列克星敦
Help not wanted
拒之门外
Apr 10th 2008
From The Economist print edition
Translation skittos
Congress is doing its best to lose the global talent war
国会正想尽办法输掉国际人才争夺战
ONE of the most unjustly neglected films of the past few years is Mike Judge's “Idiocracy”. Mr Judge is the genius behind Beavis and Butt-Head, two of the most disgusting creatures on television, and Hank Hill, one of the wisest. In “Idiocracy” he turns his talents to futurology—and to the troubling question of the long-term impact of dysgenic breeding, junk food and grunge culture on America's collective IQ.
迈克?朱吉导演的影片《蠢蛋进化论》[1] 是近年来最不该遭遇冷落的影片之一。朱吉是名天才导演，塑造了瘪四与大头蛋这两个电视剧中最恶心的人物和极富智慧的汉克?希尔。在《蠢蛋进化论》中，他把他的聪明劲用到了“未来学”上， 以及在不利于人类优化的培养方式，丟棄不要的東西食品和庸俗文化长期浸淫下， 所引出的令人头疼的美国大众智商问题。
The premise is simple. Two typical citizens—the army's “most average” soldier and a street prostitute—find themselves transported 500 years into the future. They soon discover that they are towering geniuses compared with the knuckle-draggers who inhabit the America of 2505. The country's best university is run by Costco. People are named after brands such as Frito and Mountain Dew. Starbucks has become a chain of brothels. The president is a former porn star and wrestling champion.
剧情设置很简单。 两名普通公民—属于部队中“再平常不过”的战士和一个街头妓女—突然发现自己被送到了500年之后的未来世界。在那里他们很快发现，与2505年居住美国的蠢人们相比，自己就是天才巨人！其时全国最好的大学由Costco（ “好事多公司” 美国仓储式零售商店—注）主持。 人们用品牌取名字，比如“Frito”薯片或“Mountain Dew”汽水。 星巴克已开成了连锁妓院。总统竟是一名前色情明星兼格斗冠军。
One might imagine that America's politicians would do all that they could to prevent Mr Judge's dystopia from materialising. But when it comes to immigration they are doing exactly the opposite—trying their best to keep the world's best and brightest from darkening America's doors.
按常理，美国政客一定会使出浑身解数，防止朱吉先生的“反面乌托邦”电影成为现实。然而，在处理移民问题时，他们恰恰是反其道而行之—最大限度地将世界上最优秀最具才智的人们挡在美国门外。
Consider the annual April Fool's joke played on applicants for H1B visas, which allow companies to sponsor highly-educated foreigners to work in America for three years or so. The powers-that-be have set the number of visas so low—at 85,000—that the annual allotment is taken up as soon as applications open on April 1st. America then deals with the mismatch between supply and demand in the worst possible way, allocating the visas by lottery. The result is that hundreds of thousands of highly qualified people—entrepreneurs who want to start companies, doctors who want to save lives, scientists who want to explore the frontiers of knowledge—are kept waiting on the spin of a roulette wheel and then, more often than not, denied the chance to work in the United States.
每年的愚人节对H1B签证申请人可谓一场玩笑! 此签证允许美国公司赞助高学历外藉人士在美国工作三年左右。由于当局将签证的名额订得太低—85000 份—在4月1日申请受理首日业已额满。然后，美国又采取了最糟的抽签分配方式来应付供求失衡。结果使成千上万完全符合条件的申请人—其中不乏打算建立公司的企业家、希望拯救生命的医生、想要探索前沿学科的科学家—再继续等待轮盘的旋转，而等到的结局则往往是被拒绝在美国就业的机会
This is a policy of national self-sabotage. America has always thrived by attracting talent from the world. Some 70 or so of the 300 Americans who have won Nobel prizes since 1901 were immigrants. Great American companies such as Sun Microsystems, Intel and Google had immigrants among their founders. Immigrants continue to make an outsized contribution to the American economy. About a quarter of information technology (IT) firms in Silicon Valley were founded by Chinese and Indians. Some 40% of American PhDs in science and engineering go to immigrants. A similar proportion of all the patents filed in America are filed by foreigners.
这种国策无异于国家自残。 美国一向依靠从世界各地吸引人才而得以兴旺发展。自1901年以后赢得诺贝尔奖的300名美国人中，70余人移民出身。 成就显赫的美国公司如Sun Microsystems、英特尔和Google创始人中都有移民。 迄今，移民继续在为美国经济作出巨大的贡献。近四分之一的硅谷信息技术（IT）公司由华人和印度人建立。约40%的美国科学和工程博士学位由移民获取。在美国所有专利申请中, 外藉人士提交的申请占据了与上述相同的比例。
These bright foreigners bring benefits to the whole of society. The foreigner-friendly IT sector has accounted for more than half of America's overall productivity growth since 1995. Foreigner-friendly universities and hospitals have been responsible for saving countless American cities from collapse. Bill Gates calculates, and respectable economists agree, that every foreigner who is given an H1B visa creates jobs for five regular Americans.
这些充满智慧的外国人给整个社会带来了好处。自1995年以来，欢迎外藉（foreigner-friendly）的IT行业为美国总产值带来了超过半数的增长率。欢迎外藉的大学和医院一直在承担重任，挽救了不计其数濒临破产的美国城市。 比尔?盖茨作了一项得到资深经济学家证实的统计：每个获得H1B签证的外藉人能创造五个普通美国人的就业机会。
There was a time when ambitious foreigners had little choice but to put up with America's restrictive ways. Europe was sclerotic and India and China were poor and highly restrictive. But these days the rest of the world is opening up at precisely the time when America seems to be closing down. The booming economies of the developing world are sucking back talent that was once America's for the asking. About a third of immigrants who hold high-tech jobs in America are considering returning home. America's rivals are also rejigging their immigration systems to attract global talent.
曾几何时，心怀梦想的外国人除了忍耐美国的限制之外没有多少可选的余地。 欧洲僵化、印度和中国贫穷且限制严格。如今，恰恰在美国似乎插上门栓之时，世界敞开了通往其它各地之路。 发展中国家的经济振兴吸引了人才回归，这些人曾是美国唾手可得的。约三分之一拥有美国高科技工作的移民现在考虑返回家乡。美国的对手也正在调整其移民政策以吸引国际人才。
Canada and Australia operate a widely emulated system that gives immigrants “points” for their educational qualifications. New Zealand allows some companies to hand out work visas along with job offers. Britain gives graduates of the world's top 50 business schools an automatic right to work in the country for a year. The European Union is contemplating introducing a system of “blue cards” that will give talented people a fast track to EU citizenship.
加拿大和澳洲执行了一种大体相似的移民系统，它依据移民所受的教育资格给其“打分”。 新西兰允许部分公司在招聘外籍员工的同时颁发工作签证。英国向来自位列世界前50名商学院的毕业生提供为期一年的自动就业权。欧盟正计划推出一套“蓝卡”系统，为才华者快速获得欧盟公民的身份打通渠道。
The United States is already paying a price for its failure to adjust to the new world. Talent-challenged technology companies are already being forced to export jobs abroad. Microsoft opened a software development centre in Canada in part because Canada's more liberal laws make it easier to recruit qualified people from around the world. This problem is only going to get worse if America's immigration restrictions are not lifted. The Labour Department projects that by 2014 there will be more than 2m job openings in science, technology and engineering, while the number of Americans graduating with degrees in those subjects is plummeting.
反观美国，已经为它落伍于新世界的步伐而在付出代价。面临人才缺乏问题的技术公司已被迫对外输出工作机会。微软在加拿大新建了一个软件开发中心，部分原因便是鉴于加拿大有相对宽松的劳工法律，容许微软更方便地从世界各地招纳合格员工。如果美国移民限制不思宽松，它的问题只会继续恶化下去。劳工部预计，到2014年在科学、技术和工程行业中将产生2百万个就业机会，而美国这些专业的毕业生人数正在直线下跌。
Let them come
让他们来吧
The United States is fortunate that it can solve its talent problem with the wave of a magic wand, by simply expanding the supply of visas to meet the demand. Raise the cap on H1B visas—or better still abolish it—and increase the supply of green cards, and the world's brightest will come flooding in. A country that is blessed with a dynamic economy and a world-beating higher-education system does not even have to go around wooing people, as other countries do.
美国十分幸运，它只要挥挥魔杖，加发签证以满足申请需求便可解决人材问题。提升H1B名额上限—或者，干脆取消签证—直接增发绿卡则更好，这样全世界最有天分的人都将纷纷而至。这个得天独厚于自身经济活力和拥有称雄世界的高等教育系统的国家，不必像其他国家那样四处招揽人才。
Yet America suffers from one big problem: its political system is especially dysfunctional when it comes to immigration. A few brave souls are trying to lift the H1B visa cap. But most politicians are more interested in bellowing about building walls to keep illegal immigrants out than thinking seriously about the problem. And a few are even actively campaigning to reduce the number of H1B visas in order to keep American jobs for Americans. As Mr Judge might well wonder: how do you win the global talent wars when Congress is already in the hands of the idiocracy?
然而，一个大问题使美国难以自拔： 每当触及移民问题，它的政治系统就运转失灵。 仅有寥寥数人大胆地提出调高H1B名额上限；大多数政客更热衷于筑高墙以阻挡非法移民的叫嚷，而不是认真地思考这一问题。更有少数人以保护美国人自身工作机会为借口，为要求减少H1B名额进行宣传活动。或许朱吉也会大为纳闷：当国会已落入“蠢官”的掌控之后，美国又如何打赢国际人才的争夺战？