The Senate’s immigration reform will make it even more difficult for Americans to find jobs

The Senate’s immigration reforms will make it even more difficult for Americans to find jobs. "Bloomberg Business Weekly" stated that if you are a newly graduated college student, a doctoral student, or have been working in the past few years...

A key provision in this 844-page bill is on pages 299 to 300. The content is: Under this bill, the number of visas allocated to highly skilled foreigners will be significantly increased. Demetrios G. Papademetriou, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a bipartisan think tank, said that if the bill is passed, the number of visas for high-skilled foreigners will be 4 to 5 times the current number.

The current system for allocating these visas is the very inefficient H1-B lottery system, which follows the annual first-come-first-served rule and allocates 65,000 high-skilled employee visas in April each year, and companies in Silicon Valley have to compete. (Another 20,000 visas are allocated to college graduates.) These visas are temporary but still attractive because they allow the visa holder to apply for a green card.

Companies have long argued that H1-B visa quotas prevent them from hiring enough of the talent they need, as evidenced in 2013 when applications for the visa quota were filled within five days. Neil Ruiz, an immigration expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said that 60% of the applicants, or 39,000 people, were not granted visas. But the bill's sponsors also argued that the reforms would benefit the United States by attracting talented college graduates to stay and work in the United States.

The visa limit has now been increased to 110,000, which means that the current demand can almost be met. But the actual number of visas for highly skilled foreigners will be much higher than 110,000, and there will be no restrictions on scientists and engineers. The Senate bill also increases the number of other types of high-level immigrant visas, namely "unskilled aliens". If an immigrant has a doctorate in medicine, mathematics, science or engineering, or can prove to the government that he has extraordinary ability (such as a successful dancer or magazine editor), he can bypass the entire H1-B system. The employer can immediately sponsor him to obtain a green card.

Under this bill, even undergraduate students can directly obtain a green card upon graduation without applying for an H1-B visa. Reitz expects that the 343,000 foreign students currently studying in the United States will be eligible to become citizens through this fast track. This is a large number, and it even includes people who are not currently planning to try to apply for H1-B. Many foreign students studying in the United States now plan to return to their home countries after graduation because visa restrictions make it difficult for them to find jobs. For example, a British political science student graduating from an American liberal arts university hoping to work at a non-profit organization in New York City is unlikely to apply for an H1-B visa because she has little chance of success. Other types of visas are more difficult to obtain.

If this bill is passed, more vacancies will be opened. But there will also be stricter standards for immigrants to prove to the government that they qualify. But even so, the number of existing visas is still expected to increase significantly, which will have an impact on the entire job market.