All financial crises end. The question is not if we will recover, but how we can build a resilient global economy to speed and bolster that recovery. While many immediate dangers remain, now is the time to look beyond the exigencies of today.

We must take a hard look at weaknesses in the international system that might stand in our way as we rebuild. There are several, but we take this opportunity to highlight one weakness in our ability to build a resilient global economy for the future: the inadequate state of comparable data on international migration.

This is our biggest weak spot on globalization. While many countries collect and publish detailed data on who legally enters or leaves their territory, they do not do it in the same way. In consequence, it is difficult to know clearly and to compare across countries how many persons immigrate and emigrate, for how long and for what reason.  Strangely, it is much easier to get a good picture of global movements of textiles and Treasury Bills than global movements of human beings. Vast disparities in income per head between countries mean that small changes in labor mobility may have large effects on the global economy. But we cannot begin to manage such changes well if the community of nations is not counting even legal migrants in the same, systematic way.

The main obstacle to good statistics is not that labor mobility is such a hot-button political issue. That would tend to raise interest in better data. Rather, the main obstacle is that statistics are a classic “public good”: the benefits are generalized, but the costs are localized. Everyone would gain from better statistics, but the individual governments that must bear the cost of compiling them have competing priorities. Result: decades of international recommendations for better and more comparable migration data have gone largely unheeded. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the United Nations, the World Bank, and many others have made great strides towards compiling better public global data, but much more is needed.

That is why, last year, the Center for Global Development in Washington convened a blue-ribbon commission to tackle this issue. It was co-chaired by Patricia Santo Tomas, a former cabinet minister of the Philippines and current chairwoman of the board at the Development Bank of the Philippines, and Lawrence Summers, a Professor at Harvard University prior to joining the Obama administration. The commission brought together a small, stellar group of some of the world’s top experts on migration data. It asked the group to name five ways to improve international migration data in the short term, within existing institutions, at the lowest cost.

The resulting report, Migration Counts: Five steps toward better international migration data, starts with the simple recommendation that every census on earth include a small number of questions relevant to migration.  These include, “In what country were you born?”  Answers to this simple question, asked in every country, can be a powerful tool in systematically tracking all types of international movement. The 2010-11 round of censuses is already beginning, but this basic question is still not even asked in many countries where migration is important and growing—including Japan, Mexico, Korea, the Philippines, and Egypt.

The other recommendations suggest ways to compile and release data that governments already collect but that are often not easily accessible,  and ways that existing household surveys in developing countries can help us learn more about migration at low cost. At every stage the commission makes it clear exactly who should execute each step. One recommendation proposes that the OECD compile and house a database of existing Labor Force Surveys from around the world and the Organization is already working to do that.   Implementation of all of the Commission’s recommendations will require international collaboration and national support.

If the crisis has taught us anything, it is that we cannot address issues of international migration in the global economy on the basis of inadequate data. We cannot build a stronger world economy for our children without better information about one of the significant forces that will shape that economy. There is much that national governments and international agencies can do. The time for perfect migration data is still far off, but the time for better migration data is now.

As I watched the news showing President Obama reaching out to University of Notre Dame graduates eager to shake his hand, I was impressed by the coalition of colors and nationalities in the faces all round the President that says much good about the United States. I also wondered who, among those shaking President Obama’s hand, will be told by an immigration official next week, ”Congratulations, graduate. Now hit the road, leave the U.S., go home!”

When that happens, if it hasn’t already happened to thousands of graduates across the country, the U.S. will be the loser.

The fact is that at commencement time, foreign science and engineering graduates from U.S. universities are itching to stay in America, especially at this time, and put their energy into the most valuable work. This would eventually help us recover economically and go on to thrive as an innovative world trading powerhouse.

Instead, they’ll be told we don’t want their intelligence and their problem-solving skills, or their innovative or entrepreneurial abilities. They’re told to just go back to where they came from — go back to India, to China, to Brazil, to Russia, and to all the other places that we compete with for wealth around the world.

These aren’t queue-jumping immigrants, or illegals trying to outwit border guards. They’re professionals, some with doctorates or masters’ degrees, who observe the rules. U.S. companies want to employ them. Unfortunately, they get lumped in with the general, anti-immigrant bias that cycles through Congress at times like these. and mocks the legal immigration system.

These foreign talent wanted to utilized our H1-B program that allows U.S. companies to hire a limited number of highly skilled foreign workers for the short-term or as a first step to a green card or permanent residence. Every April 1, U.S. corporations—from financial to high-tech firms—file petitions to hire these individuals under the H1-B terms.

We absolutely need H1-B immigrants for what they bring to our economy. I work in the Silicon Valley and the presence of foreign-born entrepreneurs has undeniably been a catalyst for taking the technology industry to a new level. Google founder Sergey Brin is from Russia, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang from Taiwan, and Intel co-founder Andy Grove from Hungary.

More than 50 percent of high-tech workers in Silicon Valley are foreign born, according to the Silicon Valley Index, an industry publication. Many of these immigrants go on to become entrepreneurs. In the 10 years to 2005, more than half of new tech companies had foreign-born founders.

The National Foundation for American Policy keeps estimates showing that for each H1-B visa, U.S. corporations hire five additional workers. This is not taking jobs from Americans, which is what we hear from labor unions.  We’re actually creating jobs by bringing bright people into this country.

High-tech companies know this, of course, and we gained valuable support in early May when Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, told the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress: “I know it’s not very popular to say, but our immigration laws discriminate pretty heavily against talented scientists and engineers from other countries. If you allow more people with high-tech skills to come here, you’d get more innovation and more growth,” Bernanke said.

Not only do we lose in our domestic economy by turning away this huge resource of talent, but we lose in another perhaps even more significant way. Tighter rules and continuing traces of the 9/11 worries about foreigners distort the smart power of our foreign policy that we can use internationally. Reasoned persuasion is a key ingredient of smart power, together with trade deals, foreign aid, diplomacy and cultural influences such as movies and music. We need to boost the persuasiveness of our case by being smarter about keeping talent educated at our great universities, often subsidized by U.S. taxpayers, at a time when we need it most.

By singling out work visa immigrants, we are setting a bad example internationally.  That’s true also when we indulge in trade protectionism.  You can be sure such activities will trigger a round of retaliation throughout the world.  And look what damage we will do to ourselves.

We risk our foreign direct investments of $2.1 trillion.  We risk the market access for more than 2,000 multinational corporations, whose parent companies in the U.S. make up a quarter of our private sector output. We put into jeopardy U.S.-owned foreign assets abroad totaling $18 trillion. Can we afford it?

The first Thanksgiving festival was celebrated in 1621 in Massachusetts by the Pilgrims, immigrants to America, out of gratitude for a plentiful harvest.

As we sit around our Thanksgiving tables this Thursday, almost all of us immigrants or their descendants, we’re reminded that one of President-elect Obama’s most important challenges will be to mend our broken immigration policy.

Instead of a rational immigration system, we have occasional raids by immigration officers on plants suspected of employing illegals. Then come deportations that may separate an undocumented parent and children whose birth in the United States made them citizens.

The most controversial facet of the immigration challenge is what to do about the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants. Most are unlikely to return to their native lands, even in today’s tough economic climate.

Nor would we want them to do so. They work at jobs that few Americans choose to do, both in high-skill area—scientific and medical research, for instance—and in mundane yet essential low-skill jobs, such as gardening, washing cars, and cleaning.

In 2007, Congress did not pass President Bush’s comprehensive immigration proposals, supported by the Democratic leadership and many Republicans. Will Obama succeed where Bush failed?

Obama’s proposal mirrors the bill that failed: increased border protection; more visas for new immigrants; penalties for employers who hire undocumented workers; and eventual citizenship for undocumented workers already here, after payment of a fine. It would be a major improvement.

But with unemployment rising, if Congress won’t pass immigration reform, it could still improve the functioning of American labor markets with narrower action. It could authorize the Department of Labor to decide on its own the number of work permits and temporary visas to be issued each calendar quarter.

Every year, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), as instructed by law, issues 65,000 H-1b temporary visas for skilled workers. These lucky workers are certified by the Labor Department out of approximately 630,000 approved applications from employers. Immigrants who hold H-1b visas must return to their home countries when their jobs end.

Yet, as the numbers show, most applicants do not get a visa. Many skilled foreign college graduates who have been studying in America, often at American taxpayer expense, are denied access to American jobs. They must leave, taking their intellectual achievements and valuable skills with them.

Foreign workers benefit the American economy. They pay taxes. They keep laboratories and motels, high-tech shows and construction sites, running. They cannot if they are sent away.

For 2009, the H-1b visa cap of 65,000 was reached one week after the start of the application process on April 1, 2008. That represents a tiny part of the U.S. labor force of 154 million. Even if the quota were raised to 150,000, that would be less than one tenth of 1% of the labor force. Such a quota would still deny admission to the vast majority of prospective applicants who don’t apply due to the small likelihood of success.

Whereas Congress is ill-suited to change laws each time the economy goes up or down, the Labor Department has both the expertise to evaluate changing labor markets and the flexibility to adjust visa quotas. Congress should consider letting the Labor Department make quarterly decisions about how many visas to issue.

When unemployment rises, the Department would issue fewer visas; when it goes down, visas could be increased. The Department could manage visas without causing undue burden on U.S. workers or community facilities, such as schools and hospitals.

Allowing the Labor Department to adjust legal immigration every quarter would help America. President-elect Obama could leave behind the rancor and division over immigration that have plagued the Bush administration, and set a new tone for a new year. That would be something to be thankful for next Thanksgiving.

Diana Furchtgott-Roth can be reached at dfr@hudson.org.