I am pointing toward the USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Bureau; erstwhile INS) H-1B quota for the year 2009 that will open its doors to applicants from around the world in April 2009. Every year, USCIS allows and issues 85,000 H-1B visas, out of which only 65,000 visas go to candidates with specialty skills across the world. The rest of the 20,000 visas are available for foreign candidates with higher degrees from schools in the United States, which is generally a master’s degree or higher. Most of the 65,000 H1-B visas go to hi-tech workers across the world whose technical skills in the field of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics are in high demand in the U.S. and Europe.

And so for companies and businesses dealing in the hi-tech industry, an opportunity to recruit professionals from this pool of qualified candidates is strategically important for growth, sustainment, and development of new products and services.

Although principles of recruiting remain the same, it takes a very different approach to recruit candidates from outside the country. Below are some of the pointers that recruiters must keep in mind to successfully recruit these professionals from outside the country. These points are a result of being tested as a recruiter in the global talent pool.

Getting Ready for the Long Haul

It takes a lot of preparation, planning, and commitment to recruit in a foreign market, and so before a company decides to start recruiting candidates outside the country, begin by forecasting your needs. Once the groundwork in terms of how many people, what skills, and when people are needed is done, the HR department must involve the recruiting team in planning the process of recruitment and selection. It’s important that recruiters are involved in the planning process so that:

• The HR department and recruiters understand the immigration/H-1B laws well because they can create some serious implications for a company both financially and in terms of future global recruitment if laws and rules are not followed correctly.
• The recruiters clearly understand the goals of recruitment and the plan to be followed because they are the ones to implement it. Besides, it would also look really unprofessional if the candidate — upon becoming an employee — realizes that things are different or have changed over a period of 12 months or more. This is a genuine possibility because 12 months or more is a long time for things to change in a company, and this may include change in the recruiting team, the HR team, the management team or the policies of the company.

This is also a good time to put together brochures and revamp the website and applications. Unless you are Google or Microsoft, there is going be a lot of competition to recruit people from this pool of candidates. You will have to sell your company to these candidates using your website and brochures with information about the company, its clients, its HR policies, benefits, and employee growth plan/path. It will also not hurt to provide some demographic information about the workforce of the company, and to give the candidates an overview about diversity in the company.

Stick to the Timeline

I call the recruiting process a long haul because the complete process from identifying the candidates and getting them onboard can take as much as 12 months or more. I like to call it a journey, because you start off with no candidates and over a period of time, some these candidates become friends, some remain good acquaintances, and some get lost along the way. An approximate timeline would include starting the process early on — some time in September of every year — so that recruitment, selection, and completing of non-immigrant worker application forms could be taken care of by March of next year. That way, your company will be ready to submit these non-immigrant visa applications by April 1st when USCIS opens up the quota for that fiscal year.

Once the visa is applied, accepted, and approved, it will be mostly a recruiter’s task or someone from human resources to guide these candidates through the visa interview process and work with them on arrival dates. Your candidates can start arriving in the states around October 1 because effective dates for these non-immigrant work visas is October 1 .

By the time these new hires show up at your company’s doorstep, your recruiting team would have spent an incredible 12 months or more working with them.

Starting Early

One will be surprised to know that there is fierce competition to recruit these candidates on these specialty visas. Companies big and small go beyond the boundaries of the U.S. to recruit these candidates with highly specialized skills not commonly available in the U.S. Begin the process early before everyone does, because this can give you some lead time in selling your company. It also helps in building rapport with candidates. Starting early is even more important from a company’s perspective because the cost of applying for a non-immigrant visa has gone up substantially in the past two years. To give you an idea: just the application fee to apply for a single non-immigrant visa today is $2,320.00. Add another $700 to a $1,000 in attorney fee on top of this application fee. More information on the fee can be found at www.uscis.gov.

Starting early will give your company enough time to not only assess the candidate’s skills but also to assess whether it’s worth investing that much time and money.

Successful recruiters understand the premise that recruiting competent candidates from all over the world is a time-consuming process that requires a lot of patience and persistence. They also understand that dealing with candidates in different socio-economic settings across the world calls for a cautious and calculated approach. Getting acquainted with the culture of a country to which the target candidates belong to can come in handy during the recruitment process.

Switch on your salesman instincts and nurture a working relationship with the candidate by staying in contact via phone or email on a regular basis. Meeting the candidate on an occasion or two can be really helpful in making the candidate comfortable with the company. Clearly defining the recruitment and selection process will help the candidate make an informed decision.

Evaluation

Since so much time and money is involved in global recruitment, evaluation of the recruitment and selection process is a must. Evaluation in terms of company’s preparation for global recruitment, how many recruiters are needed to focus on this effort every year, cost involved per candidate, time spent with candidate before acceptance, types of questions that candidates ask, FAQs, etc will help in identifying deficiencies and strengths in the recruitment and selection process so that the same mistakes are not repeated again. Evaluation will also give a better idea about what regions of the world to target for these niche skills.
A strategy successful in one market may not be successful in another.

The Australian Parliament recently eased immigration laws with a goal of attracting more high-skilled labor. This was in recognition of the fact that given past and future decreasing birth rates coupled with increasing demand for skills will make skilled labor the quintessential scarce resource for the next fifty years. In this hemisphere Congress wisely spent the time passing resolutions recognizing July as National Watermelon Month and declaring soil an essential natural resource (it’s about time).

Change We Don’t Believe In

Complacency about attracting high-skilled talent can have severe negative consequences. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a growth of 40%, or over 500,000 new jobs in IT-related positions through 2016. Domestic supply is not enough to cover this need at current levels. The number of degrees granted across all IT-related categories is about 54,000 annually, and trending downward. Adding to the supply-demand gap is that the number of workers in the 55-and-older group will grow by 47% in the next eight years — approximately 5.5 times the 8.5% growth of the labor force overall, with significant numbers looking for early retirement. The direct impact of this is a reduction in GDP of several hundred billion dollars and billions in losses of taxes to the government. Indirectly, the impact from lesser innovation and output will only magnify these losses.

While our legislators seem to be gorging on spiked watermelon, other countries are treating issues relating to talent with far more seriousness. Many countries have liberalized their immigration policies for high-skilled talent. That poses a major challenge to America’s historic domination in innovation and attracting high-skill immigrants. Australia, Canada, and New Zealand are the most aggressive; they conceive of immigrants as a source of economic growth, and consider highly skilled immigrants to be especially valuable contributors. Accordingly have long-standing immigration policies to attract them.

While a disproportionate number of skilled immigrants still come to the U.S., the numbers that are staying home or are going elsewhere is increasing. Over the last five years, the U.S. attracted an average of 73,000 skilled immigrants annually, down from about 107,000. That may still seem like a lot, but Canada attracted 56,000, Australia 20,000, and even tiny New Zealand managed to get 10,000.

The U.S. has had an extremely muddled approach to immigration and has done little to tilt the balance towards attracting high-skilled talent. As a consequence, barely 22% of immigrants are high-skilled workers. Other countries typically seek to have the highly skilled comprise 50 percent or more of total permanent immigration; the most recent figure for Australia was 65 percent.

The Audacity of Dopes

A big reason for lack of progress on changing immigration policies has to do with misinformation and myths pertaining to immigrant labor. Some stems from ignorance and some is nothing more than naked bigotry perpetuated by anti-immigrant groups. Some self-styled “experts” will indulge in any amount of demagoguery to further their agenda. For example, among the more ludicrous claims is that no education is required for any IT job; any programming language can be mastered in 30 days; and scientists and engineers possess no special skills.

These people often manage to find outlets for their rants, on certain news shows and even in hearings before Congress. The evidence they present tends to follow a fairly predictable pattern. It involves dubious statistics peppered with stories designed to evoke sympathy for their cause. A recurring theme is the case of some poor waif, who despite being brilliant, having excellent skills, and a great personality, is unable to find a job deserving of him. The sole reason for this unfortunate’s sufferings are all those employers engaged in a conspiracy to deprive anyone of a job if they can save a buck by finding a poor immigrant to do the work. What never gets mentioned is that immigrant workers make up less than 5% of the high-skilled workforce; in fields like IT, unemployment averages about 3% and wage growth has been consistent at about 3.9%. In fields like architecture and certain types of engineering, unemployment has averaged under 2%.

These numbers belie any claims that immigrant workers have negatively impacted employment or wages. Exceptions can always be found that prove the rule. The reasons a particular individual, despite being seemingly qualified, is struggling in finding employment is usually not because of a conspiracy among employers — it could be a case of misplaced expectations, a mismatch between the person’s skills and available jobs, or just an ability to interview well.

There are a lot of extremely talented and highly qualified automotive engineers who are out of work, but not because their jobs were filled by lower-paid immigrants. If there was even the smallest shred of evidence to support a claim that employers are systematically engaged in hiring immigrants to discriminate against citizens, then rest assured some state attorney-general would have turned it into a cause célèbre in her quest to become governor.

Losing the Edge

It isn’t just in attracting high-skilled immigrants that we’re ceding ground to other countries. The ability of the United States to attract foreign students is also deteriorating. The flow of students declined by about 70,000 per year after 2001, or some 25 percent, and rose elsewhere — in Australia, New Zealand, the U.K., and Canada. And this is likely to worsen as more countries enter the fray. We have no coherent national policy in regards to talent - either for developing or attracting. Without changes in our approach to talent, this is rapidly becoming a zero-sum game where there will be winners and losers.

Some of this was inevitable in a post-9/11 world. But we seem to have moved too far in the wrong direction, while ignoring the fact that other countries are not sitting idly by. Demands by industry that the number of H-1B visas available should be linked to gaps in supply and allocation of Green Cards should be tilted toward skilled workers are largely ignored. Then again, employers could just sign employees up for 30-day courses in programming and engineering.

In May 2006, President Bush committed that he would curtail illegal immigration and improve border security. A key part of his strategy included adding 6,000 new border patrol agents by the end of 2008. Abbott agreed to head up the agency’s recruitment function and take on the challenge of sourcing 180,000 applicants to meet the hiring quota of 6,000 new agents.

Abbott’s story sounds like it has all the makings of the first reality television series featuring the survival strategies of talent acquisition leaders.

New agents must be under 40, pass a physical fitness test, a medical exam, a background investigation, and demonstrate that they have the ability to learn a foreign language. Once they are hired, agents are assigned to work the border between California and Texas. After reviewing data from numerous sources and creating a prospective agent profile, Abbott’s strategy was to cast a wide net for applicants; in particular, he wanted to focus on mid-size cities where the demographics indicated there were large numbers of residents who fit the agent profile.

“In cities where we have a Border Patrol presence, the people know us and we have a positive image,” says Abbott. “But when you get into a city like Indianapolis, we don’t have a visible presence and what they’ve heard about the Border Patrol may not be all positive. Our first goal was to educate the public and inject ourselves into that market.”

Abbott engaged an outside firm and created a new employment brand that would not only drive a positive image of the agency, but educate prospective agents about a typical day on the job. Many of the new recruiting materials (like the video embedded below) blend applicant education with a Hollywood feel. To create recruiting messages that would resonate with the target audience, Abbott talked to current agents as well as external groups, then used the feedback to refine the messages until they were spot on.

“We solicited feedback from outside groups who gave us their perceptions about the agency,” says Abbott. “We wanted to understand what those perceptions were and then match our message up against those perceptions, so we weren’t creating materials in isolation.”

The agency reaches its target audience through a variety of media. The comprehensive recruiting and employment branding initiative (to be examined in more detail in the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership) has a look and feel that says big-budget-meets-strategic-workforce-analytics. So far both the tailored messages and the strategy appear to be working, because Abbott says the agency is hitting its 3,500 weekly applicant quota and is on target to meet its 2008 hiring goal. Of course there’s no pressure when the President sets your performance goals in front of the entire country.

“It’s the same here as it is anywhere else,” says Abbott. “If you don’t meet the numbers the same thing will happen to you in this job as would happen to you in any job.”

What few people know (and maybe even fewer care to) is that currently a fashion model coming to America has to compete for the same H1-B visas that every immigrant software engineer and developer does. This is a crisis. Summer is upon us and what are the editors of swimsuit editions supposed to do when visas run out on the first day they are available — take pictures in France and Photoshop in a background from California? Fast action is needed. Disaster looms. The fantasy lives of millions of teenage boys and voyeurs are in jeopardy.

Enter Anthony Weiner. The congressman from New York is riding (or taking the subway) to the rescue. Representative Weiner has sponsored a bill in Congress that would create a separate category of visas for fashion models, the P-4. If passed, the beauties would not be competing with the geeks and we can all breathe a collective sigh of relief. Weiner for President.

Jokes apart, the Weiner bill — HR 4080, does highlight a fundamental problem with U.S. immigration policy. With regards to talent we have no policy. What we do have are immigration laws dating to the 1940s that have been sporadically modified without much of a plan or any broader understanding of the strategic implications. That made little difference in the past with the U.S. being the best and, to some extent the only, destination for skilled talent.

While the U.S. is still a very attractive place, alternatives are emerging. I wrote about this in a recent article on increasing competition for talent from the European Union and other countries. The Blue Card program created by the EU is explicitly targeted at skilled workers, unlike the Green Card, which is predominantly a vehicle for reuniting families. Our immigration policy does little to attract high-caliber talent in fields like technology and sciences and does not differentiate much between categories of talent. There are no strategic underpinnings to support employers in the war for talent.

Take the H-1B program as an example.

The number of visas available — 85,000 — is an arbitrary number with no basis in demand. It has not been adjusted despite the fact that unemployment among high-tech workers is about 3% and there is no evidence whatsoever that skilled immigrant workers have any negative impact on the wages or the employment of domestic workers. Worse yet, H-1B visas are now allocated by lottery, i.e., at random. Need or the value of particular skills is not a factor.

Limited Options

There are some options available to employers frustrated with the situation. L-1 visas are one. These allow a company to transfer employees to the U.S. from their offices abroad for periods of up to five years. Employees must have worked for the company for at least one year before an L-1 can be issued. Unlike H-1Bs, there is no cap for L-1s.

Another option is the EB-5 program. Richard Herman of Herman Associates appraised me about this. Under EB-5, foreign investors can receive a green card if they invest at least $500,000 in a designated “investment center” and create 10 direct or indirect jobs, or $1 million outside the center. There are 10,000 green cards available under the EB-5 program, but only a small fraction get used; last year the program benefitted just 779 individuals. The program follows the lead of similar programs in Australia and Canada. That is why Microsoft has a development center in Vancouver that attracts a lot of talent.

Some communities are using the EB-5 program to create areas designed to attract immigrant talent —high-skill immigration zones. The Cleveland Council on World Affairs is leading a pilot initiative called the Talent Blueprint intended to bring together public and private entities to collaborate around the attraction of foreign talent and capital into Northeast Ohio. The region has over 10,000 openings for workers in fields related to bio-tech. Richard Herman and his associates are circulating among a large group of national thought and policy leaders the idea of Cleveland and other Rust Belt cities creating these zones to welcome both foreign talent and capital back to communities once known for their large immigrant populations that have now seen that high rate of immigrant influx migrate to places such as Atlanta, Silicon Valley, and Raleigh-Durham.

No Easy Solutions

The options described above are good ideas but they can have a small impact at best. The problem of talent shortages needs a comprehensive solution in terms of both domestic policy and immigration. But there is no one leading such an effort. Ideally there would be a cabinet-level position focused on talent. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 1.64 million job openings for IT professionals between now and 2016. Yet, despite all the evidence that problems of supply are worsening, immigration policy for skilled talent remains entangled in political posturing and colored by issues of illegal immigration.

Organizations like FAIR and the self-styled Center for Immigration Studies, which make no differentiation between an agricultural worker and a software engineer, drum up wild theories about a gigantic conspiracy between employers to hire immigrant talent at-below market rates and deprive domestic workers of jobs. One of their more popular claims is that there is sufficient supply of domestic workers for high tech jobs. It’s difficult to square that with the fact that undergraduate enrollment in computer science programs has been in near free-fall since 2000, down by almost 50%. Another is that large numbers of H-1B visa holders become illegal aliens. But all that rhetoric does have some effect. When NAFTA was passed, the TN visa category was included only after the White House accepted demands that Mexican professionals not be given the same preferential treatment as Canadians. It took until 2004 to remove this bow to what some commentators described as the Titanic principle (first class gets better treatment than steerage).

The recruiting industry is not in a good position to influence this situation. The industry is not an organized lobby. No lobbying firm represents recruiting interests in Washington, while even North Korea and Ultimate Fighting are represented. Then again, it may not help much. Congress usually has matters of far greater national importance to deal with — such as investigating the New England Patriots for stealing their opponents’ signals, and the recently passed Primate Safety Act to ensure the proper treatment of monkeys.

New I-9 Form Released…

U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services just released its new version of the I-9 employment verification form, so make sure to update your records. (You can download it here; note that the new expiration date in the right-hand corner reflects 6/30/09.) You can move to an e-file for these forms, and perhaps you should: employeescreenIQ says its data shows that more than 85% of paper I-9 forms are filled out incorrectly. And electronically verifying this step is certainly a “greener” thing to do, and companies like Verified Person, Inc. agree. Its CEO, Jim Davis, says his Verified Person I-9 solution “affirms Verified Person’s belief in promoting an HR process that benefits the environment.”

From Resume Fluffing to Conviction Bluffing…

The folks at employeescreenIQ also say one of the hottest background-screening trends centers around the importance of thorough background checks in a shrinking job market. In fact, considering the state of the economy, “the job market is destined to become even more competitive, which in turn could lead some individuals to stretch the truth in order to secure employment,” according to the company’s new list of 10 background screening trends. Also, employeescreenIQ says conviction rates among job applicants are on the rise, and points to a 56% discrepancy rate between what is reported on a resume and what is found when conducting employment and education verifications.

TMI on MySpace?

Does the idea of lurking on someone’s MySpace page make you yell, “Too much information!” or do you view it as a (lurid) source of quality screening? What about reading someone’s biographical data on LinkedIn? Though stylistically very different (LinkedIn is more button-down; MySpace is more, er, unbuttoned?), these websites provide glimpses into the backgrounds of hopeful job candidates. Just remember two things if you decide to spend more time on these sites: failure-to-hire lawsuits can be a real headache, be it from MySpace, Google, or any other website, and avoid “friending” Natasha Kone on LinkedIn at all costs.

Genie on a Job Board…

In the June 26 issue of WEDDLE’s Newsletter, by industry analyst Peter Weddle, he advises that the key to using the Web for employers and job seekers is to manage your expectations.

“What’s out of whack is our perception of what the Internet can and cannot do,” he says. Though, “this technology is probably the single most effective means of connecting” employees and employers, it takes time to work. He advises job-seekers, in particular, that “The Internet is not some genie,” nor is it “a magic carpet that can carry you off to employment bliss the minute you hop on. No, the Web for all of its reach and technological power is bound by the pace of the humans who use it at the other end–the employers and recruiters who turn to the Web to find new talent.”

Government Security Clearance…

Weddle also reports that ClearanceJobs.com’s recently released snapshot of security clearance salaries finds that those who have a security clearance earn 25% more than those who do not. This is not without hurdles, because “you have to be able to pass the intensive screening that’s involved in applying for a clearance, plus be in a job where a clearance is required for job performance. Even then, it may take a long time to acquire this advantage, as the backlog of Federal background investigations is already huge and growing,” says Weddle.

]]> http://www.ere.net/2008/06/26/the-new-i-9-form-and-other-screening-trends/feed/ http://www.ere.net/2008/05/13/the-new-war-for-talent/ http://www.ere.net/2008/05/13/the-new-war-for-talent/#comments Mon, 12 May 2008 19:00:00 +0000 Raghav Singh http://www.ere.net/2008/05/13/the-new-war-for-talent/

We may be in the midst of a recession with increasing unemployment and fewer jobs, but that’s not likely to have much long-term effect on shortages of talent.

We’ve all read about the aging of the population and other demographic factors. The likely effect of these on availability of talent has been extensively written about. But the problems are likely to be worse than we realize because of three factors: liberalization of immigration policies in other countries; more restrictive immigration policies in the U.S.; and supply of talent.

Pick a Card, Any Card

The European Union has just green-lighted the Blue Card. Modeled on the Green Card, the Blue Card (the color of the EU’s flag) will allow skilled foreign workers to work and live, along with their families, anywhere in the EU’s 27 member states.

Singapore, Japan, and Hong Kong have implemented similar programs, following the lead of Australia and New Zealand. The goals of all these programs are the same: to attract skilled talent and divert some of the talent that flows to the United States.

Currently, 85% of global unskilled labor goes to the European Union and only 5% to the United States. In contrast, 55% of qualified immigrants head for the United States and only 5% to Europe. With the Blue Card, the EU hopes to reduce the imbalance.

The EU and other countries may well succeed because their criteria for handing out permanent residency permits and work visas are much more liberal than those in the U.S., and the procedures will be simpler. Some allow employers to hand out residency permits along with offer letters.

In the EU, for jobs where a citizen is not available, an immigrant would only need to show a degree and three years of experience. Recognizing the need to attract young talent to Europe, immigrants under age 30 would have even easier requirements in qualifying for Blue Card status.

Setting Out the Unwelcome Mat

Our system of providing work visas and residency permits leaves much to be desired. It can take five to 10 years to get a Green Card and the system heavily favors family ties instead of skills. The process is byzantine, involving multiple government agencies and arcane procedures. The number of annual work visas is still only 85,000 despite clear evidence of a shortage of skilled workers. For example, the unemployment rate in computer- and mathematical-related occupations is about 2.1%, or full employment when allowing for people in transition between jobs. Incredibly, the number of visas was actually lowered from 195,000 in 2004, to a level that existed 15 years ago.

In testimony before Congress, Bill Gates had argued for elimination of the cap on H-1B visas. But in pandering to groups like FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform) and other isolationists, the solons in Congress, in their infinite wisdom, have chosen to do little about the problem.

The problem is mostly political. Anti-immigrant groups are opposed to any loosening of immigration standards, though immigrant workers make up barely 3% of the skilled labor force and disproportionately contribute to the economy. A quarter of all Nobel prizes won by Americans have gone to immigrants, and a similar proportion of IT firms were started by Indians and Chinese.

A study by the National Foundation for American Policy found that the average S&P 500 company creates five new domestic jobs for each highly skilled H-1B visa employee it hires. By raising the H-1B cap, Congress would insource jobs, allowing companies to fill vital positions and expand their operations at home instead of moving overseas.

Reductions in Supply

Even if the number of work visas is increased, the supply of talent is already getting diverted from the United States. From 2001 to 2003, applications from foreign students to American universities dropped by 26% while they increased in the United Kingdom (36%), France (30%), and Australia (13%).

A 2005 study by the Pew Hispanic Center revealed that temporary legal visitors (the vast majority are skilled workers and university students) dropped to 185,000 in 2004 from 268,000 in 2000.

There’s also a major increase in departures among skilled workers returning to their homelands. A survey by Duke University found that one in three new immigrants holding high-tech jobs in the U.S. plan to leave. Between 10% to 50% of the R&D staff of Indian and Chinese high-tech firms are returnees. The reasons are not hard to discern; with comparable jobs available at home, workers have lesser incentives to tolerate the long waits and uncertainty in the United States.

What compounds the problem is that the supply of talent is simply not adequate to keep up with demand, here or anywhere. The U.S. produces the highest number of engineers per million residents of any country in the world, but that’s only about 137,000 engineers with bachelors’ degrees every year.

Supply from elsewhere is not sufficient to meet all the demand. In 2005, Fortune magazine estimated that China was producing some 600,000 engineers and India 350,000 annually.

These numbers have turned out to be a fantasy. A report by the McKinsey Global Institute said more than half of those “engineers” would be no more than technicians in the United States.

The actual numbers are more like 351,000 for China and 112,000 for India. And that’s not likely to increase much, as it takes decades for a top-flight academic institution to get established and start producing quality talent. The Indian Institutes of Technology, considered among the best in the world, can only produce 5,500 graduates every year, more than 50 years after its inception.

The Future

There are some glimmers of hope. Representatives Gabrielle Giffords (D?AZ) and Lamar Smith (R?TX) have introduced bills raising the cap for H-1B visas. These are the Strengthen United States Technology and Innovation Now (SUSTAIN) Act and the Innovation Employment Act.

The SUSTAIN Act would temporarily raise the cap to 195,000 for FY 2008 and FY 2009, while the Innovation Employment Act would initially raise the cap to 130,000 and allow the cap to increase the following year if it is reached.

Raising the cap is necessary, but more should be done to make H-1B visas flexible. Their number should reflect the economy’s need for high-tech workers, not arbitrary limits set by Congress.

In general, Congress’ record on improving the situation is not encouraging. The last attempt to reform immigration, the Security Through Regularized Immigration and a Vibrant Economy (STRIVE) America Act, adopted the worst features of other countries’ immigration programs. It would have been better called the Stop Companies Recruiting Effective Workers (you can figure out the acronym for yourself) America Act. Thankfully, it did not pass.

But prospects for recruiting are not good. The EU hopes to attract 20 million skilled workers over the next two decades as a result of the Blue Card program. That may be overly optimistic but it will undoubtedly impact the flow of talent to the United States. How much is anyone’s guess.

Without drastic action, the gap between demand and supply will continue to widen. Recruiting will only get much, much harder. If there’s a bright side to this, it’s job security for recruiters.