1- Why are foreign workers a vital source of competitive advantage for U.S. firms in certain industries? What are the limitations of U.S. workers in some of these fields?
Foreign workers have proved to be a vital source of labor for a large number of USA firms. This is because they possess high skills, which are not available among local American citizens. In some technical industries such as nursing and computer programming, there is a shortage of skilled personnel. Consequently, firms have opted to seek qualified employees from all over the world. For example, Microsoft Company has employed a very large number of foreign workers. In fact, it is the leading company with the highest number of foreign employees. USA workers are limited in the level of skills required by some fields. For example, the co-founder of Google Company came from Russia. He was granted H-1B visa, which means he acquired legal residence on the basis of his high level skills. This limitation of skills among USA workers has brought controversy. USA citizen workers are being laid off yet there is an increasing level of hiring foreign workers. Many politicians are against this trend and they are demanding for an action to curb this situation. One of the suggestions is to reduce H-1B visas in order to protect jobs for American citizens. 2- If it is true that the recent changes in the number of H-1B visas reflect an “antiemployer” attitude, what groups might consider these new policies as “pro someone else?” The most probable group of people likely to consider these new policies as “pro-someone else” is employers. They will view these policies as a form of forcing them to hire alternative people for high skilled positions. This means that they will have to search for employees among the USA citizens. Since the labor available lacks high skilled employees, they will have to employ workers with lower or almost the skills required. This is likely to compromise the performance of such companies. Another group viewing these policies as “pro-someone else” is the foreign workers. They will consider not having a chance of fully exploiting their rare and high skills. 3- How can businesses and government work together to help ensure that there are enough workers, both foreign and domestic, available for high-level openings in U.S. firms in the short term, as well as the long term, and how might short-term and long-term approaches differ? Clearly, there is an imbalance between employing foreign and local workers. There should be a solution for this problem since USA firms require both categories of workers. It is possible for the government and businesses to work together and resolve this situation. One way is supporting American workers in advancing their skills. The government can offer sponsorship together with the business in enabling workers advance their skills.
This is a practical way of ensuring that American workers do not remain with low level skills throughout their career lives. After training they will come back to the firms and fill the high skill positions. By doing this, both foreign and local workers will have an equal chance of securing opportunities in high skills positions. The visa agency will not have to issue too many H-1B visas since employers will not have to seek foreign workers often.
This solution is long term and there needs to be a short term solution. The only practical short term solution is allowing employers to hire foreigners until the US population gets enough high skilled employees. The short term and long term approaches differ on the time they will show results. In the long term solution, employers will have to wait until employees have trained and acquired the expected high skills. In the short term approach, firms will get high skilled workers immediately the government allows more issuance of H1-B visas. Although this idea is against the ideologies of politicians, it will be only for a while. After a reasonable number of employees have attained high skills, the visa agency can limit the rate of issuing H1-B visas.