Comprehensive immigration reform builds steam from tech industry

By Richard Kistnen, Esq. –

With his State of the Union address to the Nation Tuesday night, President Obama laid out his vision for the United States in the coming months.  One of the major issues that garnered momentum in the last several months is immigration reform.  After the losses suffered predominantly by Republicans in this past election, it appears that the time is ripe for comprehensive immigration reform.  No one is better in advancing that discussion than those in the big business of technology – and they are making their voices heard.
A trend that tends to permeate graduate programs – including medical schools and the applied sciences – is that of foreign-born individuals obtaining seats in American programs and then taking their skill-set back home after program completion.  Part of the problem is that immigration laws here in the United States make it difficult, complicated and very time-consuming to obtain lawful status.  Further complicating the issue is that American-born applicants are missing out on seats in these programs, creating a gap in local supply and demand of highly-skilled professionals.
Proponents of comprehensive immigration reform, especially from the tech industries, are calling for a number of changes to laws and regulations to promote foreign-born students and professionals to make the United States their home.  One such proposal is to double the number of temporary visas available, known as H1-B.  Currently, 60,000 are available each year, which tend to be applied for and earmarked rapidly.  The proposal would double that number to 120,000.
Another proposal, which had been passed in the House but died in the Senate, would have created 55,000 special visas for foreign-born students that graduate from American schools in the “STEM” fields – science, technology, engineering and math.
Big tech business, like Facebook and Microsoft, have shipped jobs overseas because of the difficulty in obtaining work authorization for employees.  A New York Times article recently reported that Facebook had placed eighty engineers in Ireland in 2011 because it could not obtain temporary work authorization for those engineers to work in its California headquarters.  The same New York Times article also reported that Microsoft was forced to open an office in Canada as opposed to within the United States because of a backlog of visa applications.
The leaders of many of these tech giants have already been meeting with legislators.  A Senate hearing on immigration legislation will be taking testimony from them, immigration officials, and civil rights groups.  President Obama has also voiced, on several occasions, that the time has finally come for immigration legislation overhaul.  “Real reform means fixing the legal immigration system to cut waiting periods, reduce bureaucracy, and attract the highly-skilled entrepreneurs and engineers that will help create jobs and grow our economy,” Mr. Obama said during his State of the Union address.
With midterm elections peeking at us in the distance, it will be interesting to see whether legislators are genuinely interested in repairing an immigration system that simply does not function – or whether it is all just strategy-talk to shift the balance of power in our Nation’s Capitol.  If Washington politics tends to flow with business, it appears that this time around, the talk is for real.  Please reach the Law Office of Richard Kistnen if you have concerns about this article, or if you would like to discuss other legal concerns, such as bankruptcy and litigation.