Yes, I agree. The part where I start to get worried is that 1) the visas tilt heavily toward high tech, and 2) it's indentured. Both could be fixed...
Right now, we have a situation where Americans know that if they go into law, they'll be largely protected from competition. This also holds true to a lesser extent for medicine (my uncle, who is a radiologist, told me that licensing is a big factor in keeping the work in the US).
So if we expand this program, we should expect less interest among Americans in high tech, and more interest in law. This leads to a positive feedback loop (or negative, if you want to call it that). Fewer Americans -> more need for visas -> further deterrence to Americans -> greater shortage -> more visas...
The only real solution would be a global workforce where credentials and licenses are equally available regardless of nationality/border. But obviously, that's not happening.
As a result, I'd compromise by supporting a limited number of visas under terms that preserve the mobility of the worker. But a large expansion of the existing program? I think it's a bad idea.
OK so you observe that it's easier to hire foreigners in high tech than in law or medicine. How about you ask yourself a question then: do you want American high tech companies to match the efficiency of its healthcare and legal system, or maybe the other way around?
the other way around, without question. I'd much rather see this resolved by opening up other fields, rather than closing off high tech.
that said, it will be a cold day in hell when the US legal system opens up to international competition, and the imbalance itself is destructive. If my goal were to use government policy to discourage americans from engineering/science and encourage them to study law or medicine, I would probably design something very similar to what we have now. The US government goes out of its way to insulate lawyers from competition from overseas. It goes out of its way to subject us-based engineers to increased job competition from overseas.
So we have our young people more interested in law than engineering. Why do our wise policy makers scratch their heads about this? They created this situation.
Yes the imbalance is destructive. The high salaries of American doctors and attorneys are due to the access to those fields artificially closed, not only from the foreigners, but also from most American. Would you want to introduce such system to the high tech industry? No code writing until you have a degree and a special license? Even if you would, you still probably couldn't elevate American software engineers' salaries to the level of doctors and lawyers--the doctors and the lawyers can only get away with it because they have captive audience. If you brought down the American software industry to the level of the healthcare system, Americans would simply start using programs and web sites created abroad. (I read that many people go abroad for more expensive medical treatments, e.g., heart surgery in India can cost $10k and is not in any way worse than the same procedure in a US hospital which costs $100k+)
No, I would definitely oppose a licensing system for software engineers similar to the one for doctors and attorneys. Not because it's a terrible idea in theory, but because I'm positive the implementation would be so bad that it would be worse than no licensing.
But I'm not advocating special protections for US based software developers. I just think that the US government has gone out of it's way to specifically expose US scientists and engineers (and related high tech occupations) to foreign competition. I'd be satisfied if the US government simply stopped doing active harm to this profession and treated it like any other unregulated profession (ie., immigrants are free to go into it as they are free to go into any other profession - but no special visas for this specific field).
Actually, I'm not even completely opposed to some specific targeting of high tech. Because high tech tends to be a wealth generating field, it might make sense to target tech workers. Like I said earlier, I would support a moderate number of visas under terms that preserve the freedom and mobility of the engineer (ie., no indentured servitude).
But what we have right now - ie., hundreds of thousands of visas under indentured conditions with almost no enforcement of the paltry protections that are there? It goes way too far, and ends up a creating a deterrence for US students who might have otherwise gone into engineering.
I also think that this threatens the long-term viability of high tech in the US. We do need a healthy flow of our own citizens (and by this, I mean people who grew up in the US and came through our educational system) into high tech occupations. Otherwise, we will, guaranteed, one day lose our high tech industry in this country.
So I'd say - yes, supplement our work force with judicious use of visas, but also be very careful to ensure that we are not bringing in so much competition that US citizens are deterred.
I'd say between 50-60K visas a year would be fine. I'd also point out that there probably aren't that many talented foreign nationals out there every year - much of the overflow is really just a way to drive labor costs down in run-of-the-mill crap programming jobs (which is why most of these visas go to foreign outsourcing firms, not highly innovative positions at google or microsoft).
Right now, we have a situation where Americans know that if they go into law, they'll be largely protected from competition. This also holds true to a lesser extent for medicine (my uncle, who is a radiologist, told me that licensing is a big factor in keeping the work in the US).
So if we expand this program, we should expect less interest among Americans in high tech, and more interest in law. This leads to a positive feedback loop (or negative, if you want to call it that). Fewer Americans -> more need for visas -> further deterrence to Americans -> greater shortage -> more visas...
The only real solution would be a global workforce where credentials and licenses are equally available regardless of nationality/border. But obviously, that's not happening.
As a result, I'd compromise by supporting a limited number of visas under terms that preserve the mobility of the worker. But a large expansion of the existing program? I think it's a bad idea.