ImmigrationLawmakers propose bill which would increase visas for highly skilled immigrants

Four senators, led by Senator Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) – the others are Senators Marco Rubio (R-Florida), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota), and Chris Coons (D-Delaware) — plan to introduce a more narrowly tailored immigration reform bill which focuses on increasing the number of temporary visas available for highly skilled immigrants. The bill would also free up green cards so more of these highly skilled immigrants could settle in the United States and eventually become citizens.

Big technology companies like Microsoft, Oracle, Intel, and others have been campaigning for a long time for increasing the number of work visas for foreign nationals with computer, engineering, and mathematics skills. These companies have argued that such visas are necessary since not enough Americans were graduating with engineering and math degrees.

The New York Times reports that the main points of the Hatch bill:

• It would immediately increase the cap on H1-B temporary visas for skilled immigrants to 115,000 a year from the current maximum of 65,000.
• It would also create, for the first time, a “market-based” system which would increase the numbers of those visas if the supply ran out, to a maximum of 300,000 H-1B visas in one year.
• If demand from employers declined, the market mechanism in the bill would lower the cap on temporary visas.
• Spouses of temporary immigrants would be allowed to work, a change that would be especially beneficial to educated women from Asian countries like India, whose own professional careers stalled when their spouses came to work in the United States.
• The bill would make it easier for temporary immigrants who are tied to one employer to find a new job if their first job did not work out.
• The bill  would tweak the system to make more green cards available for immigrants in science and technology fields, but without increasing the number of green cards over all.
• It would allow the immigration authorities to distribute as many as 300,000 green cards that went unused over the years because of problems in the allocation system.
• The bill would make sure that a much higher percentage of 140,000 employment green cards available each year would go to the skilled immigrants, and not to their family members, as happens now.
• The bill would make an unlimited number of green cards available for foreigners graduating from American universities with advanced science and technology degrees.
• It would increase visa fees and use the money for training programs for Americans.

Klobuchar said immigrants had brought new ideas and businesses to the United States. “I truly believe we have to be a country that makes stuff again, that exports to the world,” she said in an interview. “To do that, we have to have innovation.”

“Sadly,” Klobuchar said, under the current system “we have been training our competition,” because many skilled immigrants were forced to return home after studying and working in the United States.

Many employee groups have always objected to the ideas behind the bill, saying that allowing a large number of skilled immigrants to come and work in the United States would undercut wages for skilled Americans. “America is a nation of immigrants, not of guest workers,” Keith Grzelak, vice president of the IEEE-USA, which represents more than 400,000 engineers, told the Times.