Immigration Limits Spark Debate High-Tech Industry Says Restrictions Could Prevent Hiring Best People
Immigrants are an asset for Washington, the nation’s most trade-dependent state, witnesses have told the federal Commission on Immigration Reform.
And making it harder for legal immigrants to enter the United States would hurt high-tech companies that search the world for the brightest minds, a Microsoft executive said.
“Somehow, the momentum dealing with illegal immigration has been extended to legal immigration,” said Ira Rubinstein, Microsoft’s senior corporate attorney for immigration, before his commission appearance Friday.
He and other industry representatives testified as the panel led by former Texas Congresswoman Barbara Jordan wrapped up two days of hearings in Seattle.
In June, the commission recommended that legal immigration eventually be capped at 550,000 people a year. The annual average was 830,000 in the last three years for which figures are available.
In September, the panel recommended that companies pay as much as $10,000 in fees to bring skilled immigrants to the United States.
“There’s too little regard for the consequences of those policies on legitimate employers, particularly in high-tech industries, who rely on these employees to remain competitive,” Rubinstein said.
As much as 5 percent of Microsoft’s 12,000 U.S. workers are foreign nationals on temporary visas, Rubinstein said.
Such workers make up only about 1 percent of computer chip maker Intel Corp.’s 35,000-member work force, said Tom Waldrup, a spokesman for the company that recently announced plans to build a big new plant near Tacoma.
Officials from the state Department of Social and Health Services told the commission Thursday that immigrants don’t strain the system.
“People who immigrate here tend to be under-users of services, not over-users of services,” said Wolfgang Opitz, DSHS’s chief budget officer.
About 15 percent of those in state prisons are illegal aliens, said Richard Smith, district director for the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Sounding another note, Seattle Mayor Norm Rice told the commission Thursday that legal immigration reunites families and brings refugees to the United States.
“The true measure of a nation’s greatness,” Rice said, is no longer military might but “our humanity.”
One commission proposal would eliminate visa preferences for siblings and adult children of U.S. citizens. Seattle City Councilwoman Martha Choe suggested that could force immigrants to rely on government aid when they might have turned to family members.