As the UK considers permanent rules to restrict employers’ ability to hire key talent, a temporary cap on hiring skilled and highly skilled workers from outside the European Union, in place since June, has already had a “negative impact,” as reported in the Wall Street Journal:

“The restrictions make it more difficult to plan, and in some instances positions are going unfilled or companies are moving operations overseas, industry representatives say. While the number of jobs currently affected may not be huge, employers worry about lacking flexibility to hire as the economy improves. Another concern: The uncertainty will discourage multinational companies looking to build up their presence in the U.K.”

A group of eight Nobel laureates, including two Russian immigrants who won the Nobel Prize in Physics last week, are urging the government to reconsider the policy, saying that it will threaten “Britain’s reputation for scientific excellence,” as reported in the Telegraph.

The situation in the UK shows that the marketplace for top talent is global, and when access to highly educated professionals is restricted those skilled workers, and the employers who hire them, will move elsewhere to innovate and create jobs – threatening a country’s science and technology leadership. The United States should learn from the UK's experience.

America Should Welcome, Not Restrict Access to Highly Educated, Foreign-born Professionals

Compete America supports Comprehensive Immigration Reform that includes a permanent fix to the arbitrarily low quotas and massive backlogs that currently plague the U.S. visa system for highly educated foreign professionals.

To learn more about how America benefits from a highly educated workforce, visit: http://www.competeamerica.org.

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Compete America (www.competeamerica.org) is a coalition of corporations, educators, research institutions and trade associations concerned about legal, employment-based immigration and committed to ensuring that the United States has the highly educated workforce necessary to ensure continued innovation, job creation and leadership in a worldwide economy.