After 2.5 years of non-immigrant consular work, I've had a lot of time to think about visas and really start to try and understand U.S. visa law. While I'm not "consular coned," the links from consular work to all sections of foreign policy are quite interesting. Any change in visa law (or even interpretation) has a huge political impact in foreign countries which are not part of our Visa Waiver Program. Indians will easily recall the hulabaloo when the processing fee for H1B visas (ie, for software programmers) increased. Filipinos are acutely aware of the current lack of H1C (nurse) visas.
I was interested to learn two weeks ago that Canada allows its provinces to sponsor temporary workers - and, if I understand correctly, the provinces can also decide how many of what kind of temporary worker. In the US, our numbers are capped by the federal government.
I started to think ... what would happen if, say, North Dakota could petition for foreign workers in areas where it had acute shortages? Northern VA, for instance, is chock full of software programmers. But what if Oregon wanted to actively grow its thriving (but comparatively small) IT work force - and had the option to recruit from overseas?
I then had an interesting debate with myself. On one hand, devolving power to the states appeals to me as more efficient - local governments usually have a better tap on what the local situation is and resulting needs are. On the other hand, with our current system, all companies in the entire country have an equal shot at hiring workers where they are needed - which seems like fewer economic barriers and less regulation.
Talking to so many people each day can be tiring, I readily admit. But the macro issues behind the individual visa interview are academically interesting. And I haven't even started to learn about our immigrant visa policy yet!
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