Ilya Shapiro (no relation) of the Cato Institute has an interesting column detailing the irrational red tape that faces foreign skilled workers seeking to obtain H1-B visas that would allow them to stay in the United States for up to three years, with a later opportunity for renewal. He rightly labels current policy as an "April Fools for skilled workers" - hundreds of thousands of whom found out yesterday that they will have to wait till next year to have even a chance of getting into the US. Although immigrant skilled professionals make obvious contributions to the US economy and are highly unlikely to become welfare cases, current immigration law still prevents all a but a few thousand of them from entering each year - even on a temporary basis. In addition to the costs to the US economy, it's also worth emphasizing the losses to the would-be immigrants themselves - most of whom would have vastly better lives in the US than in their home countries.

When even the conservatives at National Review Online (who are generally highly skeptical about immigrants and immigration) publish an article arguing that a set of immigration restrictions should be loosened, you know that we have a real problem.