Skilled Immigrants in the United States

Skilled Immigrants in the United States

Introduction

Immigration to the United States is a complicated phenomenon that has resulted in the population growth within the country and has brought diverse cultural changes. The United States has been accepting more legal immigrants than most other countries, in 1970; 9.6 million immigrants were brought into the country which was quadrupled by 2007 to 38 million. Recently 14 million immigrants have entered in to the United States from 2000 to 2010. The major countries people immigrate from to the US include Philippines, China, Mexico and India (Lee, 2012).

A major factor behind people immigrating within the country is in search of work. Immigrants can provide an overall gain to the economy of the country due to skilled workers, the cost for goods and services produced by immigrant labor is relatively of a lower cost. There is an increased internal competition between the domestic workers and the immigrants, which brings out the best performance from the labor another benefit is that skilled immigrant often possess certain specializations in activities that would have been impossible otherwise. The homeland security act of 2002 established the homeland security and restructured the immigration and naturalization service, which was responsible for border enforcement and inspections. The functions previously followed by the INS are divided into two categories of the DHS namely the Bureau of citizenship and immigration services are responsible for the immigration and naturalization, whereas the border enforcement is divided into the Bureau of customs and border protection and the bureau of immigration and customs enforcement Recently many heated debates have started regarding the immigration policies, and have been pressing the government to introduce new reforms to the existing immigration policy since a majority of people believe the current policy of skilled immigration is flawed and has many issues.

Discussion

The Current system of high skilled immigration within the United States

With the increase of unemployment within the country many people debate on whether there is an actual need for H-1B visas.H-1B is a visa provided to temporary non immigrants under the immigration and nationality act. According to which a US employers is allowed to temporarily employ a foreign worker for a specific job. The demand for H-1B workers constantly exceeds the capacity of 65,000 each year. Many researchers have proven the fact that the presence of an H-1B worker who has the abilities to complement the skills of the native worker often creates employment opportunities. Yet the imposed capacity constricts the economy from expanding and growing. A study conducted by Harvard Business school, most of the H-1B immigrants were scientists and engineers all holders of doctorates and were responsible for the 67% increase in the science and engineering workforce in the country. The H-1B of skilled professionals has increased the innovation patters (American Immigration council, 2011).

Problems with the National policy of Skilled Immigration in the US

The need for extensive immigration reforms within the US have become mandatory since the existing national immigration system is completed destroyed, it is undermining ...