Bring your skills but not your family

I have been posting this week on Bill Gates’ call for more H-1B visas, and now Michele Wucker, the author of Lockout: Why America Keeps Getting Immigration Wrong When Our Prosperity Depends on Getting It Right, adds her comments on immigration in a column in today’s Times.

She states, “Of the permanent-resident visas (green cards) awarded in 2005, 58 percent went to foreign-born relatives of United States citizens; only 22 percent were connected to employment…it makes no sense that roughly as many green cards are available to adult siblings and adult children of citizens—with no regard for their job abilities—as for skilled workers.”

She does suggest that immigration laws should be structured to keep nuclear families together. But the “bring your talent but forget your family” thrust of her article leaves me cold. Of the delays in getting work visas, she writes, “I’ve interviewed dozens of talented people who gave up waiting and took their skills elsewhere.” If talented people learn their families aren’t welcome, they’re likely to go elsewhere as well.