EB-1

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't understand the rationale for doing away with the EB-1 "alien of extraordinary ability" visa, as the immigration compromise seems to. Are we worried that the immigration of foreign rock stars, CEOs, and nobel prize winners is going to unduly depress the wages of our home grown superstars?

Leading critics of the bill say it is fraught with problems for top universities, Fortune 500 companies, sports recruiters and cultural institutions seeking to lure global leaders in their fields to work in the United States. Though many such candidates would rise to the top of the point system based on their academic backgrounds and language skills, experts say permanent residency would by no means be assured. They note that even Nobel Prize winners occasionally have weak English skills, while highly skilled athletes and musicians often bypass traditional schooling and do not possess high school diplomas or university degrees.

Yao Ming didn't go to college and didn't speak English when he first came to the states, but what's the harm of giving him a visa? As I say, maybe I'm missing something. I first heard of these visas three weeks ago and maybe there's some problem.

Comments

That is odd. I've worked with immigration advocates quite a lot and never heard any substantive complaint about such visas. (Sometimes people complain about the so-called "millionare visa", one given to someone who invests 1,000,000 dollars in a US venture that will employ 10 US workers [or a lower amount that will employ more- details a bit rough here perhaps] on the grounds that it's not fair to allow people to 'buy' visas. I wouldn't want to strictly auction visas, as is sometimes suggested by some economists, but this visa, like the extraordinary talent visa seem like nearly pure wins to me. [There is sometimes some worry about unsavory types getting the millionare visa but that can be dealt with by better screening.])

Posted by Matt (not the famous one) | May 26, 2007 8:07 AM

EB-1 "alien of extraordinary ability" visa

I didn't know there was a Superman visa.

Posted by RSA | May 26, 2007 8:12 AM

A lot of this only makes sense as a form of displacement behavior on the part of lawmakers. They know in general terms what the majority would like to see in the way of immigration policy: A crackdown on illegal immigration, and the businesses that utilize them, to raise wages for the average joe, and a lot more foreign skilled workers coming in reducing the cost of things like medical care.

They also know there's no way in hell they're going to deliver that; Unskilled immigrants compete with the voters for jobs, but skilled immigrants compete with the politician's friends and family for jobs. And business pays a lot under and above the table for those easilly exploited illegal workers.

So, displacement: They deliver restrictions on immigration that the public doesn't want, so that they can at least claim they're doing SOMETHING. And if that something happens to benefit people who have a lot of potential campaign donations burning holes in their pockets, all the better.

The legislature's failure to implement a policy the public would actually like is a classic example of class interest trumping democracy.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | May 26, 2007 8:25 AM

This is not about visas, this is about the "green card", or permanent resident alien card. It usually takes up to 6 years to get it, but with the EB 1 status takes much less time.

Posted by AGG | May 26, 2007 9:19 AM

Re "Sometimes people complain about the so-called "millionare visa", one given to someone who invests 1,000,000 dollars in a US venture that will employ 10 US workers [or a lower amount that will employ more- details a bit rough here perhaps] on the grounds that it's not fair to allow people to 'buy' visas "
---------

You mean giving US citizenship to someone like Rupert Murdoch, owner of FOX News? Gee, why would anyone have a problem with that?

News to the hoi polloi: Australia only has 20 million people and can probably only feed 8 million in a sustainable way. Meanwhile , she has 3 BILLION Asians just a hop, skip and jump over a short island chain to the north.

Which may give you some idea why FOX News is so hellbent on pushing for the US to maintain its global military deployments.

I've never understood why FOX News waves the US flag so much -- by rights, a little stuffed kangeroos waving AUSTRALIAN flags should be setting on Bill O'Reilly's desk. In the interest of transparency.

Plus , of course, there's Israeli Billionaire Haim Saban. Our Democratic leaders couldn't have taken $15 MILLION from Haim without first giving him dual US citizenship.

Plus, without US citizenship Haim probably could not have bought a Brookings think tank group and had Kenneth Pollack tell us that we need to destroy Israel's enemy Hussein because Hussein is close to making a nuclear bomb.

Posted by Don Williams | May 26, 2007 9:58 AM

Brett Bellmore:

Good post. If Matt's comments section didn't have an open borders policy, I'd say you deserve an EB-1 for that one.

For those of you who don't like the "millionaires visa": Let's see... giving people an incentive to invest in this country and create 10+ jobs... sounds like an excellent policy to me.

Regarding Rupert Murdoch and Fox: the dreaded Kaus suspects Murdoch's hand in the relative paucity of attention to the immigration bill on Fox News, displaced by time spent on the crucial Rosie O'Donnell v. Elizabeth Hasselbeck spat. I've noticed this too, even on the serious FNC show, Special Report w/ Brit Hume. The only panelist this week remotely critical of "piece of shit" bill, to borrow Sen. Boehner's phrase, was another columnist MY hates, Dr. Krauthammer. The African American liberal columnist from NPR, Juan Williams, seemed oblivious to the impact unskilled immigration has had on unskilled African American men.

Posted by Fred | May 26, 2007 10:32 AM

AGG- a 'green card' is what you get when you have a certain sort of visa- a visa that allows you to get admission for permanent residence. This is done with many types of visas, the EB-1 being just one.

Don- _all_ policies will have some results we don't like. You will find no policy that doesn't have some results that are not optimal. To oppose a policy you need to do more than show that some bad results have come from it- you need to show that the bad has and can be expected to outweigh the good or that fundamental rights will be violated. You've not even come close to doing either here. So please calm down a bit and see if you can come up with some general argument. I've not seen a good one for that visa but there might well be one.

Posted by Matt (not the famous one) | May 26, 2007 10:33 AM

There's no way this provision will survive, if a bill somewhow manages to reach the president's desk.

Posted by Jasper | May 26, 2007 11:19 AM

As I understand, there's a significant problem already bringing non-famous non-rich musicians into the country. To me this is a major issue, because I hate most American music.

Aren't Moon and Murdoch both felons? We seem to be highly unselective of rich crooks.

Posted by John Emerson | May 26, 2007 11:23 AM

So, John, I take it you're in favor of taking bread out of the mouths of decent, hard-working american musicians by bringing in cheap foreign musicians who will work for less? WHere's your support for the laboring musician class! ;)

Posted by matt (not the famous one) | May 26, 2007 12:01 PM

"News to the hoi polloi: Australia only has 20 million people and can probably only feed 8 million in a sustainable way. "

Wow, I didn't know so many Australians were starving. Or are you suggesting that it's not "sustainable" to trade with other nations for food?

(I know, I know, I should stop taking the bait.)

Posted by too many steves | May 26, 2007 1:56 PM

Use of the EB-1 visa has gone far beyond people of "extraordinary ability." Last year more than 36,000 people received them, quite obviously the vast majority of them could not have been truly extraordinary.

Posted by Peter | May 26, 2007 3:11 PM

Wait, I retract my last comment. "Don Williams" must obviously be an elaborate hoax. No one's really xenophobic toward *Australians*, are they?

Posted by too many steves | May 26, 2007 3:23 PM

I have some considerable experience with green cards. I've been waiting for mine for over 10 years now. And there is no end in sight. There are many people like me in this country.

The problem with the current green card system is not how many are being allocated, or what types (eb-1, eb-2, eb-3 whatever). The problem is the absolute arbitrariness of the system. This is a problem across all visa grants: h1, b1, l1, f1, green cards, doesn't matter which one you look at. The one thing that will stand out is the capriciousness of the system. It's hard to imagine that any particular policy objective is being met, and the only answer seems to be that we have bureaucracies doing what they do best. In this case, we're dealing with a bureaucracy that is answerable to no one. What's an immigrant with a denied visa going to do? Refuse to reelect her congressperson?

Specifically on the eb-1 question, as Peter points out above a lot of them are issued every year. At this point a PhD with a few papers under his belt (pretty much all of them) can get an eb-1 visa.

But what about the capriciousness? Here goes: it used to be common knowledge among immigration lawyers that it was easier to get a national interest waiver visa if you applied in vermont or texas. California was supposed to be very hard. So employers would tell the INS that the employee would be working in their "branch office" in the south or the north-east so they could be eligible to be processed by those "easy offices."

Here's another: One of my friends is the founder of a technology company that employs over 50 people in silicon valley. He's still in the queue for a visa, and no end in sight. Many of his own employees have gone on and gotten green cards. His own seems mired in the bureaucracy somewhere. Of course, there's nothing he can do but wait.

Or another: Another of my friends entered the (eb-2) queue in 2000. People who entered the queue after him have gone on and gotten visas, some of them have even made it to citizenship. His own situation remains tenuous. He can't change jobs until the green card comes through. He has gotten married and had a kid since. But he has no idea what the future holds.

What's my point? All of these discussions, should we have more EB-1's, should we have fewer, should we admit more folks with advanced degrees. These are pointless discussions. They are good to have as policy discussions. But they have no relevance to the actual people in the queue. What you really need is an open and transparent system. Once you do that, you can actually have useful and interesting debates about the system and how to improve it to meet policy objectives. Today we have a closed, opaque system that is apparently answerable to no one. This has led to a system where lawyers and immigrants constantly try to game the system, and we will continue to end up with outcomes that we did not predict or did not want.

Posted by wi | May 26, 2007 4:07 PM

I don't understand the rationale for doing away with the EB-1 "alien of extraordinary ability" visa, as the immigration compromise seems to.

Well, that's fucking stupid. The obvious thing to do w/r/t the H1-B mess was to reduce and transfer the eligibility of genuine high-skill tech applicants to EB-1. No annual quota to be grabbed like ticket scalpers on the first day of availability; just proper certification, a higher bar (perhaps indexed against prospective salary) and a recognition that people with unique skillsets and experience are actually sought by American firms.

Are we worried that the immigration of foreign rock stars, CEOs, and nobel prize winners is going to unduly depress the wages of our home grown superstars?

Well, there's presumably still the O1 visa, which is the 'Mick Jagger and David Beckham' category.

I'd agree wholeheartedly with Brett on this one: it's sheer random displacement under the auspices of 'doing something'. Legislators are generally not too smart about the actual workings of the immigration system: they farm out constituency enquiries. Why might that be? Well, immigrants don't vote.

Ultimately, though, wi makes the most important point: the US immigration system is Kafkaesque. I honestly don't know how people negotiated it without lawyers in the days before alt.visa.us newsgroup and visa websites. Heck, Christopher Hitchens only just took the oath of citizenship last month, and he sent off his N-400 in 2003.

It's not just a bureaucracy that's answerable to no-one; it's a bureaucracy that most native-born Americans never encounter in their whole lives. Splitting the bureaucracy from enforcement has relegated it even further. You think the IRS fucks you over? You're dealing with a model of efficiency by comparison.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | May 26, 2007 4:58 PM

I wonder if the visa bureaucracy is staffed with 20-something ghetto black women with 75 IQs like the TSA is. I can imagine how some foreign Ph.D. who's actually fluent in English transfixed by LaTonya's fake nails and hair extensions as he desperately tries to decipher the ebonics she's spouting at him.

Posted by Harvey | May 26, 2007 5:17 PM

Sailer's friends seem to be following him here.

Posted by John Emerson | May 26, 2007 5:37 PM

Back in the early 1990s, I had a few dealings with the INS bureaucracy on behalf of a couple of employees in my small software company. Actually, things went very smoothly, although I had to fill out some strange forms and write some peculiar job descriptions.

On the other hand, I had retained a highly experienced immigration lawyer, who'd been recommended to me by various other people. Interestingly enough, he---like most other successful immigration lawyers---had previously worked at the INS and still had "friends" there.

I've always suspected that the vaguries of the INS processing system were determined by the sort of petty corruption normally found in Third World countries.

Posted by RKU | May 26, 2007 5:59 PM

I've always suspected that the vaguries of the INS processing system were determined by the sort of petty corruption normally found in Third World countries.

It's USCIS now, and I don't really think so. There's so many layers of encrustation that, combined with inadequate funding and general low morale, create a dysfunctional bureaucracy. Elements of the immigration system appear to be there simply because no-one can be bothered removing them, after all, it's only foreigners who have to deal with them. (The I visa, for instance, is a throwback to the days of the long-term foreign correspondent who arrived in the US by ship, not the freelancer who flies to New York for an interview, does a bit of shopping, and flies back.)

Badly-drafted laws have to be implemented. Implementation can get messy. It's not a joke that you can get a different interpretation of a particular regulation or set of requirements from every person you ask. Having friends in the system just means you know what particular interpretation is in effect at a particular office at a particular time.

(It also appears that a fair proportion of USCIS staff at the frontline level are naturalized citizens: this is not a surprise, since they're likely to be self-taught experts in navigating the maze.)

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | May 27, 2007 2:34 AM

Re "Heck, Christopher Hitchens only just took the oath of citizenship last month, and he sent off his N-400 in 2003"
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If you're trying to argue that we should make the process faster and more efficient, you have chosen a very unfortunate example.

Posted by Don Williams | May 27, 2007 9:15 AM

1) Re Steve's "I didn't know so many Australians were starving. Or are you suggesting that it's not "sustainable" to trade with other nations for food? "
------
Sigh. That's the problem with so many of my fellow urban liberals -- they're armchair social engineers who want to micromanage a world of which they hilariously know little to nothing.

Steve might want to check Chapter 13 of Jared Diamond's "Collapse" for a description of Australia's severe environmental problems and constraints. Of how present day Australia is "mining" irreplacable resources rather than
farming sustainable ones.

See,.e.g, http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070430/wl_asia_afp/unclimatewarmingaustralia_070430021020 .

An excerpt:
"Drought-stricken Australia faces the world's most extreme climate change challenge as millions of city dwellers try to cope with water shortages, according to the country's most recognised scientist.

The government has already made the unprecedented declaration that farmers will receive no irrigation water from July in Australia's most fertile region if the country's worst drought in a century continues.

Water restrictions have been imposed across the vast island continent and scientist Tim Flannery, named the 2007 Australian of the year for his pioneering environmental work, says the problem will only get worse.

Flannery said the drought meant two of Australia's largest cities, Brisbane and Adelaide -- home to a combined total of almost three million people -- would run out of water by the year's end unless the so-called "Big Dry" ended.

"We could see a catastrophic situation developing here by the end of the year. It's become a huge issue," Flannery told AFP."
---------

Steve might also consider that Australians would have been speaking Japanese and eating sushi by 1946 if not for the US Navy.
Australia can never support a population large enough to stave off Asia if the US withdrew to CONUS.

Posted by Don Williams | May 27, 2007 9:46 AM

If you're trying to argue that we should make the process faster and more efficient, you have chosen a very unfortunate example.

As a person, perhaps. As an example of what should have been a simple case? Not unfortunate at all. He moved to the US in the early 1980s, and had held permanent residency for, I'd presume, fifteen years or so, but certainly more than a decade. US citizen wife, kids born in the US, etc. The only wrinkle would have been totting up his visits abroad for the physical presence requirement. And though one might wish for Hitch to fail under the 'good moral character' requirement, that's a bit of a stretch.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | May 27, 2007 11:35 AM

You think fruit-pickers are writing this law? The elite of this country would hate to have more competition for their perches.

Posted by Skyler | May 27, 2007 7:08 PM

OK, Don, so Australians *are* starving? Holy shit!

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