Immigration Reform: Immigrants Earning Advanced Degrees

[Valin]

The Foundry:

Rich Tucker

February 21, 2013

 

“We love it [in the United States],” Anurag Bajpayee told The Washington Post. He’s a 27-year-old from India who’s doing post-doctoral mechanical engineering work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). With his business partner and fellow student Prakash Narayan Govindan, he has developed a machine that could help purify water used in hydraulic fracking.

 

Both want to remain in the U.S. and run a company to make and market their invention after their student visas expire this summer. “But there are so many hoops you have to jump through,” Bajpayee says. “And you risk getting deported while you are creating jobs.”

 

Immigration seems like a large problem. There are more than 10 million illegals in the United States right now. Some came legally and stayed when their visas expired. Others come and go, working seasonally in the U.S. illegally and leaving after a few months. Reducing the number, we’re told, requires a “comprehensive” solution.

 

But one reason immigration seems like an unsolvable problem is because it would be difficult, maybe impossible, to solve the entire problem at once. If policymakers would break immigration down and solve one smaller problem at a time, the picture could look much brighter.

 

(Snip)