In Any Immigration Debate, America Should Focus On It’s Most Skilled Workers @PolicyMic | Parker Reynolds

In Washington, the tendency seems to be that if an issue is considered too poisonous, it is consigned to the scrap heap of history. We have seen this with the issue of immigration reform. Under President George W. Bush, comprehensive immigration reform was attempted in 2006, but despite the House and Senate passing separate legislation, the two bills were unable to be reconciled in conference. During the election of 2008, then-Senator Barack Obama promised that he would pass immigration reform in his first term, although that proved to be a hollow promise.

The focal point in all of these debates has been the status of low-skilled immigrants from countries in Central and South America. A reform that needs to be addressed, but is lost in the process, is the status of high-skilled workers who graduate from colleges and universities in the United States, mainly in STEM (Scientific, Technical, Engineering and Management) specialties that are becoming scarcer in the U.S., and then are forced to return home, unable to acquire the necessary visas to stay in the country. Those visas are known as H-1 visas and the benefits to our society and our economy from increasing their numbers are enormous.

Because these workers tend to have advanced degrees, they are more likely than low-skilled immigrants to obtain high-salaried jobs. This means that they tend to pay more in taxes than they receive in public benefits. In 2009, the average foreign-born adult with an advanced degree paid over $22,500 in federal, state, and Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA, or Social Security and Medicare) taxes, while their families received benefits one-tenth that size through government transfer programs like cash welfare, unemployment benefits, and Medicaid.

via In Any Immigration Debate, America Should Focus On It’s Most Skilled Workers @PolicyMic | Parker Reynolds.