A new high-tech industry

The Wall Street Journal recently ran an editorial that should excite CNMI policy-makers. In its June 12 edition, the Journal decried a fundamental flaw in the US immigration system. The United States, it said, did not grant adequate H1-B visas for America’s information technology (IT) industry.

CNMI policy-makers should be quite excited by this development. We should be excited because of the tremendous potential opportunity this U.S. immigration flaw represents to our economy.

We retain local control of our immigration policy. Therefore, we can–and we should–muster the necessary political resolve to reject labor protectionism and allow a profitable IT industry to flourish right here in the CNMI. We should pick up where America left off.

Never let it be forgotten: Information technology is here to stay. It represents the staggering prosperity of the future. The CNMI should plunge unto this vital global industry.
According to the Wall Street Journal, while America’s overall unemployment rate falls at a very low 3.9%, the rate for the IT industry is even lower, perhaps as low as one percent. And the high demand for even more high-tech workers should only continue to rise.

Unfortunately for America–but perhaps not for us–the American workforce is woefully inadequate. Because of the abysmal failures of the American public school system, math and science graduates are in short supply. In fact, according to the Information Technology Association, as much as 843,000 IT jobs may go unfilled because of America’s dire IT labor shortage.

This serious situation creates a terrific opportunity for the CNMI to fill the IT gap. So far, because of irrational protectionism and the unjustified fear of “stolen jobs,” America seems reluctant to expand the H1-B visa program and recruit more foreign workers to meet the soaring demand for skilled IT labor.

This is where our local immigration and Headnote 3(a) provisions should come into play, just as it did for the garment industry.
The CNMI should offer as many enticing incentives as possible. We should make the CNMI a veritable tax haven again. IT investment must be aggressively pursued.

The skilled IT labor pool is readily available. The CNMI should open its doors to high-tech workers from all over the world, from the continent of Europe to Bangalore, India.

To lure the management and capital, all that is required is government cooperation. Government need only stay out of the way and allow growth to flourish and people to prosper.

It is not too late to foster yet another economic boom–one much more prosperous than anything we ever experienced in the heady 1980s or early 1990s. It is time for real estate values to soar again. Let’s make millions!

As Senator Pete P. Reyes is so fond of saying, “Why not?” Only, let’s move fast in this area–not “slow,” because there is no such thing as “slow” in the high-tech industry; everything moves at breakneck pace.