows of foreign students in that period, and Australia, France and New Zealand saw similar gains. Overall, the U.S. share of foreign students fell from 28 percent in 2000 to 21 percent by 2008. In the longer run, however, the toughest competition for students may be coming from the traditional source-countries. India, for instance, has increased its number of engineering graduates almost four-fold in a decade, though the quality of their education remains much lower than in comparable U.S. schools. China is soon expected to overtake the U.S. in the number of scientists and engineers graduating with doctoral degrees from its universities. As importantly, new economic opportunities in those countries are luring back more of their U.S.-trained nationals. The rise of India's technology industry in Bangalore was fueled in part by U.S.-educated Indians returning home. China in 2007 introduced a range of incentives to lure back overseas Chinese scientists, engineers and executives, many of them educated and currently living in the U.S. The U.S. scientific establishment was shocked recently when Shi Yigong, a naturalized U.S. citizen and star molecular biologist at Princeton University, turned down a prestigious $10 million research grant and returned to Beijing to become dean of life sciences at Tsinghua University. "There's no question in my mind that over the past decade the U.S. has become a less attractive place for highly educated immigrants to settle," AnnaLee Saxenian, dean of the School of Information at Berkeley and an expert on immigration into Silicon Valley, recently told the Fiscal Times. "My foreign graduate students used to assume that they would stay here after graduation. . . . Now they say, 'I can go home and live like a king in India.'" The implications of such trends for the United States are worrisome. As Jacob Funk Kirkegaard has highlighted, the United States faces a real decline in the number of highly educated workers -- those holding master's, professional and doctoral degrees -- as the baby boom generation moves into retirement, and the U.S. education system has failed to respond. Educated foreigners have helped to fill the gap, but the growing international competition for such immigrants will make it harder for the U.S. to plug that hole. The worst-case scenario would be a debilitating loss of America's edge in scientific and technological innovation, with consequences not only for the economy but for U.S. military dominance as well. Numerous reports generated by the country's scientific establishment have warned of that danger, and some in the military are paying serious attention. Gordon England, the former deputy defense secretary during the Bush administration, warned, "The greatest long-term threat to U.S. national security is not terrorists wielding a nuclear or biological weapon, but the erosion of America's place as a world leader in science and technology." Certainly the United States retains many advantages that will continue to offset short-sighted policies, including its research universities, its dynamic venture capital system for encouraging entrepreneurs, and its long history as an immigrant society. But it is hard to see the U.S. reversing the current erosion in its attractiveness to immigrants unless the government can finally respond with long-needed policy changes to make it easier for the most talented immigrants to come and remain in the country. And that appears increasingly unlikely. Washington has been debating immigration reform since former President George W. Bush put the issue back on the table in 2004, and over that time, both political and public support for the idea has been eroding. With the deep recession and real unemployment stuck in the double digits, the political hurdles to reform have been raised even higher. Immigration is the sort of issue that poses the biggest problems for America's divided political system: The costs of inaction over the long run are serious, but the political costs of action in the short run are high. In that respect, it is much like energy and climate change policy, or the rising burden of retirement and old-age medical entitlements -- also issues on which it has so far proved impossible to make much progress despite the evident crises looming on the horizon. On immigration, the consequences of such inaction are also certain to be severe -- if not Michael Bloomberg's "national suicide," then at least a steady decline in American power and prestige. It will take an unusual burst of consensus and creativity on the part of America's political leadership to change course. That is not likely, but it is sorely needed. Collapse of US primary leads to great power warsThayer, Associate Professor in the Department of Defense and Strategic Studies at Missouri State University, 2006 (Bradley, “In Defense of Primacy,” The National Interest, December, Lexis) THROUGHOUT HISTORY, peace and stability have been great benefits of an era where there was a dominant power--Rome, Britain or the United States today. Scholars and statesmen have long recognized the irenic effect of power on the anarchic world of international politics. Everything we think of when we consider the current international order--free trade, a robust monetary regime, increasing respect for human rights, growing democratization--is directly linked to U.S. power. Retrenchment proponents seem to think that the current system can be maintained without the current amount of U.S. power behind it. In that they are dead wrong and need to be reminded of one of history's most significant lessons: Appalling things happen when international orders collapse. The Dark Ages followed Rome's collapse. Hitler succeeded the order established at Versailles. Without U.S. power, the liberal order created by the United States will end just as assuredly. As country and western great Ral Donner sang: "You don't know what you've got (until you lose it)." Consequently, it is important to note what those good things are. In addition to ensuring the security of the United States and its allies, American primacy within the international system causes many positive outcomes for Washington and the world. The first has been a more peaceful world. During the Cold War, U.S. leadership reduced friction among many states that were historical antagonists, most notably France and West Germany. Today, American primacy helps keep a number of complicated relationships aligned--between Greece and Turkey, Israel and Egypt, South Korea and Japan, India and Pakistan, Indonesia and Australia. This is not to say it fulfills Woodrow Wilson's vision of ending all war. Wars still occur where Washington's interests are not seriously threatened, such as in Darfur, but a Pax Americana does reduce war's likelihood, particularly war's worst form: great power wars. Second, American power gives the United States the ability to spread democracy and other elements of its ideology of liberalism. Doing so is a source of much good for the countries concerned as well as the United States because, as John Owen noted on these pages in the Spring 2006 issue, liberal democracies are more likely to align with the United States and be sympathetic to the American worldview.3 So, spreading democracy helps maintain U.S. primacy. In addition, once states are governed democratically, the likelihood of any type of conflict is significantly reduced. This is not because democracies do not have clashing interests. Indeed they do. Rather, it is because they are more open, more transparent and more likely to want to resolve things amicably in concurrence with U.S. leadership. And so, in general, democratic states are good for their citizens as well as for advancing the interests of the United States.
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