by KYW’s Brad Segall
While the debate rages on over immigration reform in the United States, highly skilled immigrants continue to call for radical changes in the way they are treated in this country.
Software developers, engineers, computer programmers, and other highly skilled workers from abroad say their lives are put on hold while they wait to learn whether they will get a green card to stay in the country permanently.
They say that can take five years or longer, leaving them and their families in limbo. They want the government to increase the number of green cards issued each year.
While they are here, though, Temple University law professor and former INS assistant commissioner Jan Ting (right) says, it may be good for business but not so good for American workers:
"The computer industry says, 'Gosh, we can’t get enough college graduates who want to work with computers.' On the other hand you’ve got a lot of American workers who are skilled in computers who say they have to compete with these immigrant workers, and it’s driving down their wages.”
And he says there may be other ways to keep the higher skilled workers here longer:
"If there’s a concern that we are really depriving ourselves of people that we educated in areas of science and technology, let’s just extend the period of practical training so they can work for American employers for a while. And then if the American employers want to sponsor them for permanent green card visas to the United States, then the employer can do that.”
Skilled workers now seem to be distancing themselves from the controversy surrounding what to do with the estimated 12 million low-skilled workers who are here illegally.
(File photos)
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