May 28, 2013
Immigration reform is a hot topic in the Beltway these days, and as Jennifer Martinez of The Hill reports, one industry in particular is leading the charge:
The tech industry is targeting six GOP senators in the hopes of building a supermajority behind the Senate’s immigration bill.
The bill approved this week by the Judiciary Committee significantly increases the cap on H1-B visas commonly used by tech firms, and softened tougher restrictions on their use.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg highlighted the importance of immigration in the tech sector in a recent op-ed for the Washington Post. As he wrote:
To lead the world in this new economy, we need the most talented and hardest-working people. We need to train and attract the best. We need those middle-school students to be tomorrow’s leaders.
Given all this, why do we kick out the more than 40 percent of math and science graduate students who are not U.S. citizens after educating them? Why do we offer so few H-1B visas for talented specialists that the supply runs out within days of becoming available each year, even though we know each of these jobs will create two or three more American jobs in return? Why don’t we let entrepreneurs move here when they have what it takes to start companies that will create even more jobs?