Day of Empire_ How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance--And Why They Fall - Amy Chua [177]
Third, and most important, like every world-dominant power before it, the United States is a hyperpower today because it has surpassed all its rivals in pulling in and motivating the world's most valuable human capital. Turning its back on immigration would destroy the very underpinnings of its prosperity and preeminence at a time when, in the words of Google vice president Laszlo Bock, “we are in a fierce worldwide competion for top talent unlike ever before.” The destructive effects of anti-immigration policies might be felt far sooner than Americans realize. Microsoft founder Bill Gates recently testified before a U.S. Senate committee that the United States’ post-9/11 immigration measures are “driving away the world's best and brightest precisely when we need them most.”
Bock similarly testified before a House subcommittee that tight visa caps are seriously damaging “the ability of U.S. companies to innovate and create the next generation of must-have products and services…Each and every day we find ourselves unable to pursue highly qualified candidates because there are not enough H-1B visas.” Bock added, “Simply put, if U.S. employers are unable to hire those who are graduating from our universities, foreign competitors will. The U.S. scientific, engineering, and tech communities cannot hope to maintain their present position of international leadership if they are unable to hire and retain highly educated foreign talent.”23
What should America's immigration policy look like in the twenty-first century? Borrowing a page from its own early history and from all the pre-modern hyperpowers, the United States today should pursue a much more aggressive, incentive-based strategy for identifying and attracting immigrants with high-value skills, training, and know-how. At the same time, America should not follow the lead of Germany and other European states in making the recruitment of high-tech workers the sole platform of its immigration policy. Rather, the United States should leave an avenue available to immigrants of all classes and education levels, holding open a significant number of immigration slots in a first-come-first-served or lottery-like system.
Countless immigrants in the past—including some of the most successful, such as Andrew Carnegie and Eugene Kleiner—have demonstrated the potential contributions of those who came to this country “in rags,” possessing only the drive and ingenuity that allowed them to reach these shores in the first place. Many today believe that they can tell which immigrant groups are the most desirable, the most likely to contribute to American prosperity, the most intelligent and hardworking. But it should be remembered that some of the most successful minorities in the United States today—for example, Chinese and Jewish Americans—were described as unintelligent and unassimilable a hundred years ago.
Multinationals and Outsourcing. When U.S. companies “go international,” establishing headquarters, plants, telemarketing operations, or research and development facilities abroad, Americans are often filled with unease. The patriotism of these “multinationals” is sometimes questioned, and they are accused of “outsourcing” American jobs in their callous pursuit of profit.
Undoubtedly, U.S. corporations globalize for reasons of profit, not patriotism. Ironically, however, the emergence of the multinational U.S. corporation and even the growth of outsourcing may do more good for America than is commonly recognized.
The usual defense of “outsourcing” is purely economic. Taking advantage of cheaper foreign labor, it is said, will allow our corporations to save American