In a free nation, businesses are FREE to hire whom they wish.

Coming soon to the Conspiracy, historical facts that support the thesis that there is no constitutional federal role for controlling immigration, that it was designed by the founders to be a state purview. We will also provide a systematic look at why state control of immigration would give us a better economy.

Here is the opening of the Journal piece:

The Legal Visa Crunch
The Senate bill is worse than current law for skilled immigrants.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

The Senate immigration bill continues to take lumps from all political sides, with some criticisms more deserving than others. The vote last week to halve the size of a guest-worker program for low-skilled workers is a big step in the wrong direction; skimping on visas will only lead to more illicit border crossings. But the bill's handling of high-skilled immigration is even more troubling: The proposed changes are worse than current law.

Ostensibly, the goal here is to move immigration policy away from a system based on family connections and toward one based on skills. The Senate measure calls for a "merit" system that awards points to would-be immigrants based on their education and work experience. But employers who recruit foreign professionals--and aren't too keen on Uncle Sam taking over those duties--are balking at the proposal on grounds that it will introduce all sorts of inefficiencies to their hiring.

U.S. businesses aren't looking for skilled workers in general; they're looking for people with specific skills. And in the high-tech industry especially, where the demand for new products and services is constantly changing, employers need the flexibility to fill critical positions as quickly as possible. The last thing Hewlett-Packard or Texas Instruments needs is uncertainty about whether the workers they want to hire will pass some bureaucratic point test. If the Senate wants the U.S. to keep attracting the world's best and brightest, this bill is an odd way of showing it.

Last month the supply of H-1B temporary visas for foreign professionals not only ran out in one day, but did so six months before the October start of the 2008 fiscal year. It's the fourth straight year that companies have exhausted the supply before the start of the year, which is a clear market signal that the cap should be raised, if not removed.

To read the rest of this story from the WSJ Editorial page. Visit:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010141