Imagine raising thoroughbred race horses and another breeder, a competitor, comes by every year, loads your best stallions in his truck, and drives off. You've raised these horses since they were colts and now your competitor will reap the rewards of your hard work.

A similar scenario is happening at many US businesses and universities - the result of a crippling and counterproductive immigration policy, says Margaret Catillaz, an attorney with Harter, Secrest & Emery.

The debate over immigration has largely been focused on the people crossing the southern border "through a hole in the fence," Catillaz says. But there is another side to the immigration story. Many US businesses desperately need "intellectual talent." Jobs are going unfilled because the US isn't producing the number of skilled workers it needs. Thousands of foreign students graduating from leading US universities every year would like to stay in this country to pursue those jobs. But even if US companies hire them, Catillaz says, few graduates can stay due to an immigration policy that imposes strict limits on work visas.

The bigger problem: other countries, some of our fiercest economic competitors, are eagerly welcoming these students. If there is a more efficient way to reduce our economic supremacy at a time when the US is being challenged by Europe, Japan, India, and especially China, Catillaz says she can't think of one.

"It couldn't be more counterproductive to our interests," she says.

The same is true for skilled foreign workers already experienced in their fields - physicians, technical engineers, researchers, mathematicians, scientists, and college professors - professionals who are in demand by many US companies. Many of these workers would jump at the chance to work permanently in the US. But accepting a job with a US company could mean living in limbo for several years with no guarantee of being able to stay. Recruiters in Canada, Great Britain, and Australia, however, don't have the same barriers to long-term residency, and are literally skimming the cream off the top of the foreign national workforce.

"It's very hard to attract these workers if they have no real future here," Catillaz says. "They come to new surroundings and are expected to put their lives on hold instead of becoming a part of our society. That isn't realistic. Our loss has become our competitors' gain."

There are four pathways to becoming a permanent US resident: being granted refugee status, which is usually determined by the person's country of origin; the Diversity Lottery Program, which grants "green cards" to 65,000 people annually; through an immediate family member who is a US resident willing to be a sponsor; and through employment-based immigration.

Catillaz, a graduate of Rutgers University School of Law, speaks with a cotton-soft voice of assurance and looks a bit like rock-poet Patti Smith after a Fifth Avenue makeover. She has worked with multinationals, universities, hospitals, and private individuals on immigration issues for more than 30 years. And she has written and lectured extensively about immigration law.

In an interview with City Newspaper, Catillaz discussed the need for a thorough review of the country's immigration policy, relaxing temporary work visas to make it easier for US businesses to hire foreign talent, and a future that will see a sharp demand for semiskilled foreign workers to meet the health-care demands of the country's aging baby boomers. The following is an edited version of that interview.

CITY: Most of us come from first, second, and third generation immigrant families, but immigration is such a hot-button issue. Why do we get so emotional about it?

Catillaz: I think immigration is cyclically a hot-button issue. Throughout our history we've had both a love affair and scorn for immigrants. We know that we are a nation of immigrants. We take, as a country, enormous pride in that fact. We look around and we see that people have been motivated to pick up and move to the United States for its belief in this Ameritocracy. And we love that about ourselves.

Yet, in the incremental view of it, people resort to what I think is a very human attitude that says: Beware of the stranger.

I think that is a human condition. But when times get tough, when we go through difficult financial times as we are in right now, it's easy to point to the scapegoat of others as the cause for that problem. But when we do that, to me, we turn our back on who we are as a country.

What do you mean by Ameritocracy?

A place that rewards people based on what they do, not what they are born into. It doesn't matter whether my dad was a prince or a pauper. This is still a place where I get to rise or fall based on my individual merits and abilities.

It seems like immigration means something different to everyone. What does immigration mean to you?

I've always thought of the idea of immigration as a very fundamental human event. It's based on survival. When I look at who has come here to the United States, I see that all of us and our ancestors - except those of us who are Native Americans - migrated here. Think about that. Why did they do that? And why do they continue to do it?

After all these years, I see that it has to do with your ability to feed your family, safety, and security - very basic human needs.

But I've heard you say that it is also something more.

Yes, the one thing it took me a very long time to figure out was the migration of the cream of the crop - people who could do what they want and live almost anywhere in the world that they want. This didn't initially fit my paradigm of survival.

But then I realized that what I was seeing was the need for intellectual survival. The United States is still the place where we say if you want to work hard, you can make it here. You have the freedom to create here. Come and be one of us. You see, we're still talking about survival.

Immigration tends to be discussed in terms of illegal immigration from Mexico and Latin America. And you say it should be a much broader conversation. What is the more complete picture?

Just looking at our community alone with my practice in Rochester, I have met and continue to meet people from every nation in the world. People come from everywhere to be here. The stereotype of immigration is so misaligned with the reality. People come from every continent and every single nation to the Rochester community to be part of us.

Why does it get stereotyped in the way that it does? Unfortunately, and I am sorry to say this, it happens in part because of the press. The media isn't telling the whole story about immigration. It talks about the immigration problem and it looks at it mostly from the perspective of unskilled labor, people who are attracted to this Ameritocracy.

You've talked about students and professionals who come here. We say we want their talents, yet we make it very difficult for them.

Oh, yes we do. First of all, we have as a country, and certainly as a community, the powerful magnet of higher education. Look around us. Look at the number of colleges and universities in just our small city of Rochester, some of which are at the top of their league. This attracts foreigners. It attracts foreign students and faculty.

Let's discuss students. They come in as undergraduates. They are paying full freight to go to college here. They don't get and are not entitled to government grants and scholarships. When they are finished with their education, they are able to compete in the job market like the rest of us. If they are picked for one of those jobs, they have to go through a process of immigration where they have to get permission to continue to work. They have to apply for something called an H-1B visa, which is a temporary professional work visa.

A couple of years ago, Congress decided it was going to limit the number of H-1B visas from a high of 195,000 per year down to 65,000 per year, with another 20,000 for students who receive master's degrees or higher.

On April 1, 2007, the opening day of the H-1B season, twice the number of students applied. That's in day one, mind you. And this year on April 1, well more than twice the number of students applied for the available visas.

That means twice the number of people had secured offers of employment than there were available visas. But as a matter of a rather arbitrary rule, Congress limits the number of H-1B visas regardless of the market conditions and the needs of US businesses.

What happens to the students who don't win in this lottery system?

Ah, well. Canada, for example, is coming to our graduate schools to take advantage of a perfect opportunity. I have been with the Canadian consulate who says, "You've got a master's degree? Well, line right up here. We need smart, capable, industrious people from all over the world. We will make life easy for you. You will not only be able to get a temporary work visa, but we're going to give you our equivalent of a green card and you can live and work here for a lifetime."

If you're from a third-world country and you're as bright as a new shiny penny, and you have the option of living in Toronto instead of Upstate New York, why would you not consider that to be a reasonable opportunity?

So what we're doing as a country is arbitrarily excluding people who we have just educated. Even though they have paid for their own education, we are sending them away into the arms of the other love, who is saying "Come and live with me." And I have to just applaud Canada for an absolutely focused program that recognizes that immigration is only a problem when you don't have qualified wonderful people coming to your door.

Are there other countries that are doing the same thing as Canada?

Sure. We're seeing the same thing in Australia. Immigration barriers are being knocked down in England and Germany - basically all over Western Europe.

For a lot of years I have been asked to come and speak to the Global Immigration Summit. And it's a group of more seasoned immigration practitioners from 50 countries. And we sit and compare notes about what this person is doing and how you handle this problem or that. And one thing has become glaringly obvious to me: all of the developed countries are vying for the same talent. There is a shortage of nurses worldwide. There is a shortage of home health-care workers worldwide. We have growing aging populations who need to be supported by the Social Security system and physically cared for.

When I first started coming to these meetings, everyone wanted to come to America. We were the beacon. Now my competitive juices start flowing when I see them doing a better job at this than we are. We are losing something.

There was a headline on one of the Sunday magazines that said something like: "Is America losing its competitive edge?" The headline was a hook and, of course, the story goes on to say that the US is not losing its edge. But the story cited a lot of statistics and one of them was the number of Nobel Prize winners we have. But here's the kicker, when you looked at who the winners of those prizes were, about half of them were not US-born citizens. They became American citizens back when we asked them to come in, work hard, and join us at the table.

Where would we see these foreign-born students and professional who are fortunate enough to get the H-1B visas?

They're in every place in our community - every business, every university, and in every industry. They are not there in abundance because they are really hand-selected for their skills.They don't fit the current stereotype of foreign worker, but we are interacting with them all the time.

You've been involved with immigration law for a long time. Are there cases that you still think about?

My practice is very much focused on the business side, but the asylum cases that I have worked on over the years touch me the most because these are people who have given up everything. They've put everything at risk. I often say immigration is not for the weak. You have to really want this. But asylum is especially difficult.

But, you know, the simple people who come through the hole in the fence are very stirring to me. They are the flavor I'm left with. They just want to work hard. I've had a number of people who pretended they were from Puerto Rico when they got here, and they were really from Central America. And I met this young couple, and they had been living in the shadows for a number of years.

We finally went to their interview. I was in the interview room with the wife and the husband was out in the waiting room. And her knees were literally knocking. She was so frightened. The immigration officer had a deep gravely voice. But I had worked with this guy before and I knew that he had a good heart. And as he asked her the questions, her shoulders were bowed and she was just a little bit of thing. And with each question - "How did you get here?" "Where are you from?" - I could just see her shrinking. Then in this very gruff voice he asks, "Have you ever taken welfare?" And this little lady sat straight up in her chair. You would have thought she was 6-foot-2. And her eyes flashed. She hit her hand on the table - thump, thump, thump. In her thick accent she said, "I have worked my fingers to the bone. I have worked three jobs. I have cleaned toilets." She just flared. And suddenly this guy put up his hands and said, "All right, O.K., O.K." When he said that, her body language collapsed back into fear, like she had done something wrong. But he reached across the table and said, "Congratulations. I'm granting you the right to stay. Welcome to the United States."

One happy ending

Simon Kirk almost had to leave behind a job he likes and the life he had made for himself in Rochester. Kirk is a veterinarian who works the late night and early morning hours at an emergency veterinary clinic in Brighton. He's also Canadian. He's been able to work in the US legally, on a temporary work visa. But his time was starting to run out. He needed a green card to remain a licensed veterinarian in New York State. The uncertainty was stressful, Kirk says, and made him feel like he was living in limbo.

"I would have purchased a home here a year-and-a-half ago," he says. "But the whole thing is so restrictive. I didn't know if I could stay."

Immigration attorney Margaret Catillaz was able to help Kirk get his green card before his visa expired. Now he can stay at his job - a position his employer has had difficulty filling, he says, due to the odd hours. But two of his friends in similar situations haven't been as lucky. Immigration's lottery system for green cards is too arbitrary, says Catillaz. Skilled workers like Kirk are routinely turned away because it is wrongly assumed that US employers can easily fill white collar jobs.