U.S. companies alarmed at European initiative to attract best-educated workers.
In continuing coverage from previous briefings, the New York Sun (10/29, Wapshott) reported, "American companies are becoming increasingly alarmed at a European initiative designed to attract the world's best-educated workers with a speedy and relaxed work permit system." U.S. "businesses, especially those in medicine and high technology, already face a shortage of suitably educated labor and say the restrictive and slow American 'green card' system will be no match for the new European card, leading to the world's best brains decamping to Europe." Robert Hoffman, "co-chairman of Compete America, a lobbying group representing technology companies that have been urging Congress to increase the quota of H–1B visas," said, "Europe has laid down a challenge to the [U.S.] Congress. The EU will attract the best and brightest workers in the world if the [U.S.] continues to create new burdens to hiring these valuable workers." Hoffman added that "[c]utting-edge U.S. companies depend on specialized talent coming out of U.S. graduate schools. These scientists and engineers are often foreign-born, as more than half of U.S. engineering master's and Ph.D. recipients are international students."
