Employment and Wages
The W Visa: Why the Economy Benefits from A Robust New Worker Program
The Senate Judiciary Committee returns to its task of marking up S. 744 tomorrow, taking up, among other things, possible amendments to the W visa program for new nonimmigrant workers. This new program, blessed by both business and labor, is an effort to acknowledge the need for a more flexible system for meeting the demand for workers in certain occupations and industries that require less-skilled workers. At Tuesday’s hearing, several Senators challenged the idea that the American workforce needed to be supplemented with immigrant labor, but the evidence is overwhelming that there is both a need and an economic benefit to having a flexible and responsive program in place to bring in new workers where they are most needed. Read More
Day Two of Senate Immigration Mark-Up Continues With Temporary Employment Visas
On the second day of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s mark-up of S. 744, the “Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act,” the senators tackled most of the amendments to Title IV after finishing debate on a few border security amendments. The fourth section addresses the majority of non-immigrant temporary visas including those for high and less- skilled immigrant workers, entrepreneurship and innovation programs, as well as a range of miscellaneous visitor visas. Read More
The Important Role of Immigrants in America’s Innovation Economy
This week, the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation weighed in on immigration reform with a hearing on the role of immigrants in America’s innovation economy. Remarks from Sens. Rockefeller (D-WV) and Thune (R-SD) noted the contributions of immigrant innovators and entrepreneurs. Immigrants in the United States were named as inventors or co-inventors on 25.6 percent of international patent applications filed from the U.S. in 2006. Furthermore, temporary workers and permanent residents made contributions to over half of the international patents filed by several large, multi-national companies. Temporary and permanent foreign-born workers represent at least 24 percent of the nation’s scientists and 47 percent of engineers with doctoral degrees. Read More
How to Accurately Estimate the Economic Impact of the Senate Immigration Reform Bill
One of the most important questions being asked about the Senate immigration reform bill (S. 744) is how it will impact the economy. There is already a broad consensus among economic experts that immigration reform would be a net economic benefit in terms of jobs, wage levels, tax revenue, and Gross Domestic Product (GDP). As reported in Politico on May 8, for instance, a new study by the Social Security Administration estimates that “by 2024, the immigration bill will have created 3.22 million jobs, and boost GDP by 1.63 percent.” However, the most widely awaited estimate is that of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which will soon be “scoring” the bill in terms of its fiscal consequences. Read More
Keeping U.S. High-Skilled Temporary Worker Visa Programs Workable
When analyzing higher-skilled guest worker visa programs, such as the H-1B and L-1 programs, critics often fail to acknowledge the very different and important purposes that these programs were designed to serve, and the complicated requirements already in place to protect against abuse or exploitation. There is no denying that we can and should improve these programs and the strategies used to enforce them. However, given the well-established economic benefits of these programs, and the challenges employers face finding highly skilled workers, particularly in technical fields, it is essential that any proposed reforms not impose restrictions that may make these programs completely unworkable. Read More
High-Skilled Immigration and Entrepreneurship in the Senate’s Immigration Bill
On the road to reform, the Senate’s Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act contains several changes and new provisions for skilled immigration and entrepreneurship. Specifically, the bill provides balanced reforms to the H-1B nonimmigrant visa for high-skilled individuals, various provisions for highly skilled individuals through permanent employment-based immigration, and a new INVEST visa for entrepreneurs. Read More
Details Begin to Emerge on New Immigration Bill
Ahead of the expected release of a comprehensive immigration reform bill in the Senate this week, details were released outlining the broad strokes of the bill. The “Gang of Eight”—a bipartisan group of senators who have been working to develop the proposal—delayed a press conference that had been planned for today about the bill out of respect for the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing. The Senate group could announce the final measure tomorrow Read More
H-1B Visa Cap Reached in Five Days
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced on Friday, April 5, just five days after the H-1B high-skill “visa race” began, that they had received more applications than could be approved under the cap of 65,000 for fiscal year 2014. Additionally, USCIS stated they had received more than 20,000 H-1B petitions on behalf of individuals who are exempt from the cap. As such, USCIS will no longer be accepting additional H-1B petitions for fiscal year 2014. At this point, USCIS will use a random selection “lottery” process to allocate the 65,000 visas from the applications received through April 5. Read More
Small Business Owners Support Comprehensive Immigration Reform
Small business owners throughout the United States have a pulse on the goings on within their local communities. They recognize that immigrant workers and their families are also consumers, which helps to create additional jobs and bolster local economies. Within that context, two new polls highlight small business owners’ perspectives of immigration and its positive effects on the ground in communities. Overwhelmingly, the surveys show small business owners, regardless of political affiliation, support comprehensive immigration reform. Read More
Labor and Business Strike Immigration Deal on Worker Program
Over the weekend, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO reached an agreement on a new type of immigrant worker program that has the potential to reshape the way temporary and permanent immigration visas contribute to American immigration policy. Although this is commonly referred to as future immigration flow, it should not be confused with other debates over increasing visas for high skilled workers or increasing employment based green cards. Instead, the agreement represents an attempt to reshape how business and labor will deal with the incredibly complex issues that are part of filling the demand for less-skilled labor in the United States. In the short term, it sets up a series of concepts that both sides would be willing to support in comprehensive immigration reform—but the Gang of Eight still has to convert those concepts into workable legislation. Read More
America's story is an immigrant story.
