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Contact: Eric Thomas, 202-822-9491

April 20, 2011

Compete America Applauds President Obama for Focus on Growing U.S. Innovation

Coalition Urges Congress to Rise to President’s Call at Today’s Facebook Town Hall to Keep Innovators in America and Improve U.S. STEM Education

Washington, D.C. – Compete America, a coalition dedicated to ensuring that the United States has the highly educated workforce it needs to continue to lead in innovation and job creation, issued the following statement in response to President Barack Obama’s remarks at a Facebook Town Hall in support of keeping innovation and innovators in America.

“We applaud President Obama for recognizing the critical importance of the innovation ecosystem to U.S. economic growth, job creation and the future of America.  As he said today at the Facebook Town Hall, the next Andy Grove, the foreign-born co-founder of Intel, needs to be in the United States.  Compete America could not agree more.

“We also wholeheartedly agree with the President that America must improve math and science education to ensure that we have the next generation of scientists and engineers with the ideas and discoveries that have made our nation great and will maintain our role as the world’s economic bellwether.  Compete America has long supported improved U.S. STEM education, and we will continue to urge for reforms that ensure our children can compete and thrive in the 21^st century global marketplace.

“America must also fix its broken employment-based green card and visa systems so that U.S. employers can keep foreign-born innovators in America – especially after they have graduated from a U.S. university with an advanced STEM degree.

“The future of our nation is at stake, and we again applaud the President for his focus on American innovation, and we urge Congress to enact programs to improve U.S. STEM education and fix the broken immigration system for highly educated, foreign-born professionals this year.”

To learn more about the benefits of highly educated foreign-born professionals to the U.S. economy, visit www.competeamerica.org.

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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.