The Hill
By Jennifer Martinez
January 25, 2013
A bipartisan group of
senators is poised to introduce a high-skilled immigration
bill next week that would significantly increase the number
of H-1B visas available to skilled foreign-born workers,
such as engineers and computer programmers.
A current draft of the bill
obtained by The Hill proposes to increase the cap for H-1B visas to 115,000 from the current cap of 65,000. It would
also create a "market-based H-1B escalator" that would allow
for additional visas to be made available to foreign workers
if the cap is hit early during a particular year—though it
can only hit a ceiling of 300,000 visas. The escalator would
adjust up or down, depending on the demands of the market.
Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah),
Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Amy Klobuchar
(D-Minn.) are co-sponsors of the bill, according to the
obtained draft. Hatch told The Hill that the co-sponsors are
aiming to file the bill next Tuesday. It will be the first
immigration bill introduced this year as Congress is gearing
up for a long battle over comprehensive immigration reform.
When asked why he decided to
focus on reforming the H-1B program first, Hatch said he
believed passing such a measure is "very doable" and may
encourage other members to support other immigration reform
efforts in the future.
"I think we need to break the
ice and let people know that this is the art of the
doable... at least I think it's very doable and I think
everybody ought to come on [to support it] because it makes
sense and it's a bipartisan bill already," Hatch said. "If
we put that through that says to them, well maybe we can do
more and if we can do more, I'm going to be right there
helping."
The bill, currently titled
the Immigration Innovation Act, will likely earn support
from the tech industry, which has called on Washington for
years to pass high-skilled immigration reform. Tech
companies, such as Microsoft and Intel, have argued that
they struggle to fill positions for engineering and research
jobs because of there is a lack of qualified applicants for
those positions. They also say the existing immigration
rules force them to lose these skilled workers to
competitors abroad.
The tech industry relies on
the H-1B program to hire foreign workers for jobs that
require advanced technical skills, such as scientists,
engineers or programmers.
Hatch said there may be
pushback from groups upset with the bill's aim to increase
the number of H-1B visas for immigrants, but he "doubted it"
because the measure will help boost the U.S. economy.
"We know that we've created
all kinds of efforts against ourselves by educating people
and not allowing them to stay here when they wanted to,"
Hatch said. "And we ought to keep these master's degrees and
Ph.D.s that can help us to regenerate our business community
and our economy, and this bill will help us to do that."
The bill would also remove
the cap that limits the number of H-1B visas that a American
employer can apply for in order to hire foreign graduates
with advanced degrees from U.S. universities. That cap is
currently limited to 20,000 visas a year.
Notably, the current draft of
the bill authorizes dependent spouses of H-1B visa holders
to work in the U.S. The issue has typically been a thorny
one in previous years.
The bill also attempts to
reduce the backlog for green cards by exempting certain
groups of people from the employment-based green card cap,
such as dependents of employment-based visa recipients,
"outstanding professors and researchers," and foreign-born
gradates from U.S. universities with advanced degrees in
math, science and engineering. It would also eliminate the
per-country caps on employment-based green cards.
Additionally, the bill
proposes to increase the fees that employers would have to
pay to petition for H-1B visas and employment-based green cards The additional money from these fees will go towards
a grant program dedicated to promoting education in the
so-called STEM fields—science, technology, engineering and
math—and "worker retraining" at the state-level, according
to a one-page summary of the bill.
Spokespeople for the bill
co-sponsors did not respond to requests for comment.
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