There’s a reason many companies zealously try to safeguard and retain talent: It is time-consuming and complicated to train people well, and people are any company’s most valuable asset.
That simple lesson unfortunately doesn’t seem to have been learned by our leaders in Washington, who have stood by for decades as a clunky and ineffective immigration system has hampered foreign graduates’ ability to remain in the country after receiving years of often highly technical education here.
A recent analysis by the Niskanen Center, using Canadian immigration data, found that between 2017 and 2021, approximately 45,000 postsecondary graduates of U.S. schools, the vast majority of them international, were invited to obtain permanent residency up north. Thousands more returned to their countries of origin or are recruited to positions in other parts of the world. Many of these graduates would like nothing more than to remain here and build out personal and professional lives, and we reward that commitment by turning them away.
It’s a situation the U.S. can no longer afford. Congress must streamline and modernize the outdated visa system. It’s already a day late and a Canadian dollar short, but the cost of inaction is only going to compound.
