Obama's New Initiatives in Immigration Policy : Too Late and Too Little

Big Apple has been a dream for talented and skilled people world over, a land of opportunity. Millions of people migrated to US to do some thing closer to their heart in a free and fair environment. Name, fame and money for individual and evolution of a nation leader in technology, science, art rather every sphere of life. 

U.S.'s cutting edge in in field of technology depended upon regular flow of foreign born engineers to create them. So the technology industry was pushing very hard for changes in the country's Immigration Policy for more than a decade to allow more skilled workers into the country. 

Many foreign technocrats in USA were waiting for Green Cards from a longer period of time, hanging in uncertainty, despite the fact that they contributed very hard to keep US far ahead of its competitors.  They will definitely be benefitted by Obama's Executive Order. But the fact remains it falls well short of what both immigrants and industry leaders were asking for. The most vexing issues they face, like speeding up the process  for obtaining permanent residency and getting more Visas for highly skilled technology work would require an act of congress. 

Many immigrants working in technology are heartened by Obama's initiative and feel that they could make life and work in the country easier.

One of the Obama's initiatives, for example, would give entrepreneurs starting a company a special founder's Visa, provided that they raise outside funding. This move will give USA economy more moolah as well as employment to many. Right now, the law is so complicated that an entrepreneur engineer, who is from India or China, wishes to start his company has to find  an American Co-founder, who  will technically hire him to get Visa from his previous employer then only he will be able to create a business entity. So many Indians or Chinese who want to start a business  prefers to divert some potential jobs from an American City to Canadian City like Vancouver where immigration laws make it much easier to bring foreign engineers.

Many talented people from India or China feels that immigration was a gnarly problem but one thing the USA politicians fighting in Washington DC, do not understand is that for every foreign engineer hire, the company also hires local engineers and other staff. 

One would extend the amount of time and energy that someone who has earned an USA science or tech degree could work at a company after graduation. Currently, the limit for such optional practical 

training is 29 months. Obama has directed immigration officials to begin a formal process to set more liberal rule for the programme. A longer training period will help companies hire more workers than current annual cap of 85,000 new H-1B Visas allows.

Many Indians who are really working hard to add their entrepreneurship skill to boost US economy feels that provisions that would allow spouses of high tech Visa Holders to work would also help. Start ups loose promising overseas job applicants just because they had their wives who did not want to give up the ability to work so that their husbands could take jobs in US. 

Collectively, Obama's Visa proposals for highly skilled workers would add about 1,47,000 people to the workforce by 2024, according to an analysis by White House's Council of Economic Advisers. In fact that is too little, too late for many in the technology industry.

Employers, particularly those in tech business feet disappointed that Obama never followed through his original campaign promise to pass comprehensive immigration legislation in his first year in office.

The ultimate test of these initiatives will be Obama's ability to get the proposals passed in Congress.