Although it's played on uneven political ground, immigration policy is a game governed by classic economic rules, especially by Say's Law, which says supply creates its own demand. With millions of highly qualified, ambitious people in the rest of the world and a few hundred thousand employers in the U.S., many employers would like to have more applicants for the jobs they want to fill. More applicants then will mean the price of labor will fall. On the other hand, there will be more people hired at the lower price.

Whether the new applicants are seeking stoop-labor jobs in California's Central Valley or high-tech jobs in Silicon Valley, the laws of economics dictate the outcome: more immigration. Or, they would, except that the government steps in to manage labor markets to satisfy the desires of some participants at the expense of others.

In no sector is this intervention more common or more important than in the high-tech sector, where U.S. companies seek workers with qualifications in math, physics, chemistry, biology, computer science, computer programming, and engineering (known to Washington analysts and lobbyists as STEM workers, standing for science, technology, engineering, and math).

In search of such workers, American high-tech companies have opened research labs around the world, particularly in Europe, India, and China. They also have lobbied Congress to provide more visas, work permits, and permanent residency for STEM workers coming to the U.S.

The Immigrant Contribution

Last year's election changed immigration politics. A new bipartisan coalition has appeared in favor of legitimizing many of the 11 million or so residents of the U.S. who have no legal right to be here. Very few of the 11 million are STEM workers, but the prospect of a bill dealing with immigration issues has excited lobbyists and employers who focus on opening the door to more foreign STEM workers.

In turn, the STEM lobbyists provide positive feedback to the political system by telling a story that strengthens the movement to deal with all immigration issues: High-skilled immigrants have made America richer.

Think of Samuel Slater, the Englishman who brought the secrets of water-power looms when he moved to America in 1789. Or think of mathematician Michael Brin, who brought Sergey, his six-year-old son and the future co-founder of Google, when he arrived in the U.S. from Russia in 1979.

Often cited by advocates of more immigration, research funded by the Kauffman Foundation on Entrepreneurship estimated that in 2005, immigrant-founded tech companies generated $52 billion in revenue and employed 450,000 workers. The same study found that in the semiconductor sector (computer chips), immigrants founded 35% of start-ups. In Silicon Valley, they founded 52% of start-ups. Further work by the same researchers found that in 2006, foreign nationals residing in the U.S. were named as inventors or co-inventors in one-quarter of patent applications filed from the U.S. with the World Intellectual Property Organization, and that doesn't count inventors who were foreign-born U.S. citizens.

Opportunities for Reform

President Barack Obama put both immigration reform stories together last month: "We will have an economy stifled by deporting folks and a bottlenecked legal system that forces people to work illegally. It prevents us from recruiting and keeping top-flight engineers and tech people who are ready to work here or invest here. But because our legal immigration system is broken, we don't track them. We train them here and then send them back to their countries. The opportunity for reform has never been higher."

Two proposals to increase STEM immigration emerged recently from back rooms for possible consideration by the Senate.

The first is an expansion of the quota for H1B visas, which provide temporary authorization to work in the U.S. for people with "special skills," including but not limited to STEM workers. There are far more applicants than places in most years, and these visas are awarded by lottery.

Although it's not being discussed by lawmakers, the lottery is a bad idea. An auction would improve the process by letting employers bid for the workers that they deem most likely to contribute to their bottom lines.

Another feature of the H1B system also should be a target for reform: The H1B visa entangles the foreign worker with his employer. The foreign worker cannot quit for a better job without losing his visa. It's reminiscent of the reserve clause that held baseball players to one team and held their salaries to tiny fractions of the pay that players receive in the modern free-agent system.

If the high-tech industries and their lobbyists really want to help the U.S. economy grow, if they are really doing anything more than looking for cheap indentured labor, then they should support immigration reform that does away with the H1B reserve clause.

The second proposal that might come to the Senate is astoundingly simple and direct for a piece for federal legislation. Endorsed by President Obama and Mitt Romney, the U.S. would award permanent residency and a path to citizenship to foreigners receiving advanced American university degrees in STEM subjects. (A different version passed in the House but not the Senate late last year.)

Unfortunately, nothing is so simple that politics can't make it complex.

Unfair Trade

In last year's version, the U.S. would make room for 55,000 earners of advanced degrees by cutting 55,000 "diversity visas," otherwise known as the green-card lottery. These visas are for applicants from countries that historically have had low rates of immigration (African and a few Asian countries).

Immigration need not be a zero-sum game. Just adding the new STEM visas to the total would be best. Second-best would be carving the 55,000 out of other visa categories, such as those reserved for "family reunification."

Third-best, the STEM visa is more important than the diversity visa. Immigration should be a tool that the U.S. uses for the benefit of all Americans, both native and recent arrivals. The best way to do that is to give priority to immigrants with the greatest potential for economic success.

Editorial page editor Thomas G. Donlan receives e-mail at