Hey, That Foreigner Could be The Guy That Gives You A job. Or Not.

Did you know that some legislators in Washington have begun to temper their anti-immigration rhetoric? It seems that they're beginning to hear from constituents that being against immigration is hurting businesses and job creation. In a time of very high unemployment, being against businesses and job creation isn't all that great of a position to be in. Here's the  thing, being "down" on immigrants, legal or illegal, hurts many businesses, but mostly agriculture. That means rural, that means areas that had been "down" on illegals. But since laws are being passed and local law enforcement has bared down of illegals, folks are finding out that it's not such a good idea after all. Okay, but how does job creation come from immigration? Well, in Thomas L Freidman's new book "That Used To Be Us", he points out that science and math standouts are the folks that come up with the most new patents and begin the most new startup companies, all of which hire, guess what, employees. So you ask, what does that have to do with immigration? Well something like 70% to 80% of the top graduates in math and science from American colleges and universities are foreign students. But it can take up to ten years for them to get a visa to get back into America. So, many are just staying home where they start those new companies and compete with us instead of coming here and hiring Americans. I'd call that bad policy, wouldn't you? Another thing Freidman mentions in his book is the idea that people think that if their kids are better educated in their school district then the next door district, they'll be able to get better jobs. But Freidman says, it's not the school next door they must compete with, it's the school in China or India or Singapore or Denmark or all the other industrialized countries in the world. That's because we compete with these nations for jobs. Jobs go where the best educated workers live. We'd better start getting our act together, because we're way behind much of the rest of the world. And those countries we're ahead of, have cheap labor that we can't compere with either. We sort of sit between just average education and very high tech job requirements. Where do you think we sit? On the outside looking in? Could be.