We see stories like this one over and over again, but that's because they're not exceptions. The Washington Post has a profile of two MIT postgrads who have created a water-decontamination system that was dubbed by Scientific American as a world changing idea, based on the fact that it could revolutionize the controversial practice of fracking by decontaminating all of the contaminated water that is output by the process. Such technology is in high demand, and the two engineers, Anurag Bajpayee and Prakash Narayan Govindan, are trying to create a company that will hire an awful lot of people (beyond cleaning up our water). They have people willing to give them millions of dollars to do this.

There's just one simple problem. They're about to get kicked out of the country because their student visas are expiring, and the US has no reasonable system for keeping such highly skilled engineers here, rather than sending them back to their home countries.

But their student visas expire soon, both before summer, and because of the restrictive U.S. visa system, they may have to move their company to India or another country. "We love it here," said Bajpayee, a cheerful 27-year-old in an argyle sweater and jeans. "But there are so many hoops you have to jump through. And you risk getting deported while you are creating jobs."

Stories like this are so prevalent these days, and yet Congress remains unwilling to take the most basic steps to fix the problem -- in part because the wider immigration debate raises so many other issues. Yet again, it seems that we're letting silly politics get in the way of actually doing what's right.

And, of course, the more that we fail to keep these skilled folks here, the more other countries are opening their arms to them:

Countries from Canada to Germany to Australia to Singapore are enthusiastically courting foreign entrepreneurs with relatively easy visas. Some offer cash.

China has given bonuses of up to $150,000 to thousands of highly skilled expatriates who have come home to work or start businesses. Chile is luring top talent with $40,000 in capital, free office space and a quick visa through its "Start-up Chile" program.

We're training the best and the brightest, and helping them to make breakthrough innovations that can change the world... and then kicking them out of the country and into the open arms of other countries. Can anyone explain how that makes sense? In the article, the only person they could find to argue against letting these kinds of skilled immigrants stay is a guy who works at an anti-immigration "think tank," whose argument is so empty of substance that, well, you just have to read it.

"It's a stupid idea," said Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports tighter immigration controls. "What is an entrepreneur? Businesses come and go."

Yeah. The Center for Immigration Studies might want to look into bringing on spokespeople who can communicate complete thoughts in the future, because that argument seems to amount to "we hate it because bad." Hopefully, people who actually understand the impact of entrepreneurship and startup businesses have on the economy can finally get these kinds of needed reforms through Congress, and we can stop kicking skilled job creators out of the country.

Six years ago, we wrote about Andy Kessler's fascinating book, The End of Medicine, which got me to totally rethink how nearly every society approaches healthcare today. Even though the book is years old, I recommend it frequently. The key issue is that we still tend to treat healthcare as something driven by two key industries: pharmaceuticals and insurance. However, the book is based around the idea that, in pretty much every other industry, technology tends to (1) get better and (2) get cheaper. But that doesn't happen much with healthcare -- and that's because it's all about insurance and drugs. That means it's really about treating the symptoms, rather than actually trying to prevent problems.

One story in the book that has stuck with me is the description of a possible home-based heart scanner. The argument was that we really aren't that far off from being able to wake up in the morning, walk into the bathroom and scan your body, such that your computer (or phone?) would immediately pop up a 3D scan of key internal organs, such as your heart, allowing you to see if everything's okay. No waiting for chest pains before you get your heart checked out. Why not check out your heart every single day, and have the 3D model immediately available?

We're not quite there yet, but a few months ago, I was introduced to Dr. Fabien Beckers and his co-founders of the fascinating startup Morpheus Medical -- and when he described the product they were working on, which some have called "a Google Earth for cardiologists", I immediately recalled that product from Kessler's predictions. Morpheus is building an amazing product, where a simple heart scan creates a 3D model of the heart non-invasively and shows flows and pressure. Morpheus doesn't go quite as far as the example in Kessler's book yet, but this is a serious team and the existing product looks amazing. You can read a bit more about the offering here. Among the key features is the fact that they can just use data from a quick MRI to build this 3D model and show all sorts of useful data to doctors at a fraction the cost of what's out there today. A product that is cheaper, faster, better and can help keep people healthy? It seems amazing.

The team leading the company really is a bunch of all-stars. Dr. Beckers has run a series of companies, often driven by the ability to use technology to advance social good. For example, before Morpheus, he built and ran a company called Kameleon Technologies -- which was initially built off the idea of helping design a better guidance system for the blind. That technology then expanded to be useful in the consumer space, using the same concept to create interactive billboards for advertising purposes, called Mobizone. And, oh yeah, he has a PhD in quantum mechanics from Cambridge University -- hence the "Dr." title. The rest of the team is equally talented. The origin of the company came from a meeting between Dr. Beckers and John Axerio-Cilies, who was working on a PhD in fluid dynamics at Stanford. Add to that Albert Hsiao who has a PhD in bioengineering, and Shreyas Vasanawala, an associate professor at Stanford whose own works is focused on pediatric MRIs, and it's a monster team of innovators building an offering that I hope drives the healthcare revolution in the direction that Kessler described in his book.

It will not surprise some that the biggest roadblocks the company may face are regulatory, rather than technological. But the amazing thing is that the biggest one may be immigration regulations. You see, Beckers, who put the company together and has been instrumental in building it up, is not an American citizen, and due to our immigration policies, there's a very real chance he can't get a visa to stay in the US. Is this really the sort of thing that the US wants to be known for? Kicking out pioneering innovators like Dr. Beckers as he seeks to build a company that can really drive the healthcare market forward would be a massive loss to the US and the public at large, especially if it leads to difficulty in keeping the company going. I know the experience first hand, having tried to start a company many years ago, where my partner couldn't get the appropriate visa, leaving us unable to proceed.

Years after reading that Kessler book and imagining a world where we might finally focus on using technology to really solve healthcare problems outside of the pharma industry, I'm hopeful that we may finally be near such a world. Hopefully our short-sighted immigration policies let that kind of innovation move forward (and move forward here in the US).

While I enjoy reading The New Yorker when I get the chance, it's rare they cover an issue that I'm deeply familiar with. So it's great to see James Surowiecki jump into the pool with an article about the problems with the US's view towards skilled immigration. It's an issue we've been covering for years, and I still can't figure out why people are against opening our shores to skilled immigrants. It often seems like the arguments against it are a mix of just under the surface racism with a healthy dose of ignorance about economics. Skilled immigrants help expand the pie, creating new companies and new jobs, rather than taking away from the market, as some falsely assume.

The Surowiecki piece is a good one in debunking many of those arguments and highlighting why we really need reform to let in skilled immigrants -- because as we keep turning them away, plenty of other countries have been welcoming them with open arms, meaning that they'll be building businesses that compete with domestic companies, rather than building companies in the US. And, even worse, a large number of those that we're turning away are people who were schooled here. So we're building our own competitors -- who want to stay here and help our economy -- and then sending them elsewhere to compete with us. How does that make any sense at all?

Of course, with unemployment here above eight per cent, too little immigration may not seem like a bad thing: surely we need more jobs, not more workers? But this is a shortsighted view. Economies are not static, with a limited set of resources to go around. As the work of the economist Paul Romer has shown, economies grow faster when there is more innovation, and having more smart people in the workforce is a key driver of innovation. And the quickest, cheapest way to get more smart people is to make it easy for them to move here. What’s more, historically there has been a clear connection between immigration in the U.S. and entrepreneurship, with immigrants creating companies (and jobs) at a disproportionate rate. In one famous study, the social scientist AnnaLee Saxenian showed that Chinese and Indian immigrants alone founded a quarter of Silicon Valley start-ups between 1980 and 1998, while a 2007 study found that a quarter of all technology and engineering start-ups between 1995 and 2005 were founded by immigrants. On a larger scale, more than forty per cent of the companies in the 2010 Fortune 500 were started by immigrants or their children.

Of course, the piece also explains why various bills to fix this (even with bipartisan support) don't seem to be moving: "there is no urgency in Washington on the issue, and voter anxiety about the weak economy and the scarcity of jobs gives politicians an excuse for inaction." Basically, some fear mongering among those who don't like "foreigners" during an election season is holding back good and useful policy, much to our own detriment.

We've talked about just how ridiculous US policies towards highly skilled immigrants and entrepreneurs are for years. We're driving away the very people who can help create new companies and new jobs within our economy, and handing them, gift-wrapped, to other countries. And those other countries are increasingly aware of the massive opportunity the US is vehemently ignoring, and those other countries are becoming increasingly welcome to foreign high-skilled workers and entrepreneurs. The Economist has a good article highlighting just how backwards US policies on entrepreneur immigration are, especially compared to countries like the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, who are very welcoming towards foreign nationals who want to start companies in their countries. And then there are upstarts like Chile, who go so far as to simply hand large sums of cash to startups that want to set up shop there.

But the US keeps pushing such people away.

The article includes an example -- one of hundreds we've seen -- of entrepreneurs trying to setup a new company and create jobs in the US... only to be forced to do the same thing in another country (in this case, Canada). We're actively pushing away the job creators at a time when our economy needs jobs.

And, of course, while sometimes these individuals go to these other welcoming countries, some also just head back home. As the article notes, China has actually become pretty aggressive in offering some highly skilled workers who come back from trying to work in the US "not only free homes but also cash to buy furniture."

Honestly, it's pretty clear from the Economist piece that whoever wrote it is incredulous that the US would have such policies in place when they clearly harm its own interests. And, of course, the truly amazing thing is that over the years, the various efforts to fix these problems and welcome in skilled immigrants who create jobs always seem to get shot down. As we recently mentioned, the Startup Act 2.0 has been introduced, and even though it offers some pretty simple ways to let in a few more job creators, it's not clear that there's enough momentum to push it through (though, you can help change that by telling your elected officials to pass the bill). There are many different forms of protectionism -- and almost none of them are helpful. But it's perhaps worst of all when you're protecting yourself from job creators.

Reuters has a short article detailing how the UK has been successful in luring a growing number of foreign entrepreneurs to open up shop (or even move their companies to the UK). While there are still plenty of foreign entrepreneurs starting or moving companies to the US, it's got little to do with the US government -- which often makes it quite difficult for foreign entrepreneurs to relocate here. While, thanks in large part to Brad Feld's activism, there is finally some movement on a startup visa concept, the US government still takes a rather hostile view towards foreign entrepreneurs and foreign startups. With other countries actively courting and welcoming them -- and backing it up with some infrastructural changes, this should be seen as a serious problem for US innovation. Of course there's a lot more to this issue, and there are certainly institutional reasons why the US has long had a strong startup culture, but we shouldn't merely assume that we can just rest on our laurels, especially as others are ramping up their efforts to attract hot startups.