Green Cards: A Better Way to Attract Skilled Foreign Workers?

Bruce Morrison has seen immigration legislation backfire before. In 1990, when he was a Democratic congressman from Connecticut chairing the House immigration subcommittee, unions complained that U.S. employers were using H-1 visas to exploit skilled foreign workers, paying them low wages that undercut American job seekers. So Congress created a new visa, the H-1B, with tighter rules. Workers had to have a bachelor’s degree, and employers had to meet wage standards. At the same time, lawmakers roughly doubled the number of green cards available for these desirable immigrants in hopes companies would sponsor them for permanent residency and citizenship.

The transition from guest worker to citizen didn’t go as planned. Paperwork and bureaucratic hurdles made the green cards hard to get; it sometimes took years for the government to approve applications. Thousands of green cards went unissued despite a backlog of people seeking them. Many employers decided the hassle wasn’t worth it. “We were fools” to believe that companies would move their workers from H-1Bs to green cards, says Morrison, now a lobbyist for a professional association representing engineers and programmers. “That’s not how it worked out.”