Immigration reform has been on the
lips of almost every political commentator in the past few weeks. The topic is
heavily debated and cumbersome in detail, but as members of the analytic
community we must understand it as it affects our job market directly. As we reported in The Burtch Works Study 58.8%
of entry-level Big Data professionals are not U.S. citizens, which means that
companies are looking abroad for professionals with the necessary skills to
tackle their data sets and analytics challenges.
Companies want the best and brightest in the quantitative
sciences, and the fact is that right now many of these workers come from
outside the U.S. As pointed out by John Shinal in this article that I posted
on twitter many companies are building offices overseas when the
available visas run out since, “the 65,000 cap on H-1Bs for this year was
reached on the very first day that the government began accepting visa
applications”. The competition is quite clearly global, and this immigration
reform could help boost our standing in the community by encouraging companies
to keep their offices here in the U.S.
Rosario Marin, former US Treasurer under President George W.
Bush points out in her recent
op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, “The current skilled-labor
shortage—particularly for workers in science, technology, engineering and math
occupations—puts U.S. companies at a disadvantage. By 2020, an estimated 1.5
million jobs will go unfilled, according to McKinsey & Co. Until America
can educate enough graduates in these fields to meet the demand, legal
immigration is the only option to find the necessary talent.” Most of these
1.5 million jobs are in analytics and that number will only continue to grow
with further advancements in harnessing Big Data. Even most of the graduate
students who excel in quantitative programs at the Master’s and PhD levels in
the US come from outside of America. When these students graduate, we need to
ensure companies are able to sponsor their visas and keep them in the country
lest they find employment opportunities in Europe or Asia.
My hope for any change in the current immigration system is
that the United States can continue to provide the best technological and
scientific advancements that benefit us every day. Relative to that, as the
economy continues its recovery we will see a renewed urgency to hire and fill
positions that support such advancements within analytics that didn’t exist ten
years ago. This
Gallup Poll shows Americans mostly in favor of some type of immigration
reform, and though I would not claim that the current bill is the best option,
it is certainly a starting point.
