Submitted by CARPE DIEM

America’s political leaders are so fixated on illegal immigration they’ve barely noticed that the U.S. is losing the race for the best high-tech minds. This country won’t keep its edge in the global economy until legislators stop behaving like border sentries and start acting like international recruiters – a switch virtually every industrialized country is making.

A good way to begin is for Congress to pass pending legislation to scrap the cap on skilled worker (H1-B) visas. This cap is currently so low (65,000) that in April last year it got used up within a day of these visas becoming available, leaving thousands of left over engineers to be scooped up by America’s competitors. Immigration authorities started accepting 2009 applications last Tuesday – and expect a similar flood.

~Shikha Dalmia in today’s Wall Street Journal

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