Immigration

Nextgov.com reports that the government can fix the immigration system without legislation, by automating visa processing and by granting priority to skilled workers, including technology professionals, over family members, according to a new report by the Brookings Institution.

"The infrastructure for considering and granting visas needs a major upgrade," Darrell M. West, founder of the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings, a nonpartisan think tank, wrote in a policy paper released on Wednesday.

Currently, the visa program requires people seeking entry to the United States to provide paper copies of sometimes hard-to-obtain documents that are then often lost in the government's system and must be submitted repeatedly, he said. Repairing the nuts and bolts of the immigration process would get to the root of what West sees as the solution to the nation's immigration debate.

The visa system should adopt digital technology to reduce both errors and delays," he wrote, noting that obtaining a visa often is the first step talented foreigners must take to gain U.S. citizenship. "Changing the composition of the immigration stream, even without increasing its size, would result in a 'brain gain' for the United States." To read more, click here.

A new study released Thursday from Georgetown University predicts that by 2018 a majority of U.S. jobs will require some post-secondary education, demand the United States is not ready to meet.

The report, conducted by Georgetown's Center on Education and the Workforce, predicted that 63 percent of all jobs will require some post-secondary education. Employers will demand 22 million new workers with postsecondary degrees and without major changes in U.S. education policy, the report claims the United States will fall short by three million workers.

Information services is among the top six industries that will require workers with the most education, the report said. It also said that 90 percent of science, technology, engineering and math fields will require post-secondary education.

"America needs more workers with college degrees, certificates and industry certifications," Anthony P. Carnevale, the center's director, said in a statement. "If we don't address this need now, millions of jobs could go offshore."

Compete America, a coalition of businesses, industry associations and education groups, said the report shows that while "domestic sources of talent are being expanded, U.S. employers must often rely on foreign-born scientists, engineers, researchers and other professionals to help maintain America's innovation leadership." The group favors immigration reform legislation that would allow foreigners who obtain advanced degrees from U.S. colleges to remain in the United States.

But with unemployment still hovering near 10 percent, groups like Compete America may have a tough sell persuading Americans and Congress on the need to allow more skilled foreign workers to come to the United States.

Concerns are mounting that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., might try to advance a hastily drafted immigration reform bill to satisfy demands that legislation is introduced by May 1, CongressDaily reported.

Sources said such a move would be disruptive to business and labor groups, which resumed delicate negotiations Wednesday to find compromises on several issues, including how to bring workers into the country to meet labor needs. Talks had broken down last month but resumed in hopes of producing a comprehensive immigration reform bill that would be introduced by Sens. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

Reid and congressional Democratic leaders are under escalating pressure from grassroots Latino and pro-immigration groups to introduce legislation by next weekend or face repercussions, including mass demonstrations, civil disobedience and diminished support at the ballot box in November.

Sources familiar with the talks doubt a bill will be ready by then, as Schumer and Graham have yet to circulate firm legislative language. One source said good progress was being made in the negotiations. Both sides are focusing on how to develop a visa system that brings workers into the country to meet business needs, rather than establishing a temporary worker program that is opposed by labor unions, especially the AFL-CIO. To read more, click here. (Subscription required)

Information Technology Industry Council CEO and President Dean Garfield is touting information technology as one of the key drivers helping to pull the country out of the current economic downturn.

In a column Thursday in the Huffington Post, Garfield pointed to recent positive earnings reports from such companies as AMD, Apple, eBay, Google and IBM as evidence of the industry's "lead role in laying the foundation for a new pro-growth economy."

He noted that the IT industry has been a major source of job creation in recent years. Garfield said a new report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation found between 1999 and 2008, more than 688,000 new information and communications technology jobs were created. "History shows us that high-tech is a proven economic catalyst," he said, noting the contributions the personal computer, the Internet and new technologies such as social media have made to U.S. economic growth in the last 30 years.

Of course, he said the industry could be doing even better if policymakers took action on some key issues including making the research and development tax credit permanent, passing comprehensive immigration legislation that would make it easier for high-skilled workers and foreign students with advanced to degrees from U.S. universities to stay in the country permanently, and push to improve science, technology, education and math education.

"If this week's earnings reports from industry bellwethers are any indication, our economy is set to emerge from the recent downturn stronger, more efficient and more competitive," Garfield wrote. "But in many respects, the major policies we have in ... place in the areas that matter most to economic growth -- education, immigration, trade, taxes -- are the same policies we had in place for the last 50 years."

A coalition of more than 40 privacy and civil liberties groups late Tuesday asked President Obama and key lawmakers to reject a proposal to require U.S. and foreign workers to have a card continuing biometric information, such as fingerprints, in order to work in the United States.

The groups, which include the American Library Association and Americans for Tax Reform, oppose a provision that Sens. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., plan to put in a bill to overhaul the nation's immigration laws. Schumer, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Immigration Subcommittee, has said that a biometric identification card is a necessary part of doing comprehensive immigration reform.

"No one disputes that our broken immigration system harms both immigrants and non-immigrants, but a full scale National ID system is not the solution," the groups wrote in a letter to Obama, the House and Senate Judiciary committees, the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee. "A National ID would not only violate privacy by helping to consolidate data and facilitate tracking of individuals, it would bring government into the very center of our lives by serving as a government permission slip needed by everyone in order to work," they added.

They also noted that the proposal would require the development of a national database and could cost $285 million.

Separately, immigration reform advocates on Tuesday called on Schumer and Graham to introduce their bill by May 1. The bill could then be marked up by the Senate Judiciary Committee in May and brought to the Senate floor in June or July, said the advocates, who represent groups such as the National Council of La Raza and the Reform Immigration FOR America campaign. When asked if a bill would be introduced by the end of April, Schumer would only say he wants to pass immigration reform this year and is waiting for a second Republican to help him and Graham introduce the bill.

An industry coalition that favors changes to the immigration system that would allow more highly skilled foreigners to stay in the United States Thursday praised immigration legislation outlined by Sens. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

In an op-ed set to run in Friday's Washington Post, the senators discussed some of the elements they believe should be included in comprehensive immigration legislation. One of the provisions they proposed would award green cards to immigrants who receive a doctoral or master's degree in science, technology, engineering or math from a U.S. university. "It makes no sense to educate the world's future inventors and entrepreneurs and then force them to leave when they are able to contribute to our economy," Schumer and Graham wrote.

In a statement Thursday, Compete America praised the senators for recognizing "the importance of fixing America's broken immigration system, and particularly the visa system for highly educated foreign nationals." Compete America co-Executive Director Jessica Herrera-Flanigan added that "America's national interests are best served when the world's top scientists, researchers, engineers, entrepreneurs, healthcare professionals and teachers can live and work in the United States. That is how we keep America on the cutting edge of innovation and technology, that is how we will help lead the country back to economic strength, and that is how we will create more jobs for Americans."

President Obama also issued a statement Thursday on the immigration proposal, saying "I am pleased to see that Senators Schumer and Graham have produced a promising, bipartisan framework which can and should be the basis for moving forward."

Compete America, the industry group focused on labor immigration policies, has hired Monument Policy Group to manage Compete America's lobbying efforts in 2010. In addition, Monument Partner Jessica Herrera-Flanigan and the firm's Senior Vice President Scott Corley will serve as executive directors for Compete America, the group said Tuesday.

The bipartisan team - Herrera-Flanigan has worked for congressional Democrats while Corley has worked for Hill Republicans - will help Compete America push policy makers to enact changes to the nation's employment immigration system that would allow more foreign students and workers to remain in the United States. Specifically, the group is pushing for changes to the nation's green card system and for a market-based approach to allocating H-1B visas for skilled foreign workers.

"It is clear that for any legislative initiative to be successful, it must have bipartisan support," Compete America Co-Chairman Dejan Pavlovic, Oracle's senior director of government affairs, said in a statement.

A new report released Tuesday by the Center for American Progress highlights the importance of high-skilled immigrants to the U.S. economy, but argues that "arbitrary restrictions" keep companies from fully utilizing this talent pool. "Reforming our high-skilled immigration system will stimulate innovation, enhance competitiveness, and help cultivate a flexible, highly-skilled U.S. workforce while protecting U.S. workers from globalization's destabilizing effects," the report said. Among the reforms the report recommends include establishing a market-based mechanism for setting the annual levels of H-1B visas available for skilled foreign workers, raising the green card cap and streamlining the process for obtaining a green card.

The current cap on H-1B visas is set at 65,000 annually with an additional 20,000 available for foreigners who graduate from U.S. schools with master's or doctoral degrees. Unlike past years, the 65,000 cap was not reached this year soon after the fresh batch of visas became available at the start of the new fiscal year on Oct. 1. As of early December, 61,100 of the 65,000 H-1B visas have been applied for, though the cap for the 20,000 supplemental visas has been met, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Industry officials who favor a market-based system for allocating H-1B visas say this year's figures indicate that such a system will work because with the economic downturn, companies have shown less of a need to hire foreign workers. "This report accurately highlights the positive benefits of high skilled immigration to America's economy," Information Technology Industry Council President Dean Garfield said in a statement.

The report, however, also addresses a key concern of those who oppose allowing more skilled foreign workers into the United States: bringing in foreign workers, no matter how skilled they are, depresses domestic wages and may hurt Americans' ability to obtain such jobs. "Current enforcement mechanisms are too weak to adequately prevent fraud and gaming of the system," according to the report, which calls for greater focus on targeting employer fraud and abuse, strengthening requirements for companies to seek out U.S. workers before hiring a foreigner and other protections.