Increasing American Competitiveness

Reference to Arianna Huffington's Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/when-it-comes-to-innovati_b_512280.html

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Legal Immigration:
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Your article talks about the annual limit of 65K H1B Visas and an additional 20K assigned to graduate students passing out of US schools. This does not by itself jumpstart innovation. These cater to some of the immediate needs of US enterprises, universities etc who are pressed to find good qualified skilled labor. If qualified individuals obtain an H1B visa for a few years, their continued presence in the US is only facilitated by Green Cards.

The real issue associated with legal immigration is employment based Green Cards (Permanent Residence Cards). Annually 140K Green Cards are provided for candidates associated with employment. Now the 140K includes spouse and family members. With a family of 4 as an average, the US allows only 35000 qualified candidates from around the world per year. For a great nation in dire need of employees with education and qualification, this number is very small. So if the top scientists, engineers and doctors of the world have to immigrate to the US (remember, Einstein was an immigrant too), they have to struggle for this 140K number and have to wait for a long time to get their Green Cards issued. With worldwide demand for highly skilled/educated personnel, this struggle can be disappointing. Australia, UK, Germany, Canada etc have always facilitated skilled immigration.

Foreigh students enrolled in US universities and carrying advanced, state of the art research will leave the country if they do not have easy ways to continue working in the US, after graduation.

For Family based immigration, there is no real criteria for admission to the US apart from a relationship to a US Citizen. Now how many of these immigrants from the family based category, go onto be innovators is debatable. Then there is the regular humanatarian immigration for refugees. So looking from the global immigration numbers for the US annually, the employment based skilled immigration (referring to green cards and not H1B) is a teeny part of the equation.

There is a critical need to overhaul the legal immigration system to make it easy for highly skilled and higly educated individuals from around the world to immigrate to the US and advance innovation. Along with this, there should be enforcement to eradicate the bad apples trying to game the system or involved in persecuting individuals with the lure of the 'American Dream'.


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Infrastructure:
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The lack of High Speed Rail infrastructure in the US can be attributed to lack of long term vision. Europe and China have advanced with vision and implementation. According to reports, China has $88 billion in rail spending in 2009 alone with $186.3 B since 2006. On the contrary US has $8 billion committed in 2009 for investments beginning in 2010. Gov.Pat Quinn of IL says the following: "We need visionaries on high speed rail. Where there is no vision, the people perish."

The Indian Government is planning to spend $350B by 2012 with about $150B extra private sector funding to total $500B in infrastructure (http://www.khl.com/magazines/international-construction/detail/item39693/Indian-infrastructure-investment-to-reach-US$-500-billion-by-2012/). The Chinese Government announced a $586B stimulus package in 2009 with infrastructure as the main target (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/blog/the-dig-rebuilding-the-economy-with-infrastructure-spending/225/). In comparison, the US will spend about $200B (http://blog.aefeldman.com/2009/01/13/infrastructure-spending-to-surge-in-2009-opening-doors-in-infrastructure-finance/) for infrastructure.

High Speed Rail projects have the biggest deterrent in funding and without federal help, there is very little the individual states can do.

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Mobile Infrastructure:
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Apple may have released the coolest mobile gadgets namely the iPhone and the iPad. But if you look at worldwide adoption of mobile ecommerce, I would say that there is very limited use of mobile technologies in the US such as SMS for commerce. Compared to many of the countries like Japan, the US mobile infrastructure is lacking.

With infrastructure comes innovation. Remember, James Cameron delayed making Avatar for about a decade because the technology that he required, did not exist until the last 3-4 years. So if proper infrastructure is not in place, some innovation that can happen will not.

In my view, the US should look at the improving education with emphasis on science, math and global economy. While this is being done, policies should be implemented to make it easy for the top individuals (in education and skills) of the world to gain residence.

High Speed Rail

* RT @HSRail: Gov Quinn: "We need visionaries on high speed rail. Where there is no vision, the people perish."
* RT @HSRail: 50% of US flights are under 500 miles. These routes clog airports, should be replaced w/ high-speed rail. http://bit.ly/Ve3XH
* Annaheim's proposed rail hub. http://bit.ly/cA0Ll #rail #hsrail #highspeedrail
* High-speed rail might not deliver the Obama vision -> USAToday http://bit.ly/20foKs . #HSRail
* Modern Train Station in Belgium. http://ow.ly/15RE9I
* China: $88 billion in rail spending in 2009 alone, $186.3 since 2006. US: $8 billion committed in 2009 for investments beginning in 2010

Short Term Business Visa/Visitor Visa to Australia

Let us assume that either you have to go to Australia on a short term business trip or want to visit Australia for sight seeing, honeymoon etc. If you do not belong to the set of countries that are ETA eligible (US, UK, Canada, Singapore etc), then you will need to:
a) Apply form 456 for short term business visa.
b) Apply visitor visa (Form 48R).

After this, you have to send it by FedEx or UPS or USPS Express to:

Embassy of Australia,
1601 Massachusetts Ave, NW
Washington DC 20036

Tips:
1) Allow a minimum of 10 Working Business Days.
2) Do not book flight tickets before the visa arrival.
3) Clearly mark the date of intended travel.
4) Both the Immigration Officers and the help line are very very busy. So it makes sense to plan your travel properly and apply for visa well in advance.

The Help Line is based out of Ontario, Canada.
It is 1(905)280 1437. Note that you may be charged International rates to Canada. Do not use mobile phones to call this help line.

In my case, my packet reached on Feb 1, 2010. My confirmed travel was on Sunday, Feb 14, 2010 to Sydney. Due to record snow storm, Washington DC was shut down for 5 days. But immigration officer, Grace Dizon heroically approved my application on Feb 11 and then called me as to which courier to use so that I get it on Friday for Sunday travel. Remember both UPS and FedEx had not picked any packages for 5 days. She stayed beyond embassy close time of 4:30pm to personally hand the envelope to Fed Ex guy at the entrance (5:14pm). Then she called me on mobile and said "Have a nice trip". Hats off to her.