Foreign Workers Banned From Wall Street

This is not a particularly good idea:

Foreign Workers Banned From Wall Street

Alice Su, an M.B.A. student in Wharton Business School's class of 2009 and a resident of Hong Kong, turned down job offers and interviews because she'd been offered a coveted spot with the technology group at investment bank Merrill Lynch. But because of an amendment added to the stimulus legislation last month by Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., Merrill rescinded its employment offer.

The stimulus plan forbids banks that have taken Troubled Asset Relief Program money from hiring foreign workers who require visa sponsorship if they've laid off workers within the last 90 days. "There is no need for companies to hire foreign workers ... when there are plenty of qualified Americans looking for jobs," Grassley said at the time. The legislation amounts to a blanket ban on the hiring of foreign workers.

"I grew up internationally between China, Hong Kong and Belgium and worked in Japan. Nowhere else have I ever experienced this kind of discrimination," Su says.

Bad public diplomacy and bad economics all in one. Really a very impressive accomplishment that is probably even worse than "Buy American."

Update: Tuck Business School's leadership argues that it's a terrible time to reject skilled workers, and that doing so will have a negative effect on the economy and one of the the nation's greatest assets, its university system.