The Economic Innovation Group, a public policy group, has floated the notion of a “chipmakers visa” that would be auctioned off to semiconductor manufacturers in need. There would be 10,000 new visas each year for 10 years, with recipients being put on a smooth path to a green card when their visas expire. (The visas would last five years and be renewable once.)
That may seem like a lot of foreign workers, but in the long run, the group says, temporarily relying on help from abroad will create more chipmaking jobs for Americans, not fewer. The use of an auction is intended to make sure the visas go to the companies that value them most, not ones that manage to jump through bureaucratic hoops best. Revenue raised from the auctions would go toward training American workers for jobs in chipmaking.
The Economic Innovation Group describes itself as bipartisan. It’s definitely pro-technology. Its founders circle includes Sean Parker, the founding president of Facebook, and Dan Gilbert, the founder and chairman of Quicken Loans. Its economic advisory board includes Kevin Hassett, Glenn Hubbard, Robert Litan, Kenneth Rogoff, Matthew Slaughter and other economic luminaries.
Not everybody thinks the chipmakers visa is a good idea. Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at Howard University who is also a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, pointed me to Bureau of Labor Statistics data that U.S. employment in manufacturing of semiconductors and electronic components had fallen 49 percent from its 2001 peak by January 2021, when Biden took office. Despite the hubbub about a manufacturing renaissance, it has risen only 5 percent since, indicating to Hira that there are plenty of Americans with industry experience available for hire.
“I think it’s a bad approach to create just another alphabet soup visa program instead of fixing the ones we have,” such as the H-1B, the L-1 and the E-2, he said. Daniel Costa, an attorney who is the director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, added that the figure of 10,000 visas appeared to be plucked from the air.