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Beverly Hills, California, United States
Eli Kantor is a labor, employment and immigration law attorney. He has been practicing labor, employment and immigration law for more than 36 years. He has been featured in articles about labor, employment and immigration law in the L.A. Times, Business Week.com and Daily Variety. He is a regular columnist for the Daily Journal. Telephone (310)274-8216; eli@elikantorlaw.com. For more information, visit beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com and and beverlyhillsemploymentlaw.com

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Monday, January 24, 2011

H-1B Visas: A Modest Proposal for Immigration Reform

The U.S. can't afford to continue its policy of screening out the best and most talented immigrants.

MSNBC: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses " A statement of current American sentiment? Not quite! While there has yet to be a move to strike this universally recognized phrase from the Statue of Liberty, the ideals behind these noble words would find little support today among the vast majority of Americans. Efforts by both Republicans and Democrats over the past decade to address the nation's broken immigration policy have stalled and immigration remains at the epicenter of the partisan divide. A divisive topic in any economic environment, immigration reform appears to be almost impossible to discuss in a job market with unemployment hovering near 10 percent. Unfortunately, the visceral reactions preempt fulsome consideration of both the problems and the potential solutions. These reactions also obscure the long-term economic consequences of not opening our borders to the world's best and brightest. Current U.S. immigration policy limits the number of highly skilled workers who are permitted to enter the country each year. Rather than encouraging these individuals to come to the U.S., or even allowing the number of visas to float to reflect the demand for their services from U.S.-based employers, current U.S. policy caps the number of H-1B visas at 85,000 annually. That number has not been raised in years, and the demand for highly skilled immigrants far outstrips their supply.

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