Thursday, June 12, 2008
Lawmakers want high skill grads to get automatic green cards
Business says backlogs are hurting U.S. competitiveness
By BRITTANY LEVINE
The Orange County Register


WASHINGTON College graduations have their traditions: the cap, the gown, the procession to the strains of Pomp and Circumstance. But some lawmakers want to add another element to the celebration — a green card.

To combat the brain drain of highly skilled workers, a proposed bill – reviewed at an immigration subcommittee hearing today — would effectively staple a green card to diplomas of foreign students who get a master's or more advanced degree from a U.S. college or university.
Hundreds of thousands of visa applications are now stuck in a mess of bureaucratic delays, lawmakers say. This backlog is weighing down U.S. competiveness in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, who introduced the green card bill in May. The measure, called STEM, would apply to people with degrees in science, technology, engineering and math.

[b]"We must retain the best and brightest innovators," said Lofgren, D-San Jose, chairman of the committee, "so that they can work with us, rather than compete against us in other countries."[/b]
Similar legislation was introduced in the Senate by Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Judd Gregg, R-N.H., earlier this month. So far this Congress has not taken up any immigration matters but Lofgren has said she hopes measures like this might get enough bipartisan support to pass.
But Mark Krikorian, head of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that wants to restricting immigration, told the subcommittee that the long term effect of this bill would encourage American businesses to hire skilled foreign workers rather than skilled American workers.

Krikorian said the U.S. should stick with the current system, under which foreign graduates compete with other foreign nationals for a limited number of skilled worker visas but "limit it to the best and brightest." The bill is supposed to streamline the immigration of geniuses, "but how many geniuses really are there in the world?" he asked.

Foreign nationals comprise about half of the master's and Ph.D.s graduating from U.S. universities in engineering fields, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association, a trade association. However, many are more likely to find jobs abroad because of the difficulty in transitioning from a student to worker visa.

Each year the government issues 140,000 worker visas and the vast majority them are sought by the semiconductor industry. This bill would exempt such highly skilled graduates from that limit.

The European Union and Canada are already making changes to let in more highly skilled workers, the witnesses told the panel. Canada is even recruiting skilled foreign students at U.S. universities such as Stanford, said John Pearson, a Stanford administrator and spokesman for the Association of International Educators, at the hearing.

Yongjie Yang, who has a doctorate in neuroscience and genetics, told the committee that although he graduated from a U.S. university and is currently working to find a cure for Alzheimer's disease at Johns Hopkins University, he has been caught in the visa backlog. Originally from China, Yang's H-1B visa will expire next year but although he has been approved for a green card he's not sure he'll get it before his H-1B visa expires.

Two other bills discussed today would roll over work visas that haven't been used. That means if not all 140,000 worker visas are handed out one year, the extras can be added to the visa totals for the next year.

One of those bills would also recapture green cards lost to bureaucratic delays since 1992, when limits were established. This would recapture about 220,000 worker visas and 200,000 family visas. Lofgren and Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., introduced this bill.

The other would eliminate per country limits on worker visas. Without the limit, more highly skilled workers from countries can work here. Rollover of unused visas would also be applied after the bill is passed, but this bill would not allow a recapture of previously unused visas. Lofgren and Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., introduced this bill.

Contact the writer: (202) 628-6381 or blevine@ocregister.com





http://www.ocregister.com/articles/bill ... sa-foreign