Elephants in the Middle of the Room: Immigration and Education Policy

In a recent email discussion with Winfield Myers, Director of Democracy Project, I mentioned that rather than searching for topics, issues seem to find me. Recently the issue of immigration reform has been pursuing me, and it dovetails with the critical issue of the failure of American schools to prepare our students to compete in an international marketplace. The issue came up as a result of my firsthand empathy with the dilemma of a talented young colleague on a temporary visitor’s visa. He would love to build his future in America, but sadly for him and our company, the door to the land of opportunity will be soon slammed in his face. Draconian immigration laws will force him to return to his native Italy after his temporary J-1 visitor’s visa expires in 5 months, since his H-1B visa application wasn’t selected from the lottery pool for specialized workers. This issue of immigration reform is one of the elephants in the middle of the room that speaks to the very heart and soul of the issues that are tearing apart the moral fiber of our country.

His name is Gianluca Mattaroccia, a Mechanical Design Engineer in training at Orics Industries Inc. in New York, a company that manufactures automated food packaging machinery. After attaining proficiency as a fully trained engineer, he will be welcomed back to Italy with open arms, and enticed by attractive salary and benefits packages from other European countries as well as China, India, Korea and Iran. Friendly nations as well as our enemies are eagerly seeking intelligent young minds pursuing highly specialized occupations in engineering, physical sciences, medical research, nuclear physics, and other fields, schooled, trained and then wantonly discarded by United States.

Gianluca likes the abundant opportunities, the culture and the spirit of meritocracy he sees in America. He yearns to make this country his home in order to enrich his horizons, raise his future family, pay his taxes and pursue the American dream. Regrettably, it is only a dream, due to our nation’s twisted immigration and homeland security policies. Every year, the door is closed to him as well as hundreds of thousands of other talented immigrants from friendly countries, in favor of millions of unskilled, ungrateful, and potentially dangerous foreigners who steal into our country illegally and sponge off the taxpayers filling our schools, prisons, hospital emergency rooms, and underground economy, and who potentially pose a terrorist threat. But the U.S.-trained cream of the global marketplace who are summarily kicked out, may inevitably find their way to enemy nations and rogue states, that are waiting eagerly to pick their brains for our latest technical secrets.

The president of the company, Ori Cohen has had a hard time finding proficient engineers able to meet the demands and deadlines of the highly competitive food packaging industry. He has experienced a high turnover rate of specialized electrical and mechanical engineers educated in America, and regrettably had to settle for mediocre talent in the past. But Gianluca, who earned his Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Cassino in Italy made an immediate impression on Ori as a diligent, creative engineer with a can-do spirit and expertise in advanced mechanical technologies and CAD solid modeling. Although fluent in spoken English, he was also taking evening classes to improve his language skills. A short interval after he was hired, he proved his worth as a great asset to the company and Ori decided to sponsor Gianluca on the H-1B visa work authorization. But after investing over $8000 in lawyers services and expedite fees and up to a year’s worth of training, now Gianluca will inevitably have to leave Orics Industries and the United States for good taking his wealth of knowledge and intellectual capital with him. Out of potentially hundreds of thousands of visa applications for H-1B non-resident status that need to be postmarked within a 24 hour window, only 65,000 are accepted in a random drawing. Those that complete this laborious process and are issued an H-1B non-resident visa can stay in America for up to six years, during which time they may apply for permanent residence.

Rather than pursuing this arduous path, in many cases workers may choose a sham marriage, falsifying identification and papers, or seek other immigration law loopholes or illegal means to stay in America and become part of the mushrooming underground economy working off the books. Many employers have jumped on this illicit bandwagon as well, and others have opted to pack up their entire operations and move them off shore altogether, due to the obstacles to filling specialized positions imposed by our current immigration policy as well as our schools that fail to produce graduates with marketable skills.

Offshoring benefits from the competitive advantage of a lower standard of living and cheaper labor, but also the superior intellectual capital that is increasingly being found offshore, especially in China. The Chinese government has been implementing a massive investment in higher education, recently building 50 new universities in one province. While American schools have succumbed to progressive pedagogies that focus more on social justice education and feel good outcomes than on competency, there is certifiable proof that Chinese schools have left us far behind, according to Andrew Wolf in the New York Sun. As we keep dumbing down proficiency tests year after year to make the results appear better and Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein look like heroes, our children and businesses suffer. Thus our own students graduate with less proficiency compared to foreign students who possess more competence with 21st century skills. The answer isn’t to kick out the smarter, more proficient foreign workers and students, so we can go on fooling ourselves that our schools aren’t failing. This way we will cease to be a meritocracy and end up as a socialist state where everyone is equally incompetent having been reduced to the lowest common denominator. We have to do whatever we can to avoid this road to disaster.

Ori and I are seeking to bring these issues to the attention of our state and congressional representatives, as well as the New York and national media. An example of one of the obvious flaws in the current immigration policy is the lottery system for H-1B visa status which is based upon random selection, rewarding luck rather than merit, talent and skills. If laws and policies are unreasonable for workers and employers, harmful to the economy and national security, and schools are failing to educate our future generations, they must be reformed. We intend to make every effort to do so. Gianluca is willing to become the poster child for immigration reform and education reform in order to fulfill his opportunity to pursue the American dream. More to come.