Maine's research community sees growing value in global recruits

When Yichang Jia finished his Ph.D. program in China a few years ago, he began looking for a job in the United States because few labs in his country were hiring post-doctoral fellows then. He met his mentor, Susan Ackerman, at a conference in Hong Kong in 2006 and joined her neurodegeneration research team at The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor the following year. Now, Jia says, many newly minted Chinese scientists are finding jobs in China.

"The pharmaceutical companies and the economy grew up so rapidly, there are too many opportunities," Jia says. "My colleague, with two papers in good publications, he chose to stay in China. Right now he is in a pharmaceutical company and his salary is very good."

With China's economy relatively roaring, not to mention India's and Brazil's, the race to attract and retain talented, high-skilled workers, wherever they may be, is growing more competitive. American science and engineering companies are worried they could fall behind if their ability to hire foreigners is thwarted. For that reason, some businesses are adding their voices to the debate over immigration reform, a debate that is often dominated by political hot-button issues like border control, homeland security and illegal immigration.

Representing business' interests in this movement has been the Partnership for a New American Economy, a group launched by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg last year with other mayors and CEOs from companies like Hewlett-Packard, Disney and Boeing. The group's agenda is to relax certain immigration barriers to stimulate the economy and to "change the discussion around the country," says Jeremy Robbins, a policy adviser and special counsel in Bloomberg's office. "We're not talking about the economic issues."

Something similar, on a smaller scale, is happening in Maine. Business leaders from a handful of organizations, including Fairchild Semiconductor, the Maine State Chamber of Commerce and engineering consulting firm St. Germain-Collins in Westbrook, have been meeting over the last several months to discuss immigration and how to disseminate their point of view. Going by the informal name Immigrant Business Advocacy Coalition, they have a shared purpose: "To make this an economically focused discussion, because [immigration] has tremendous economic implications for the state," says Paul Delva, Fairchild's general counsel, adding that this is often drowned out in the rancor over illegal immigrants and protectionist impulses. "And we would like to moderate the tone of the conversation," he adds. He doesn't know the exact number of immigrants or first-generation immigrants who work at Fairchild, but says it's significant.

If you walk into Fairchild, Jackson Lab or Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in West Boothbay, you're bound to hear foreign accents. Graham Shimmield, Bigelow's executive director, says four of the lab's senior scientists are from abroad and 10% to 20% of the post-doctorate researchers are foreigners. Shimmield himself is here on a temporary work visa from Great Britain. Michael Hyde, Jackson Lab's vice president for advancement and external relations, says that of Jackson Lab's 1,300 employees, he estimates that 10% are foreign nationals, from 20 countries.

Hyde says that in this country, not enough students are pursuing scientific and technical studies in American universities to keep up with demand. The Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce published a report last year predicting that by 2018, our education system will produce half the number of U.S.-born graduates needed for 2.8 million job openings in science, technology, engineering and math. Meanwhile, non-citizens are picking up the slack. According to the National Science Foundation, foreign students in 2008 received 25% of science and engineering master's degrees and about 40% of science and engineering doctoral degrees. Meanwhile, temporary visa holders — non-U.S. citizens — accounted for 57% of science and engineering post-doctoral degree holders in 2006. "I think an awful lot of people have the impression that immigrants to this country are maybe not such highly skilled workers," Hyde says. "It's not widely understood at all that the whole scientific enterprise in this country is supported by foreign nationals."

Immigrants and Maine's future

It's not just R&D labs and high-tech companies that are hankering for immigrants. Dana Connors, president of the Maine State Chamber of Commerce, says immigrants will be vital to Maine's future economy — in all sectors. "We are the oldest state in the nation, and as we look out over 20 years, our population is projected to be flat," Connors says, with the over-65 demographic burgeoning while the younger set dwindles. "Part of our population growth is our immigrant community."

Connors says he's teaming up this winter with the Maine Development Foundation, a nonprofit economic development organization, to write a report on the aging work force and ways to counter what could be a devastating hit to Maine's economy. Besides looking at how to attract immigrants, the organization is considering engaging other labor pools, such as young people, disabled workers and older workers. MDF President Laurie Lachance says, "If we don't find a way to attack this slow population growth with every tool in our tool kit, it will be a lost opportunity."

Peter Landis, a Portland lawyer who specializes in employment-based immigration, also warns that Maine's facing a shortage of doctors, a problem he predicts could grow to a "tsunami of a medical crisis," as baby boomers age and new health care laws expand the number of people seeking medical treatment. Medical school graduate rates have not kept up with the need, and Landis argues that international medical graduates undertaking post-graduate training as residents and fellows could be a life-saving source of labor — if they could more easily obtain visas and green cards.

But "our legal immigration system is broken," Landis says. "It doesn't allow sufficient numbers of immigrants to immigrate legally to replenish the labor pool and build the labor pool." Every year the United States issues 65,000 H-1B visas to high-skilled foreign workers. The three-year temporary work visas can be extended once. An additional 20,000 are set aside for foreign nationals who've obtained graduate degrees in the United States. And 140,000 employment-based green cards are issued every year, with a 7% cap per country, no matter the population size. Some people, particularly from India and China, can wait five or more years for green cards, Landis says.

The H-1B debate

Even with high-profile business people like Steven Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO, and Rupert Murdoch of the News Corp. pressing for more business-friendly immigration laws, some groups are not convinced that expanding the H-1B program, or inviting more foreign students to remain in the United States after graduating, is a good move for the country. Ballmer and Murdoch are co-chairs of the Partnership for a New American Economy.

"The name I use is Billionaires for Open Borders," says Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C., describing the partnership. "Plutocrats for cheap labor."

Krikorian says businesses want to hire foreigners not because they can't find employees with expertise in the United States, but because they can get them cheaper than Americans. He points to studies his organization has published showing that 51% of H-1B workers in computer occupations were being paid wages in the bottom quarter of U.S. wages, and that H-1B computer workers were making $13,000 less than Americans in comparable jobs.

"The goal for the companies is the master's degree recipient. There's a lot more of them, and they're not so special. That's where the cheap labor comes in — [companies] want more young, controllable workers," he says.

But U.S. companies aren't supposed to pay foreign employees less than Americans. They're required to demonstrate that they can't find anyone here to fill the job, and that they'll pay no less than the prevailing wage for a position they're filling with an H-1B worker. This is intended to ensure wages paid to foreign workers do not pull down incomes here, Landis says. While Landis concedes there are probably some companies that abuse the system, he thinks it's a small percentage.

Robbins, at the Partnership for a New Economy, says Krikorian's claims "are patently false." He points as a counterexample to the case of Microsoft opening a software development center in Vancouver, Canada, in 2007, rather than in the United States, to hire foreign workers. Microsoft's press release about this center says, "Our goal is to attract the next generation of leading software developers from all parts of the world, and this center will be a beacon for some of that talent."

The Partnership for a New American Economy also uses plenty of studies and statistics to make the case for immigration, including one finding that immigrants are nearly twice as likely as U.S.-born to start new businesses, and another showing that immigrants launched 25.3% of technology and engineering businesses in America from 1995 through 2005. One of the organization's favorite statistics is that more than 40% of Fortune 500 companies were started by immigrants or children of immigrants. And Robbins points to a study by the National Foundation for American Policy that found that for every H-1B position requested, U.S. technology companies increased their staffs by five workers. "This is not a zero-sum game," Robbins says. "If we get the best workers to fill the jobs in our economy, we will grow and compete."

A global practice

If immigration is critical to the future economy, how should the legal immigration system change? "We need a streamlined process, and more permanent residence numbers, making it so that our immigration system is much more responsive to the market," Landis says.

The Partnership for a New American Economy is pushing for green cards for foreign students who graduate from U.S. schools with advanced degrees in science, engineering, technology and math, and for a new visa category for entrepreneurs. It also wants to eliminate country caps for work visas.

Maine's business coalition hopes to educate people about immigration's value to Maine businesses, says Mark St. Germain, a business owner in the group, though it has no events or talks set up yet. "I think it is much more productive to proactively educate folks," St. Germain says. "I would much rather be proactive then reactive."

Perhaps the simplest thing that can be done, says Lachance, is to create a welcoming environment. "When people come to Maine, they have to have a level of comfort that their families will be safe here, that they will not be detained on the street and questioned," she says. Though Lachance did not specifically refer to it, a bill submitted in Maine's 2011 legislative session would have required immigrants to carry identification papers and allowed police to ask immigrants if they're here legally, similar to Arizona's "show-me-your-papers" law. The bill died.

Hyde, at Jackson Lab, says the organization "goes to great lengths" to help foreign-born post-docs, for instance by offering ESL classes to employees and their family members. It also partners local families with new arrivals to help acclimate them to Bar Harbor.

Prabakaran Soundararajan, who is from India, earned his master's and doctorate degrees from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, and joined Dr. Greg Cox at Jackson Lab in 2009 to study degenerative motor neuron diseases, such as Lou Gehrig's disease. He calls Bar Harbor "a great place to live," and Jackson Lab "cutting edge."

Soundararajan says he wanted to work in the United States because, "historically, the U.S. has been a force in terms of innovation and technology, and that stems from people who've come from different parts of the world and because the U.S. has fantastic education institutions."

Cox invited Soundararajan to join him because their research is complementary. "He had specific expertise in stem cell development and function," Cox says. "And I'm a geneticist studying the genetics of diseases. He wanted to apply his background to disease models, and I wanted to extend my research into the stem cell field." Cox says such student-mentor matchmaking requires an international arena to scout potential collaborators. "Because you don't know who's going to be that perfect fit. Limiting it to U.S. residents limits the pool of available talent," he says.

Soundararajan says flexible immigration laws allow science to be a global practice, fertilized by people who don't all think or talk alike. "That is how it's been flourishing over the years," he says. "You have different minds from different countries puzzling the mysteries of nature."

Editor's note: This article was corrected to reflect that Peter Landis believes international medical graduates, not foreign medical students, are an important source to alleviate a physician shortage in the United States.