FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                                       

Contact: Frances Cox, 202-822-9491

May 10, 2011

Compete America Supports President’s Call to Fix Broken Employment-Based Immigration System

America Needs a System that Helps It Compete and Maintain Competitive Edge

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 on comprehensive immigration reform in El Paso, Texas, today.

“We appreciate President Obama’s continued focus on comprehensive immigration reform.  Permanently fixing the employment-based green card and visa systems that U.S. employers use to create jobs and grow the economy is in the national interest and must be a top priority of reform efforts.

“As the President made clear, in a global marketplace, ‘we need all the talent we can get,’ for the benefit of all Americans.  Highly educated, foreign-born professionals have a long history of making great contributions to our country, and we must allow them to continue doing so.

“America must have an employment-based immigration system that lets us ‘out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world,’ and we call on the President, Congress and all stakeholders to work together to achieve that goal 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.