America’s Brain Drain: H-1B Lottery Chaos (Full)

Episode Transcript
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Alex (00:05):
Solving America’s Problems — where Jerremy and Dave just learned
that a Stanford PhD who’s spentseven years in the US, paid taxes,
and is literally curing cancer… hasthe exact same 25% lottery shot at
staying here as any random bachelor’sdegree holder filing from overseas.

Melissa Harms laid it out cold: every spring, USCIS runs a literal (00:23):
undefined
random drawing for 85,000 H1B visas.
Last year 358,000 people registered.
This year it dropped,but still triple the cap.
One of her clients — a biotech star— lost the lottery nine straight times.
Another got selected, then laidoff before the paperwork even

(00:45):
landed because the economy turned.
And when the best minds finally give up?
They don’t go home.
They open the same lab in Hong Kong orToronto — and hire everyone there instead.
Jerremy and Dave sat there stunnedas Melissa said the quiet part

out loud (01:01):
America is now actively shipping its own brain drain overseas…

Jerremy Newsome (01:07):
The people want to know Conley.
What are we talking about today?

Dave Conley (01:12):
In this week's episode of Solving America's Problems, we examine
the outdated structures crippling ourimmigration system, where businesses and
universities invest billions, trainingand educating cutting edge global talent
only to face an immigration system so oldit forces Silicon Valley to mail paper
applications like its 1925, not 2025.
At the heart of these issues arepoliticians unable or unwilling to

(01:34):
change laws in 40 years, companiesdesperately trying to hire Stanford PhD,
curing cancer have the same 25% chanceas anyone else, and your best sales
person from Canada, or entrepreneur fromEurope, starting the next great company.
Have no chance at all.
Our guest, Melissa Harms brings 25years of experience as an attorney on
the front lines of immigration law.
She helps fortune five hundreds,startups, universities, and biotech

(01:57):
labs navigate the broken bureaucracyand inefficient government systems
driving America's innovation overseas.
She's taught immigration courses at CalState and the University of California,
and speaks nationally for the AmericanImmigration Lawyers Association on
navigating visa challenges to retaintop talent and drive economic growth.
And that's this week on solving America'sproblems, paper planes, and brain drain.

(02:19):
America's talent crisiswith Melissa harms.

Every year, America educates the world's brightest minds.
Then we kick them out.
International students pump 44 billioninto our economy, but we hand them
diplomas with deportation notices.
Meanwhile, companies from SiliconValley to Main Street follow every rule,
pay every fee, but still can't fillall the jobs they desperately need.

(02:44):
What's the result?
Cities from Beijing to Berlin are thinkingus for the best talent in the world.
I'm Jerremy Alexander Newsom withmy co-host Dave Conley, and this
is solving America's Problems.
Today we have Melissa Harms 25 years as animmigration attorney on the front lines.

(03:05):
the one CEOs call when the Visasystem threatens their best people
Silicon Valley to University Labs.
She knows exactly where thisthing is broken, and we're
gonna be discussing that.
Melissa, welcome to the show.

Melissa Harms (03:20):
Thanks, Jerremy.
I'm not sure I can sayexactly where it's broken.
It's broken in many places.
I don't have, if I had the recipe tofix this, I'd be making a lot more money
than I am right now, that's for sure.

You at least know all the things that are broken, or

I can, yes, I can tell you it's broken.
Maybe not how to fix it.

That's okay.
That, the good news is we'regonna have a conversation.
We get to use your ideas and yourthoughts and your beliefs, and
Dave's whimsical concepts of howto change and make adaptations.
That's why we're here.
Lemme throw this at you, 25 yearsMelissa, helping businesses and
universities navigate immigration.
Did you know in law school that you wantedto do employment and immigration law?

Yes and no.
I did initially start out in employmentlaw really thinking I wanted to
get into employment discrimination.
I've always been interestedin women's issues.
I was a public policy major in collegebut not so much immigration, although I
loved travel and international cultures.
I hadn't really been thought aboutimmigration and quite honestly fell

(04:21):
into it after doing the big firmroute for a little while and realizing
that's not where my heart was.
Really wanting to pursue afield of law where I felt like
I could enact social change.
While also using my analyticalskills and law degree.
And so that's how I sort of happenstanceinto immigration a few years
after graduation from law school.

And just as like a brief.
I dunno, maybe this might be more for me.
the heck is immigration law?
What are you doing?
Are you changing the policies?
Are you working with individuals?

That's a really good question.
We have a fair share of policy.
Like we like to call them policywalks that are working for the
national, on the national level.
Doing lobbying and telling, comingup with what the fair systems are.
We have a national group called AmericanImmigration Lawyers Association, which
is about 15,000 immigration lawyersnationwide and they're really in
charge of doing a lot of the lobbyingwork disseminating information.

(05:14):
I've been involved withthem on many levels.
Recently working with them on technology.
And we worked with USAS on technologyfor immigration which was great, but
ultimately after the administrationchange led to a whole lot of nothing,
which is a theme that we mightcontinue throughout our conversation.
But in the actual practice of immigrationlaw, we really have two different sectors.

(05:35):
We have those who help with deportationremoval, so those are the people who
are on the front lines of the border whoare working with undocumented workers.
Trying to figure out some sort ofrelief for them once they're in that
pod of being unauthorized coming hereillegally or falling out of status.
And then we also have the other potof immigration lawyers, which are
the business immigration attorneys.

(05:57):
And that's where I fall.
We're the ones that work with corporationsand companies and universities to
obtain visas for people who are herenow legally, or maybe people who are
outside the US who we wanna bring over.
But we generally don't touch thepool of, that's almost like a whole
nother field of law working inthe deportation aspect of things.

But still really fascinating because after, don't
know, probably 12 conversations onthis topic, it would also seem that
I think the majority of listeners,the majority of participants, they
feel like the biggest immigration,at least the largest challenge.
And from a number standpoint,it is, like you mentioned, the
undocumented, the asylum seekers.

(06:38):
But what you're mentioning is havethe individuals who are working,
who wanna work in a differentcountry, global corporations.
And you would think that would be arelatively straightforward process.
what it sounds like isthat's not the case at all.
So when CEO or university presidentscome to you, what's their top

(06:58):
frustrations about bringinginternational talent to America?

I think when you look at the corporation side,
they're frustrated because theycan't get the workers they need.
And our immigration system forvisas is incredibly archaic.
The most common visa we have isthe H one B visa, and I think most
people have heard of that now.
There's been a lot of press about that.
But the H one B status.
It's only for people who have a bachelor'sdegree in a certain field, and the

(07:25):
job requires a degree in that field.
And over the years, without any sortof legislation or rulemaking U-S-C-I-S
has narrowed that definition to beonly, it only really benefits those
who have, let's say, a chemistrydegree and they're gonna be a chemist.
But in the business world in fact, theycame out with a proposed rule a few years

(07:45):
ago that says we don't consider businessdegrees to be specialized degrees.
So if you're looking at,you come out and you are.
You started a company and you're A CEO,they'll say you don't qualify for H
one B because you could have a numberof different degrees to be A CEO.
You could have a degree in English,you could have a degree in marketing,
you could have a degree in finance.
So they're really looking for thehard science, the analytical fields

(08:06):
to be eligible for H one B status.
And that's all we've got.
Unless you're from another country,we have very specific narrow visa
categories for those from Australia,Mexico Chile, Singapore, and Canada.
But other than that's it.
We can bring people over ifthey've been employed abroad.
But we don't have a catchall forjust the very smart person who's

(08:27):
starting a company, quite frankly.
So there's a giant hole inthe Visa framework for, what
we see in today's economy.
And the, we started out talking about how.
Immigration is late 1946, andit really is, we haven't had a
substantive change to our businessimmigration framework in many years.

H one B visas our research is saying it's about, it's only about 85,000
people a year that that qualify for that.
And what would you say to folks that,that are thinking that somehow this
depresses American jobs like Microsoftjust fired 9,000 people, and yet they're

(09:09):
also asking for a record number of visas.
Now, personally, I don't thinkthose two things are like that.
The pie isn't, finite like that.
But what do you say to people who thinkthat this is something that actually hurts
Americans rather than helps everyone?

I think if you believe in capitalism, the
markets correct themselves.
So what I will tell you is that anHOV Visa can cost as much as $3,400.
In just filing fees.
And on top of that, if you wannahave an answer in three weeks, as
opposed to six months, you have topay $2,500 more to the government.
So you're looking at 6,000 ingovernment fees before you pay my fees.

(09:50):
So companies don't wanna dothis unless they have to.
So I have a lot of companies, andI'm on retainer with companies.
That's how we generally work.
They'll say, when we need aVisa, we're gonna call you.
And I have a lot of 'em thatsay, you know what, we're not
gonna do any H one B sponsorship.
We're just, we're, wefeel like we're just.
Gonna save those costsand hire American workers.
And I say, great.
And then I get a call the next weekwe've had this job open for, 10 months.

(10:12):
Nobody's applied, or the peoplewho have applied have just been way
underqualified and we need a visa.
So the cost of doing these H one visasis a, impediment to, no company's
gonna do this unless they have to.
So you will see them laying offworkers, but they're generally
not gonna be laying off workers incategories that are hard to fill.
So they are still hiring H one B workerswhen they can't find anybody else.

(10:36):
And I think if you look at the waythe markets set, the demand is out
there and immigration fluctuates.
We have a lottery each year for peoplewho are getting their first H one B,
and we do this whole archaic thingwhere we sent in these petitions to
U-S-C-I-S to be counted in the lottery.
And the petitions were,three inches thick.
They cost me about $50 to FedEx.

(10:57):
And we had to send in the entireprepared petition, and then they would
run a lottery and send back the onesthat they didn't choose at the expense.
And I always looked at this of $10 perapplication they sent back in postage.
So this archaic way, finally,we had an electronic system only
within the last five years where wenow do this electronically first.

(11:18):
We've been looking at thenumbers and what we've seen as.
As the economy gets worse and there'snot as many jobs open, there are less
applications for H one B numbers.
So we see it fluctuate basedon the way the economy runs.
We used to, under Clinton, thenumbers went up, so now we have,
you're right about 85,000 total.
Under Clinton, it was raisedto about a hundred and let's

(11:40):
see, 195,000 at one point.
And back then we didn't use them all.
We never used them all.
Now, in today's economy this past yearwe had, let's see, 358,000 registrations.
And they selected of that,they selected 120,000.
Now, this was down from lastyear when we had 480,000.
So you see the economy works inseeing how many of these are selected.

(12:02):
And I do have clients that willput somebody in a lottery and
then they're chosen on the lotteryand they're really excited.
And then the companywill say, you know what?
Hard times we don't have that job anymore.
We're not actually gonna file thepetition for that selected person.
We do see that happen when thecompany feels like there's not a
need for that position anymore.

In previous episodes I've talked about how medieval this system is.
Can you walk me through sort of theexperience of, a student and they wanna
stay in the United States and I know,in our research there's something like
the OTP and you get to stay here for alittle bit, but then you like take your
chances versus somebody who's overseaswants to come to the United States.

(12:44):
Or is there like yet another category?
What are the different things that peopletry in order to either hire in the United
States or stay in the United States?

So what we see is there's really three, again, I'll use buckets
that these H one B applicants come from.
Majority.
I would say, and this is totallyoff the top of my head with my
cases, 80% of those are studentswho graduated from a US school.
So these are people who come inon a student visa, an F1 when
they graduate from a US school.
They get one year of OPT as you said.

(13:16):
If they have a degree in a STEM field,which is designated by their school,
they can get an additional two years.
So they get three years total to work in aSTEM field without the employer having to
spend money sponsor them, sponsoring them.
So during that time I tell employers,if you wanna keep this person, you
should put them in the lottery thefirst year that they are eligible.

(13:38):
Because about every year, and thisis a really rough estimate, you have
about a 25% chance of selection.
So with three years, you're notguaranteed to get an H one B number.
So you need to try every year.
I have one individual who hasbeen through the lottery nine
times, never been selected.
So there are those outliers.
So that's the, these are thestudents and those are, that's

(14:00):
probably the biggest bucket of who'sapplying for these H one B visas.
The people outside the US are, thoseare not, they're not that many of
them because they need to have theexposure to the US employers to have
the US employer feel like, Hey, Ireally wanna bring this person over.
I really wanna spend this, five to$10,000 trying to hire this person.
There's not a lot like that.

(14:21):
We might have some who came here for alittle while, worked for us, employer went
back, and now they're trying to come back.
That might be one of or somebodywho works for an overseas
subsidiary and wants to come here.
Then the third bucket is people who arehere in some their status who wanna move
to H one B. A lot of times that willbe somebody who's here on what we call
an L one, and that's an intercompanytransferee where you work abroad for

(14:41):
the company for a year, and then youcan come here on an L. The L is great
in many ways, but the H is betterfor long-term green card processing.
So some of those people are switching.
We had people switching out of the tn,which was for Mexicans and Canadians
because of fear of what Trump wasgonna do with the TN visa category.
So there's always, we always havefear-based switching h fours, sometimes

(15:04):
it's a dependent of an HMBV holder.
They might say, I got a job and nowI wanna move into H one B. 'cause
most of the time they cannot work.
They get to a certain point in theGreen card process for the spouse
that they can get a work permit.
But most of the time these spousesof these H one B workers cannot work.
And that's difficult, especially in theBay Area, to have a single income family.
So they're trying to get their own H oneB. So those are the types of people who

(15:27):
would be applying for this H one B status.

So

It's a lot.
I know.
I get too technical so feelfree to tell me to dumb it down.

This is perfect because, in order to really, we have to define these
problems, and if people's eyes are glazingover right now, that's a good thing.
Because should be simple.
That's the first thing.
I don't know, in one of our episodes,it's like somebody took the worst of the
tax code, drank themselves into oblivionand said, immigrate to the United States,

I tell people that clients, especially when I meet with
new companies, I say, you reallyshould not need me, but you do.
Our system is probablythe most complicated and
archaic in the entire world.
And quite frankly, doesn't servethe American population well some
of these policies I look at andwhat was the policy behind this
and who were they trying to help?
Because it really doesn't help.
Another thing that people might notrealize about the H one B system

(16:18):
is that the employers have to saythey're paying the hire of the
prevailing wage and the actual wage.
For that position, in that location.
So the reason they do that is theysay, we wanna protect US workers.
We don't want companies to come in,fire all their US workers and hire
H one B workers and underpay them.
Great intent.
I see where that's going.
But the way it plays out in a lot of mycases, I can't even tell you how many, is

(16:44):
that our prevailing wage is set by the,we use this government database for wages.
And I don't know where theyare getting their data.
They don't even cite it.
But it's incredibly high.
So what happens is somebody will call meand say, I wanna hire a software engineer.
In Silicon Valley, and I'll say, great,the prevailing wage for that is 240,000.

(17:05):
And they say, there's no way I'mgonna pay that person 240,000.
I say that's the prevailing wage.
And so they'll either A, not hirethem, or B, they'll hire them and
pay them like twice as much asthey're paying their US workers.
In effect, it doesn't do what it'ssupposed to do, put it that way.
I think if we had a workable wagedatabase that was actually accurate
it does have a good intent behindit, but it just doesn't work.

And so you also teach HR professionals about immigration.
What are the common misconceptionsthey hold about, the process or
any individuals that might reallyhurt the ability to hire talent?

This kind of comes back to you shouldn't need me, but you do.
One of the things I tell themis, before you hire anybody.
We have certain questions youcan ask without violating any
discrimination laws about whetheror not the person needs sponsorship.
So before you hire somebody, come tome and I have them give me the resume,
the job description, and the salary.

(18:03):
We also have a short questionnaire.
We ask anybody who says they needsponsorship to fill out so I can make
sure there's a visa that works becausethere's a lot of times where they
wanna hire somebody and say, I'm sorry.
There's just nothing wecan do for that person.
So that's the first thing Itell HR people is just talk to
me before you extend an offer.
And that, and it's also comes toeducating them on what can be done

(18:24):
for people and what the costs are.
A lot of times they don'trealize how much this costs.
And I find myself in many occasions,talking them out of hiring somebody
because the costs are so high, they'renot gonna be able to keep them for long.
The chances are low that theircase is gonna get approved.
I think just having an open dialoguewith an immigration attorney is
probably the first thing they can learn.

And so everybody pays, right?
So the worker is in this place ofuncertainty for sometimes years.
The businesses have to pay all these feesand they're stuck in this uncertainty.
Am I gonna have this person?
Am I not?
this is, none of this couldactually help businesses, right?
There's no upside to this.
Is there?

no.
There really isn't.
And we have people whoaren't selected the lottery.
These students, some ofthese are PhDs from Stanford.
I had a situation with one of my biotechclients several years ago where the
individual just didn't get the h. Shehad been here in F1 after her PhD, so
she had to move back to, I think theymoved her to Hong Kong where they had an
office, opened a lab there for her, andthen hired all the lab workers in Hong

(19:27):
Kong that they would've hired in theUS if she could run her lab in the us.
But because she could not get adegree or could not get an H one B,
we couldn't, she couldn't work here.
So those are some of the things, whatwe're seeing now with the current
administration, there is somethingcalled an Extraordinary Ability
visa that we use for a lot of thesescientists and highly trained workers.
And we're seeing U-S-C-I-S crackdown on those and say, this

(19:50):
person isn't extraordinary, or.
This work is not the national interest.
Under Biden there was a sort ofstreamlined approach to this, what
we call a national interest waiverwhich is a green card application
for people in the STEM fields.
And basically if you could prove thatyour work was the national interest and
you had a PhD in the STEM field, it wasan expedited route to this green card.

(20:12):
I filed one for somebody who has a PhDin chemical engineering and he's worked
at a biotech company for many years.
He has whole departments reportingto him and they just said he
wasn't extraordinary enough.
So in the last 12 months, we'veseen this national interest waiver
applications go down the tubes as well.
I think the Biden administrationhad the interest of promoting the

(20:33):
economy and promoting innovationand entrepreneurship in mind.
I don't know what the currentadministration has in mind, honestly.

I've heard people say that before.

Yeah.
That was about as diplomaticas I could put it, right?

That was nice.
I like that diplomacy.
So in regards to what you kinda mentioned,like the different, graduates that
are getting specific degrees, you seesome that are outside of the STEM that
people should or could focus more on

I think particularly with your entrepreneurs now, some
business schools, and I do work with,a business school here in the Bay Area.
Many of the top tier business schoolshave been able to get their programs
designated as STEM programs with abusiness degree, which is fantastic.
'cause then their graduatesget that three years.
But I'm not sure how long that will last.
I'm always scared to point out thegood things because somebody will

(21:23):
listen to this and shut 'em down.
But, if that changes, I think we havea real hole for entrepreneurs and
we had an international entrepreneurrule that was so complicated and
convoluted that immigration attorneysjust wouldn't even touch it.
But we need something for the peoplewho are building the economy and
our entrepreneurs out there, thatmay not have a STEM degree but
are still, fantastic individualswho are going to contribute jobs.

(21:49):
I think everything should begeared towards job creation.
And there are many visas thathave been but it's not the
way the economy works now.
So we need an economist to come inand say, how can we simulate the
US economy through immigration?

Tell me a little bit about the penalties.
Certainly if you're here undocumented,particularly in areas like
construction or farming or servicelevel jobs, and you're undocumented.
There isn't that big of a penalty.
They keep on doing it.
I happen to live in Florida.
It's one of the few states thatmandate, like E-Verify to hire people.

(22:27):
But when it comes to legal,immigration, people going through
this process, what's the downsideto a business saying, ah, screw it.
We're just going to keep this person here.
We're just gonna keepgoing in this process.

It's a, that's a complicated question.
There are a number of differenttypes of penalties based on that.
If you had somebody who was an H one Band you knew that their h had expired
and you didn't care, you just hired them.
You have the basic i nine penalties.
But then you have, if there's aknowing violation you can attach
even criminal penalties, not only thecompany, but to the HR representative.
So there are a number of different itdepends on what the degree of malicious.

(23:03):
Intent was as to whatyour penalties could be.
But the simple I nine penaltiesquite frankly are not that high.
I don't have them in front of me, butwe're talking hundreds of thousands
of dollars, which is a drop in thebucket for a lot of these companies.
I think the bigger issue and I thinkyou might be reading these reports
and I'm not like, these are notusually my type of clients 'cause I'm

(23:24):
working with more, people who are.
Doing highly skilled workers and theydon't have a lot of undocumented workers.
But you'll look at these.
I just read an article in New YorkTimes yesterday about a meat processing
plant in, I think it was IL or somewherethat had been rated and lost 70% of
the workforce who was using E-Verify.
So you know this, and in the owner ofthe company has always been Republican.

(23:48):
He voted, he actually voted in2024 for Democrat because of the
potential impact on his workersfor these immigration wa raids.
And he's gonna have to shut downbecause he is lost 70% of his workforce.
So that I think is what has a lotof those type of employers running.
Scared is not so much the penaltiesthey'll face, but if they're rated,

(24:09):
what's gonna happen to their workforcebecause they rely on those workers.

Yeah.
Makes sense.
You're talking about the scale, someof the companies just describe that.
Is there certain companies that are justdemoralized by all of this happening
and that have to have current employershere that just simply cannot go and
find any immigrants to come over?

Again, these really aren't the clients I'm working for.
But I think if you look in therestaurants and the agricultural
fields, manufacturing, that's whereyou're gonna see the hardest hit.
I'm very close to Napa Valley and I thinkthat, you're gonna see a lot of these
agricultural workers in Napa be affected.
I think the fear is a really big part of
What's happening now.

(24:50):
There are certain companies or certain.
I know wineries people just don'tshow up 'cause they're scared
that ICE is gonna show up there.
There's all sorts of websites thattrack where ICE is and people are
scared to go into those communitieswhere they know ICE is going to be.
And, on a personal level I see thesekids, these high school kids, or I have
high school children, but these kidswho are scared about their parents being

(25:14):
deported, what is that gonna do to me?
That's a whole othersector from what I do.
But I think what, my employers and myclients are facing is how are we gonna
get the talent we need and how do wecontinue to be innovative and develop
the drugs that we wanna develop or,come up with these new technologies
without the best and the brightest.
And America's starting to soundlike a place that doesn't welcome

(25:36):
the best and the brightest.

It's not, it's something I had from a personal.
Somebody in my life was that their visawas through their employer and in a
way, she was trapped with the employer.

Yes.

So tell me about that.
And what are some of the downsidesto having this employee based

Yeah.
That's hard, it's almost indenturedservitude because you get hired
by this employer and the lifecycle of a foreign worker.
They're hired maybe as astudent with that OPT and then
they get they H one B lottery.
They work with the employer.
Now they can go work for another employer.
But that new employer has to do the hagain, they don't have to go through the

(26:18):
lottery, but they have to pay all thoseridiculous fees we just talked about.
So that's what they have todo if they leave companies.
Now, the scary part for themis what if they get laid off?
They don't have a job anymore.
They essentially have a 60 daygrace period to find a new job
without having to leave the us.
Which, if you're a senior levelperson, that's just not easily done.

(26:40):
So that's very scary.
And then, the other side of this isthat if they wanna stay here past
that six years, so you get a totalof six years in H one B status.
If you wanna stay here, if you starthaving kids here and you develop
your professional network here.
You have to have the company file agreen card for you and you talk about
archaic, where, I could get into that.

(27:00):
But that's where the companyhas to recruit and prove there's
a shortage of US workers.
And they have all these thingsthey have to do, these recruitment
steps they have to take.
One of which is putting two Sundaynewspaper ads, which if you'll go pick
up a Sunday newspaper, the Chronicleor wherever you are, New York Times
has them, I would say 80% of thosenewspaper help wanted ads are for

(27:24):
the green card process for a foreignnational, because they have to be done.
No, I'm serious because Iknow what they look like.
We have to write 'em a certain wayso I can pick up the newspaper.
I'm like that's a perma.
That's a perma.
That's a perma.
So they have to go out andrecruit for this position.
And then once they go through this.
Really two year process of just gettingthe thing on file or getting it approved.

(27:45):
They have more steps.
They have to wait for a green cardnumber to come up because we have only a
certain number of green cards per year.
Like we have H one Bs per year.
So they're waiting and waitingand the whole time they're
stuck with that employer.
They do get to a certain pointvery far in the process where they
could change employers, but it'syears and years down the line.
So now that they've had this employerfile for them and spend all this

(28:07):
money and get this approved to acertain point, they're still stuck
with that employer and that job.
That job has to remainedsomewhat the same.
You can allow for a little bit of careerprogression, but if you get hired as a.
Analyst and now you'rerunning the whole department.
That's a completely different job and youneed now a whole new recruitment process
and proving shortage and all of that.

(28:27):
So that's where it gets really bad.
And that's where you really talkabout the indenture servitude.
'cause these employees have to stay withthe same employer for so many years.

And she couldn't like at some point in the process, like she
wasn't allowed to leave the UnitedStates for years, and then she needed all
these like invasive like medical tests.
And I'm like, oh, come on.
Is that real?

yeah.
We have to, they have to do medical exams.
There's a certain period of time wherethey can't leave because of certain
paperwork we're filing if they don'thave an underlying non-immigrant visa.
I find it hilarious that we'vegot, this health and human services
secretary who doesn't want vaccines,but our four nationals have to have
three COVID vaccines and everythingelse under the sun before they
can become a green card holder.

(29:09):
So it's, yeah, it is a very long, veryexpensive process from start to finish.
Just to give you an idea on the, and thisis something that shocks a lot of people
for these employment-based green cards.
So if you're being sponsored byan employer and you don't have a
family member to sponsor you wehave that, I think it's 144,000
per year only for green cards.

(29:30):
And it's broken down by country ofbirth and your preference category.
And so the country of birth was thatwe wanted to have a diverse country.
So we don't want one single countryto, to have all the green cards, right?
So the countries with the highestdemand have the longest waits.
So if you're from China, for example,right now the visa bullets and
that we get every month, if you'refrom China actually India's worse.

(29:54):
So if you're from India you couldbe waiting 12 years for a grain card
If your employer sponsors you.
Yeah.

whoa.

So it's, it's just a crazy system.
And it also seems very unfair.
'cause you're from India and you wait12 years, but if you were born in
Pakistan, you wait a year and a half.
And that's all based on demand.
That's the whole point.
And there's been a lot of differentproposals in Congress to eliminate
the per country limitations.
None of which have succeeded.

(30:24):
Nothing succeeds in Congress aboutimmigration anymore, but this one has
been one that a lot of people haveadvocated for, to make it more fair.
But yeah it's definitely a broken system.

Just dancing around that for a second.
The latest federal spendingbill had major fee increases.
Do you see any of these rising coststhroughout the system affecting
more Visa business sponsorships?

Yeah, the Visa fees went up dramatically.
In 2024, there was a new fee increase.
And we have now we have a $600 asylumfee that's added on to every single
case we file 300 if you're from a smallemployer that has less than 26 employees.
That was completely new.
That was supposedly to fundthe asylum program, and this
is just for H one B workers.

(31:06):
And then the fees themselves wentup, I think 70% for an H one B. So
the fees have gone up dramatically.
Like I said, a lot of theseemployers really need these people.
So that Delta was not enough todissuade them just from the filing
fees when you're talking H one Bs.
But, I think the fees justincredibly start to get more and
more unbearable as things progress.

Yeah.

it's expensive.

Yep.

fees go?
Do they fund what is it, the U-S-C-I-Sor what, or they just go into the ether?

So the, there's a filing fee that's supposed to just fund the
cost of adjudicating the petition.
U-S-C-A-S is supposedly self-sufficient.
It's supposed to generate its own fees.
Then there's a fee, there's a $500fraud fee, which is what it's called.
And that goes to this FDNSunit, which is fraud detection,
national security, I think.
And they go out actually, andthis is a very active unit.

(31:59):
They go out to employers and willsay, okay, you filed an H one B
petition on behalf of Joe Schmo.
I wanna talk to Joe Schmo andmake sure he's doing what you
said he did in the petition.
And I've had many of my clients havebeen visited by those fraud officers
and that $500 fee funds that department.
We've never had a problem with the fraudofficers because as I'm lucky to have

(32:19):
clients who are actually employing peoplein the capacity that they say they are.
And then there's a $1,500 educationretraining fee that is supposed
to go back into US education.
I've never, really tracked that fundthat's part of the H one B fees.
But that was the intent of thatwas let's educate US workers so
they can do these jobs that we'regetting forward workers to do.

(32:41):
And that's actually one of mypersonal feelings about the whole
process is that we do need to lookat our education system because we're
not churning out the science, theemployees that our employers need.
So there should be a better lookat our education systems and.
I can get on my high horse, Californiaand its schools and how expensive it is
to go to the California universities andhow hard it is to get into a University

(33:05):
of California or even a Cal State School.
They need to look at giving more moneyto education here in the us for sure.

Or at least doing it correctly.

Yes.

Yeah,

Yeah.

lot of money.
I mean that, that was whyDave, me and Dave asked that
question once in an episode.
Where's the money going?

Oh, it is a, it's a, and let's trace it.
I'd love to see where,all those H one B fees go.
Yeah.
Our government is really good aboutbeing transparent in immigration.
Let me tell you that.

Oh, the best we're number one for sure.
So if you had to sum this up,you can do it delicately or not.
What is working, isthere a portion of this?
You're like, man, we're crushing it here.
We're doing really great.

I think one of my frustrations with H one Bs, and again,
I keep coming back to those 'causeit really is 70 to 80% of what we do.
One of my frustrations with those hasbeen the way they change the adjudication
standards without any sort of lawmaking.
They just say, Nope, that doesn'tcount as a specialty occupation.
When they had more lax standardsabout those H one Bs, it did work.

(34:09):
And when we didn't have this lotterysystem for H one Bs, it did work because
like I said, when companies can hire a USworker and not pay these fees, they will,
and having those, even those inflatedsalary surveys, just having some sort
of salary protection on there, it works.
What I think would work better is somesort of point system where we can look

(34:30):
at, and, other countries do this, wherewe look at the individual's education,
we look at, not if it's a. Bachelor'sdegree, but look at a points, look at
how long they've worked in the industry.
Look at, how, what is theirimpact gonna be on the US economy.
Like some sort of point system wherewe capture it in a different way.
I think that could really work.

(34:50):
I think the NIW, the streamlined MIWs for cases where people really are
doing important work, we need that back.
We need some sort of way to get thesecases approved for people who are
generating money and jobs for Americans.
So that was a really

No,
Brilliant.

flaky response because there's not too much
that's working great right now.

you gave me a good segue because looking at Canada's point
based immigration system, maybe you know,Australia's regional programs where it's
easier to immigrate to underpopulatedareas, you feel like that would be a
very relevant thing to make a shift into.

I do.
And I'm definitely on themoderate side of immigration.
There are people who feel likewe should have open borders and
I don't think we can do that.
I want common sense immigrationreform, but it should make sense with
balancing the needs of US workersagainst what we need to remain relevant
the world economy and innovative.
I think that we're, especially, wehaven't really talked about this,

(35:52):
but the recent crackdown on Americanuniversities from the current
administration we're gonna lose our bestand brightest of the university setting.
And I think that's thebeginning of the end to me.

Yeah.
Valid.
Talking about that.
'cause I'm a huge educational guy.
If you could the student toworker transition process.
What type of pathway would that look like?
Or how would that kind ofbe reformatted, Melissa?

I think what would be great is to have some of these
workers work under this, like whatwe call OPT and be required to do OPT
before they transition to H but nothave them worry about the lottery.
So if they had.
Three years of work experienceunder OPT, then they didn't have
to go into the lottery because thenyou can have employers really try

(36:39):
'em out and make sure that they'rereally somebody they wanna invest in.
Because if, and I have this happenall the time, where somebody will
say, the company will say we hiredthis person, but they're just not
cutting it, so we're gonna lay 'em off.
So give them a chance to train them andfigure out if they are worth it before
they sponsor them for H one B, butdon't have it be this fear-based system

(36:59):
where I better sponsor them or they'llnever get a chance to work with me.

Yep.
And for universities watchinginternational enrollment drop, do you have
any creative approaches within currentlaw that could help retain graduates?

I also am, and this may not be popular, but I do think it has to be
balanced number of foreign students too.
I do think especially our publicinstitutions that you set a realistic.
Level for how many foreignstudents you're gonna accept.
And then you work withyour budget that way.
'cause I think that's been frustration inthe uc system is that there was a point
in time where there were so many foreignstudents and that California student

(37:35):
kids weren't getting into these schools.
So I think you have to look at that,but I think that maybe the federal
level, the federal government comesup with a, percentage for how many
J ones and F ones you can give out.
And then we're gonna make upthat shortfall in the budget
with federal funding, in yourbudget for whatever you need.

(37:55):
And then they get the best, thebrightest for those students.
But, you also need to developpathways for us kids to, to get
into those institutions as well.
It's a broken, we get a whole, Icould do a whole podcast with you on
getting your children into college.
'cause I just went into that and howbroken that system is because the.

We'll have to get back.

That is a mess.
Let me tell you now.

I will say the only, and I can only speak from two states the
only two states, and then we'll probablyget back into the general topic, but the
only two states that I know of that do itcorrectly, from my current knowledge, and
Georgia do a great job on a state baseof the Hopes program and dual enrollment,
Where, you know, you go to high schooland you go to a free dual enrollment

(38:40):
program with a community college.
And when you're in that communitycollege, that counts for high school
and college credits without taking anylike honors or AP or anything like that.
So when you graduate high school.
If you already have two years of collegedone the ability, once you've done a
dual enrollment in Florida or Georgia,to get into a college, at least for me,
again my SAT scores is like a nine 30.

(39:02):
I'm a, have a nine, I have a 97 iq.
I do I've taken tests, it's whatever.
But I went right into Universityof Florida, top 10, college,
business school in the nation.
there was some that do it correctly.
But to your point, youhave to be in that state.
You have to live in that state, youhave to go to school in that state.

(39:22):
Good grades in that state.
So there's a lot of aspectsthat do approach that.
But I really enjoy kinda like whatyou mentioned in the sense of there
should be some type of system approachwhere you have US based students,
obviously international based studentsobviously, but if the internationals
do wanna stay here, get visas,get working, visas working into a
transition, like just having that be.

(39:45):
Grade related, right?
Like how do they do,how do their scores do?
What
Do?
What type of jobs are they trying to get?
And then making theemployment so much easier.
'cause that kind of blows mymind a little bit, that a company
can sponsor someone and they'rein India and it takes 12 years.
That's like the fourth of someone's life.

Yes.
To get a green card.

already said, yes, let's do this.

I think getting back to the student I mean I think that's
where the system is broken right nowis that you do have this connection
between the schools and the employers.
We bring in these foreign studentsand we bring in a lot of them and we
bring 'em in to get educated here.
So when we're bringing 'em in toget educated here, there needs to

(40:30):
be a pathway for them to stay andimplement that education, right?
So that's why the federal government, insome ways does need to get involved in
the students and how many they're bringingover are they just bringing 'em over?
'cause they can pay full tuition.
'cause a lot of schools.
The foreign students pay more, right?
So they make a lot of moneyoff the foreign students.
Bring 'em over but then there'sgonna be no pathway for them to stay.

(40:52):
It creates this friction right there.
So that's where there needs to be.
If you are brought into a US school andyou are in that top percent to be at that
institution, then I feel like there shouldbe a way for you to stay here and work in
the us But let's not bring over, I don'teven know the numbers, but 10 million
foreign students and only have a pathwayfor 85,000 of them to stay, every year.

(41:15):
That's where I feel like the breakdownhappens is that these students
come in with the feeling that onceI graduate from here, I can stay.
Or maybe that's made clear thatthey can't, from the outset,

yeah.
That's a topic of immigration that I.Definitely know that not a lot of people
are discussing right now, which I'm sohappy to have you on this podcast for.
Because again, right now, especiallywith the Trump administration and it's
all about alligator Alcatraz and theundocumented and the asylum seekers.
But to that point, is a hugeportion that's affected by

(41:45):
totally different aspects.
We're like, Hey, listen, I'm working.
I pay taxes.
I'm a student.
I'm here.
I'm spending money in this economy.
I'm spending money in this country.
I have a job, I work here,and I can't even get it.
I can't stay in.
That is definitely a wild broach.
So I don't think people areeven really truly discussing.

And expanding on that from the business students I talked to,
there's some people, these individualswith these amazing ideas and they
say to me, I wanna start a business.
I've got funding.
Can I hire myself for H one B?
We have some rules that are makingit a little easier on them, but
not great.
And it is hard.
So let's have a way for them when they'restarting a new business after graduating

(42:27):
from a top five business school forthem to be able to start it and try it.
And let's see what happens.
Maybe it's a short term, you geta five-year visa at a tryout your
business, but let's figure out away if we're gonna bring 'em in, and
they're these amazing people to have'em stay if they're gonna come here.

yeah.
'Cause you talked about, theentrepreneurship route and potentially
that having some different applicationprocess or awareness process point system.
It makes sense to me.
be beyond federal reform, Melissa,and we're talking about schools too.
I was like, what can states and cities do?
Actually to help businessesaccess global talent,

Quite frankly, there's not a lot they can do because
immigration law is all federal.
So to get these visas, they'rereally working on the federal.
I have a lot of great employers who aredoing things like helping the people
on DACA transition from DACA into an Hone B. Really trying to look at their
workforce with a holistic view ofhow can we help some of these people,

(43:29):
asylum seekers, and maybe helpingwith some of their fees or whatever.
Because a lot of these people who arein that other bucket I talked about
are actually working at companiesin lawful status, but they're just
in this very transitory phase.
I do encourage employers to lookat sort of ways to be helpful to
your foreign national workforceother than just sponsorship.

Yeah.
And for the small businesses,Melissa, like small business owners
who needs international talent, butfears the system, what are three
practical steps that they couldtake this week, in your opinion?

That's a really good question.
I do work with a lot ofsmall employers who are very.
They're so nervous about doing it aboutsponsoring somebody for H one B, and I
think the first thing I do is say that'susually a student that they've hired
that they wanna get an H one B for, andI just lay out the costs and say, you
just have to know these are the costs andthese are what you could be sacrificing.

(44:24):
And as long as they're willingto do that then we go forward.
And it's just honestly, find a partnerwho will, an immigration partner who will
explain everything to you very clearlyand simply about what happens next.
And it's hard to understand, but walk youthrough the whole process because that's
what we need with those smaller employers.
I do encourage all my employersto sign up for E-Verify.

(44:45):
I know it's.
It's not the best system, but itdoes show a good faith approach
to following the immigration laws.
So I think E-Verify is definitely useful.
Again, not perfect.
And then I think another thing that youwould wanna look at are some of the,
causes you can help in your community.
There are a lot of different, there's agroup I work with called Talent Beyond

(45:07):
Boundaries, and they help bring inhighly skilled workers who are working.
You might have an engineer that'sin a Syrian basement that would
like to do, electrical engineeringsomewhere very qualified, so they try
to match them up with us employers.
Look at ways like that to find talentwhere you can't find American workers.
So being a little creative andthere are a lot of great ways

(45:28):
you can help for nationals andstill help your business succeed.

And then from a, let's just say even bigger front, right?
So we talked about the small guys.
If American businesses uniteon one immigration, ask
Congress, what should it be?

I think it would be to give us a workable work visa that
captures like a point-based work visa.
I think if they could, revisit the Hone B with today's economy, today's
professions, like there are a lot ofprofessions now that do allow for a
number of different bachelor's degrees.
The bachelor's degree is aantiquated requirement in my mind.

(46:09):
Looking at your work visa andlook at it more of a point system.
And then, the lottery, makingthe lottery more equitable.
People like the individual who's beenthrough nine times, there should be some
sort of allowance given to people the moretimes they've gone through the lottery.
I don't know.
I think we can just really revisitthe work visa at this point.

So I think it was in previous episodes that we've had.
We also know that, so much ofthis is geared towards college
yet where we need to be doing.
Probably most of the hiring in the UnitedStates is in blue collar professions.
And by and large, the electricians,the concrete workers, the people
who are actually building.
Are from outside of this country.

(46:51):
So what does point-based system mean?
How does that work?
Does it say, oh, youhave a bachelor's degree?
Yes.
Or you have a, high skillset.
Yes.
What does point-based mean?

I like those examples because I do think that there's points
for different occupations that we need.
We need more nurses, we need more,a simple nurse cannot get an H
one B, so we need things thataccommodate non four year degrees.
So part of that point systemcould be based on what's the
need for that occupation.

(47:23):
And every year there could be some sortof indexing of where are the occupations
that are unfilled by US workers?
And those get an extra point.
So you could bring in people in,because that's another complaint I
have a lot, like maybe it's somebodythat's just an exceptional, very
exceptional sales, for example.
And this person's sales, like that'sprobably my most common need is

(47:46):
that a lot of these companies, thisguy's been selling for me from.
From abroad, and his salesnumbers are through the roof.
I wanna bring him into theUS and I'm like, no, I can't
get a visa for a sales guy.
No way.
No how so maybe past performance orincome or, there's just some allowance
for a lot of different factors besidesthat just being your educational degrees.

I am sure AI could track that somewhere, Dave, easily.
It could be some relativelysimple database, but again, it'd
be a good opportunity as wellabout built out and tracked and
measured because that'd be cool.
Kinda like the credit system,which is also totally broken,
but it's the least trackable.
People can log in and see what's going on.

I, I'm at large.
I'm not a fan of people from theoutside coming in to run the government.
Thinking they know morethan everybody else.
But that said, I do think there's ways youcould privatize some of this, to start a
system using real world common sense abouthow to make the immigration system work.

Yeah, totally.
That's that's a huge blue oceanof opportunity in my opinion.
Just especially, and the conversationwe had last podcast was about the forms
and and helping, all the documentationneeds to happen for the undocumented
immigrants who are trying to come inand they just, they've already been here
for sec seven years and they feel right.

(49:08):
Just go through this whole process,like, how can we speed up everything
And give the ability for lawyers to, or.
Judges to just see things so much faster,articulate things, so much faster,
document things so much faster, becomeaware of the problem, the solutions so
much quicker, turn days into minutes usingsome AI scanning tools, logging tools,

(49:29):
metric tools, things of that nature.
Again, probably we privatize, butultimately is just still a product that
right now would be extremely helpful.

Yeah I mean with, so my role with our National Lawyers
Association was with I was head of thegovernment collaboration subcommittee
of the technology innovation.
And so I worked with U-S-C-I-Sand some of the stupid stuff
that we're doing right now.
So we, when I file an H one B petition,I can file it online now, but if I

(49:57):
file an H one B work thing online, Ican't use my private case management
system that I use to get all theinformation from these people securely.
I can't use that data and hook it upto U-S-C-I-S right now, there is no
there's no way to connect those two.

Crazy.

I wanna file something electronically, I have to input the
data myself or my team does, right?
So much data.
So I don't file petitions electronically.
Now, some firms have worked around thisand used done their own sort of API
to make it work that USAS doesn't wantthem doing, but they have done that.
But USAS hasn't created APIs thatwe can use with our private system.

(50:38):
So then we have to inputeverything manually.
So that means I am stillsending paper applications
into U-S-C-I-S, which is giant.
And the way, my team is all, we all are.
We work.
In various places around the country.
So we upload, we have PDFs, everythingstored securely, and then what we
have to do is print that PDF, putit in a FedEx mailer, mail it to

(51:00):
USAS, and then U-S-C-I-S has a teamof people scanning in our paper.
Okay?
So my question was, why can't youlet us upload that PDF until you
have an API where our databasescan talk, let us upload that you
get to fire all your scanners.

(51:22):
I get to save paper and,environmental costs of the shipping.
And they promise us that by the endof fiscal year 2024 has not happened.
Has not happened.
We cannot upload an application yet.
So that's tiny.
That's a tiny idea of how badU-S-C-I-S is, they need to be.

(51:44):
U-S-C-I-S could be completelycleared out as far as I'm concerned
and start it over again, but,

And it's an extraordinarily simple change, right?
Like a, a tech team couldput that together in no time.
Even with archaic systems.
I know this because I did governmentcomputer work and I know how bad
those systems are, but somethinglike accepting A PDF and then, but
because they have to scan it backinto some system anyways is bonkers.
We had a guest last week that, for hiswife they had to take physical photos

(52:14):
down to an office of their wedding toprove that they had gotten married.
And it was like I don't evenknow where to print photos.
What would I do?
What is this?

Yeah.

it, you've been doing this for 25 years.
25 years from now, whatwould you say we got right?
And what would you say we got wrong?

You mean where do I see it going the next 25 years

i.

Yeah.
I don't know.
I'm scared to answer that question becauseI think we're all very scared about the
practice of immigration law in general.
One thing, and this isn't really tothe government, but we're all very
scared of what AI is gonna do toimmigration law because, there's,
immigration is incredibly complex.
People think I just fill outa form and that's all I do.

(53:02):
But there are so manynuances to what we do.
If what we see is that kind of the dumbingdown of immigration law where people are
going to be getting in trouble 'causethey're doing things through AI and
not understanding all the implications.
So that's one that's looking at morethe practice of immigration law.
But then in terms of what I see,our country right now is being fed

(53:23):
so many, lies about immigration.
And I think what my goal is for peopleto get out of this is read the facts
on what immigration does for oureconomy, how they're not replacing us
workers, the e the economic benefits,the taxes that immigrants pay.
All of these positives aboutimmigration, our country.

(53:43):
Rich history with immigration.
We are a nation of immigrants.
And the last really bigamnesty program was by Ronald
Reagan, a Republican, in 1986.
And there were a lot of positivesout of that 1986 amnesty including my
best friend who's now a US citizen,because she was unlawful back in 1986.
No, but there's just the, for theAmerican people to get the truth

(54:07):
because I think particularly in someareas of the country people feel
like immigrants are taking away theirjobs, and that's simply not the case.
And so I think that is more whatI wanna shout from the rooftops
is get the facts out there.
Read about the economic benefits ofimmigration and how can we do this right.

Yeah.
And again, I think we blend bothimmigration challenges together in
the same bucket far too often aswell, just from a media standpoint.
If you go to a county fair andstart talking to people about
immigration, they think it's justpeople coming across the borders.
They're not even thinking about thearea where you're in or the corporations

(54:47):
you're in, their business you're in.
We're like, Hey, we're hiring talent andit's a large number of people and we need
that talent 'cause we're growing, right?
The country's growing.
And to surmise it, for me, it reallycomes down to almost an abundance versus
scarcity mindset where you'll hear thatin books, you'll hear that in programs or
like your random woowoo Instagram channel.

(55:09):
But if we really think aboutthe abundance approach.
We're saying is there's more than enough.
There's more than enough to go around.
There's plenty.
And if we approach it from thescarcity of there's not enough, we
need to shrink, we need to close,we need to be scared, we need to
be worried, we need to be panicked.
There's not enough jobs.
AI's gonna take everything.
Everyone's gonna fight tooth to nail.
That's a scarcity mindset, right?

(55:30):
There isn't a post abundance, postscarcity world coming too, where
everyone has more than enough.
Everyone has opportunities like thatalso exists, and it's gonna require
some level of just bigger thinking.
And I really like that approach.
So where it's like, Hey, listen,this is adding to our economy
and the best way is imaginable.
That's what created this country after wesettled it, in the ginormous open gate of

(55:54):
all the immigrations that we allowed inthe late 18 hundreds, early 19 hundreds.
And that's what caused this countryto become massive, incredible, just
this generous, overflowing cornucopiaof the world's largest economy.
We brought everyone together andwe had that abundant mindset.
We didn't fall into the scarcity, intothe beliefs that there's not enough.

And that said I wouldn't go so far to say open borders, but we need
a common sense approach and we do need tothink about the job market in particular,
as being, we just want it bigger.
We want it bigger and bigger.
And the more opportunities wecreate, the better off we are.
And so far, I would say over my 25years, I feel like immigration has been
a limiting factor for economic growth.

(56:37):
Particularly, everything I've seenwhen I started back in 2000, it's
like everything's gotten worse.
There's nothing where I can say,oh, this has gotten so much better.
I feel like everything has gotten worse.
That's where you, when you ask meto go 25 years in the future, I'm
like, how much worse can I get?

Yeah.
We need to make some changes now.
We hope that this podcastwill at least inspire a few
thousand people to do just that.
Not only make that change,make that shift, but be aware
create maybe new policies.
As you mentioned, take somethingfrom the private sector, bring
into the governmental sector justin case it can speed up processes.

(57:13):
We've used the word archaic way too much.
We shouldn't be using it this much.
It is 20, 25.
PDFs shouldn't be mailed intoanything, anywhere, ever again.
especially for someone's livelihood,

Yep.

right?
For someone's life.
You mentioned families, children,jobs, like that's really what this is.
This is economy.
This is growing.
It does not, should not need wordarchaic shouldn't be here anymore.
And I just wanna motivate and encourageeveryone who's here and everyone who's
listening, we have opportunities.
They're all around us.

(57:48):
We just have to look for them.
We have to find them.
And Melissa, thank you for sharingyour wealth of knowledge, your
excitement, your details about thistopic, and giving us a glimmer of not
only hope, but just also solutions.
Easy implications, easy applicationsthat can be upgraded, updated, and
changed to make this a better, faster,quicker, more efficient process.

Thanks, Jerremy.
It was a pleasure to talk to youand Dave and I look forward to
your resolution of this crisis.

Thank you, Melissa.
Awesome guest.
Very informative, verysmart, great talker.

Yeah.

A lot of good content.
Was able to carry a lot of stuff for us.
You asked amazing questions.

this whole thing has surprised me.
What did you learn?

You know the part that intrigues me.
Is that as a country of this size, wedo just have such mundane processes
that I'm just trying to figure out why.
I know that's why Elon was like,listen, I'm just gonna come in, throw

(58:53):
a couple hundred million dollars.
I'm gonna create the Department ofGovernment efficiency and poof, we'll
have a more effective government.
And that dude who freakingblows up rockets and was
like, nah, that's too hard.
Let's make 'em sit.
Let's make 'em come back to the sameplanet, the same launch launching pad.
Let's reuse a rocket over and over.

(59:14):
guy was like, nah, this is too tough.

This,

Where is this?

The guy who builds all of these incredible businesses
launches things into space like anactual rocket scientist built brand
new cars, tunnels under the ground.
The government broke him.

Yeah,

yeah,

in three months.
And yeah, man, I'm just like that.
Why are we doing it in such a backend?
1947, our girl, Melissa's a 25-year-oldtop tier attorney for huge, mega
businesses and is mailing in documentationthat her team is running down by hand

(59:53):
because she needs to get people's visasso they can have jobs, so they can
support their family, so they can spend.
Thousands of dollars a year on thesestupid taxes that we're probably just
throwing away at people for no reason.
That's what I'm learning, man.
I'm excited to fix and update a lotof these challenges and problems
because I know it's possible.
I know it's doable and it's justconnecting with, I love that she
said the word, the private market.

(01:00:15):
I am on the exact opposite end ofthat discussion where I think the
privatized sector is where we'veprobably fixed most of the government.
And I don't believe that thegovernment shouldn't be people that
are not probably a double negative.
They should be filled with peoplewho did come from the private
sector, who just were citizens.
We're like, Hey, I've donesome really cool things.

(01:00:35):
Now my money's figured out.
For the most part, I'm not gonnatake a bunch of money from other
countries or corporations orcompanies to make my lifestyle better.
'cause that's obviously illegaland I shouldn't be doing that.
So I'm just gonna be a publicservant and just make this stuff
run better and quicker, efficient.
My job is to literally sit down andfigure how to solve this problem
within this domain that I'm focused on.

(01:00:57):
I do not think that immigration shouldbe as federally overwhelming as it is.
I think I've mentioned that before.
I think there should be otherdepartments, other governments, other
efficiencies that should also be handlingthat where it's not the deporter in
chief, Obama, or it's not Trump whoare like, this is not the way it is.
And now I have the 16th largestmilitary in the world ICE all this.

(01:01:19):
And we're not spending timeto make it quicker, more
efficient and less militaristic.
And that just seems weird to me.
And this is a very fascinating topic.
And again, it is one of the ones to meand many of them have been for sure.
But this is one where I'm like, wow.
Wow.
We wow.
It affects so many people, soblatantly every single day.
yes, education and my main componentdoes affect people daily, but it's

(01:01:44):
also gonna be something that'sgonna be longer term effects, right?
Like when you study.
Taxes and we study the stock market.
When we study money and we study financeand we study health, those are effects
that do prolong themselves, right?
They take weeks, months, maybe even years,but this is one that's been affecting
people for decades and will continue toaffect people for decades, but affects
people in everyday life right now, ona big scale, no one is seemingly doing

(01:02:10):
anything about it, and it's quite wild.
That's what I learned.
Hand it over.

Dave Conley (01:02:16):
Okay.
What did I learn?
I learned that we spend all ofour time talking about illegal and
alligator alley and deportationsand all of the money goes to that.
Yet this topic, legal,immigration, people wanting jobs.
This should be the number one discussionpoint when it comes to immigration.
it's fear mongering.

(01:02:38):
in comparison to this.
These are people who are building theeconomy, building the next stuff, building
the things that we need in this country.
Pathways to citizenship, pathwaysto, blue collar jobs and the people
who we need to build this country.
I think that this legal immigrationthing needs to be the number one
thing that we're talking about.

(01:02:59):
And in a way, I think thatsolves the undocumented
All of these people are here fora lot of different reasons, but
primarily, we've learned that alot of it's economically driven.
you want to be in the United States.
These are the people who arebuilding our homes and building our

Jerremy Newsome (01:03:16):
Yep.

and harvesting food and all those things.
And so the, this discussionneeds to be about.
Jobs and business and economicsand what's right for America.
And I think that solves theillegal immigration part of this.
So I think that we arefocused on the wrong things.
the second thing I learned is I thinkstates should be pretty involved.

Yeah, dude.
Like
Over here.
So I asked a question and after Iasked, I was like, am I an idiot?

I

for asking that question?
'cause she's right.

bonkers.

federal, but there's no one going into the federal government
from an immigration standpoint.
It's a hundred percentstates that get affected.
That's it.
Who else?

And it's different for.

Each state.

states like Arizona, Texas Florida, California.
There's different needs,different aspects to this.
Like why aren't states sponsoring theseH one visas or they have their own visa?
It's okay, yeah, but yougotta work in California.
Oh, boohoo.
I think would be even more valuableis rural, we've talked about this

(01:04:23):
with housing, like rural communitysponsoring people to be like,
come on in, we got plenty of land.

Yep.

jobs to fill.
It's come on.
We welcome you, rather than the wholeeating our dogs, eating the cats thing.
It's no, come to America and workin our rural hospitals and work in
our, I think states should be deeplyinvolved and there's a disproportionate
impact for states like Texas.
So they're gonna have different,they're gonna have different.
Problems too.

(01:04:50):
And Texas has different problemsthan Florida, even though we both
have a high immigrant population,so states need to be involved.
And then the last part on the solutionthing is that this thing hasn't really
substantively been touched since 1965, andthen again in the eighties and a little
bit, under DACA with President Obama.

(01:05:12):
This thing is a patchwork of mess,mainly designed by special interest,
probably, like being very protectionistand they don't know what left
hand is affecting the right hand.
So that's created this Byzantine thing.
And politicians, which we've said overand over again, know nothing about this.
And the people that do know it.

(01:05:34):
Need to be designing these systems.
Those are business people and thoseare the immigrants themselves.
And we get those two groups togetherin a public private partnership
with saying, okay, are the thingsthat we need to build in America.
These are the social aspects ofthis, and these are the immigrants
and immigrant experiences.
We'd have a really sane immigration plan.

(01:05:54):
We talked about likethe points-based system.
Like I am sure that a sane immigrationplan that isn't open to all the borders
and isn't nobody comes in, come out ofthis because what we have now is, again,
medieval, we're gonna keep saying that.

Team, if this is firing you up as much as it is myself
and Dave Conley, let just promote thisepisode, promote this entire podcast.
Do what you can, and hit uswith those five star reviews.
Listen, if you've got a 14-year-oldson that has a phone, take it from him.
up the podcast, click that fivestar review, write a quick review.
The more reviews, the more stars that weget, the more people that will listen.

(01:06:32):
The bigger the audience.
The bigger the audience, the moresolutions that we will not only
think about, know about, hear about,but we will be able to create.
You can find us, solve USAPod on X or solving America's
Problems podcast Instagram.
We are gonna still be here.
We're gonna continue to pour into you.
Thank you so much for being a listener.
You rock.

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