Eric Thomas or Frances Cox 202/822-9491 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 15, 2008

Bipartisan Legislation Would Make Incremental Adjustments to Employment-Based Green Card

Bills Would Help U.S. Employers Keep Critical Highly Educated Professionals Working for the American Innovation Economy

Washington D.C. – Compete America today welcomed the introduction of three bipartisan bills that represent incremental adjustments to the employment-based (EB) green card system.  U.S. employers rely on EB green cards to keep much-needed and sought-after highly educated professionals living, working and innovating in America.
Specifically, the bills would:

• “Recapture” employment-based (EB) green cards that Congress authorized in the past but that went unused before the end of the fiscal year because of government processing delays (H.R. 5882; lead sponsors: Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI));
• Eliminate per country limits on EB green card distribution, thus removing artificial bottlenecks for employees from high-demand countries (H.R. 5921; lead sponsors: Reps. Lofgren and Bob Goodlatte (R-VA)); and
• Exempt highly educated, foreign-born students earning an advanced degree in science, technology, engineering and mathematics from a U.S. university from the annual EB green card limit (H.R. 6039; lead sponsors: Reps. Lofgren and Chris Cannon (R-UT)).

“Chairwoman Lofgren and her Democratic and Republican colleagues have recognized the enormous strains that green card backlogs have placed on U.S. companies and most important, on highly educated workers who are already here and contributing to the American economy,” said Robert Hoffman, Vice President for Government and Public Affairs at Oracle and Co-Chair of Compete America. “Taken together, these three bills represent common-sense incremental measures that Congress should enact this year.”
Backlogs in the EB green card system are well documented, with some foreign-born highly educated professionals waiting over 6 to 10 years to receive a permanent resident visa.   Without these incremental reforms, U.S. employers will be crippled in the global competition for the world’s best talent, as more and more extremely valuable professionals from around the world take their education and abilities to competitors abroad. 

“America is in a full-blown global competition for talent, and competitor nations are doing all they can to make permanent residence more readily available to highly educated workers and draw talent away from the U.S. economy,” continued Hoffman.  “We look forward to seeing these interim fixes to the EB green card system, as well as other reforms for highly skilled immigration, become law this year.”

For more information on how highly educated immigration benefits America, please visit www.competeamerica.org. 

Compete America (www.competeamerica.org) is a coalition of corporations, educators, research institutions and trade associations concerned about legal, employment-based immigration and committed to ensuring that the United States has the highly educated workforce necessary to ensure continued innovation, job creation and leadership in a worldwide economy.

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