FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                                       

Contact:  Eric Thomas or Frances Cox, 202-822-9491

October 21, 2010

Compete America Applauds White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics

Improving U.S. Education the Key to Future Economic Competitiveness and Job Creation

Washington, D.C. – Compete America, a coalition dedicated to ensuring that the United States has the highly educated and innovative workforce necessary to grow the economy and create American jobs, applauded President Obama’s Executive Order establishing the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics.

“The United States must focus on improving the educational system at all levels and for all people. This announcement by the White House is a welcome push in that direction,” said Compete America Co-Executive Director Jessica Herrera-Flanigan.

Compete America specifically endorsed the White House goal of “... increasing college access and success for Hispanic students and providing support to help ensure that a greater percentage of Hispanics complete college and contribute to the goal of having America again lead the world in the proportion of college graduates by 2020, in part through strategies to strengthen the capacity of Hispanic-Serving Institutions ….”

Herrera-Flanigan noted that Compete America’s recently released Education and Workforce Principles specifically advocate for the development of a stronger high-skill domestic workforce through diversity.

• Promoting Domestic Skilled Labor Through Diversity – Accounting for less than 5% of the U.S. engineering workforce combined, Hispanic and African American students are an untapped resource for the next generation of engineers. Compete America believes that traditional minority-serving institutions should be bolstered through H-1B visa fees paid by U.S. employers to better support these students in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields.

To learn more about the benefits of highly educated foreign professionals to the U.S. economy, 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.