America's Got Talent: But Still Needs More H1-B Visas In the global war for talent, one measure of success is the number of Nobel Prizes awarded to citizens from different countries. Four countries are clearly winning in this war; however, these countries are increasingly accomplishing this via immigrants rather than native-born citizens. Specifically, over 30% of Nobel Prizes awarded in the last 30 years have gone to immigrants, and more than 50% of those went to immigrants working in the U.S. Indeed, over 50% of U.S. startups worth over 1 billion were founded by an immigrant. Although trailing the U.S. on this metric, Great Britain, Australia, and Canada are the other three clear winners in this competition, whereas India, China, and the Philippines are the clearest losers when it comes to this international brain drain. The U.S.'s ability to maintain this status, however, is increasingly threatened by changes in immigration policies that may restrict the flow of talent into the county. In the vignette that opened this chapter we focused the labor shortage in some low skilled jobs in the agricultural and meat processing industries and how this has recently been exacerbated by changes in U.S. immigration policy and policing. Increasing the number of H2-A temporary visas that allow temporary employment to farmworkers was seen as one solution to this problem, but when it comes to highly skilled workers, it is the H1-B visa program that matters most. H1-B visas allow highly skilled workers in areas where there are shortages of labor to work in the country for three years. Recent changes in immigration policies and a shortage of such visas, however, are leaving human resource managers in high tech fields struggling to fill critical jobs. This, plus the general perception that the U.S. is increasingly unfriendly toward foreign workers is considered a major threat to employers such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook who alone employ over 100,000 people who are part of the H1-B program. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckenberg spoke for many in the industry when he stated that "we need to keep this country safe, but we should do that by focusing on people who actually pose a threat." DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. How does the increased difficulty of working in the U.S. create exploitable opportunities for countries like India, China and the Philippines when it comes to plugging their brain drain? 2. What can a country like the U.S. do to decrease its reliance on immigration to fill high tech jobs? Sources: A. Creighton, "Four Nations are Winning the Global War for Talent," The Wall Street Journal Online, www.wsj.com, October 18, 2016; M. Jordan, "Demand for H1-B Skilled Worker Visas Forces Agency into Lottery," The Wall Street Journal Online, www.wsj.com, April 7, 2016; E. Huet and G. DeVynck, "America's Got No Talent," Businessweek, November 21, 2016, pp 32-33; "Google Criticizes Impact on Staff of Trump Immigration Order," The Wall Street Joumal Online, www.wsj.com, January 28, 2017.