Frances Cox 202/822-9491 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 22, 2007

Compete America Applauds Inclusion of EB Green Card and H-1B Visa Reform in House Immigration Bill

Provisions Included in "STRIVE" Act Would Relieve Crisis Facing U.S. Employers of Highly Educated Foreign Professionals

Washington D.C. – Compete America today endorsed provisions of the “STRIVE” Act that include critically important measures to reform both the employment-based (EB) green card and H-1B visa programs.  Both the EB and H-1B visa programs are key mechanisms for legal employment of highly educated foreign nationals, and are critical to America’s continued innovation leadership and global competitiveness.  The STRIVE Act was introduced today by Representatives Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ).

“America benefits when the world’s top innovators, entrepreneurs and job creators are living and working here – yet our visa system for highly educated foreign professionals continues to work against U.S. economic interests,” said Robert Hoffman, Vice President for Government and Public Affairs at Oracle and Co-Chair of Compete America. “We applaud Representatives Gutierrez and Flake for recognizing the competitiveness crisis facing the United States and taking action to fix the broken EB green card and H-1B visa programs.”

Among the key provisions included in the STRIVE Act that were endorsed by Compete America are the following:

• Updating the EB green card cap and exempting key categories of professionals, such as those with “extraordinary ability” in the sciences, arts, business, and other critical fields.
  
  
• Creating exemptions from both EB immigrant visa and H-1B caps for foreign students receiving an advanced degree from a U.S. university, as well as foreign professionals who have earned advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM) at foreign universities.
  
  
• Updating the cap on H-1B visas for highly educated temporary workers, including through a flexible market-based annual adjustment.
  
  
• Creating a new student visa category, to allow U.S. STEM degree holders who have a job offer to transition directly from student visa to greencard.

“With the 2008 H-1B cap likely to be reached in April, and with multi-year backlogs in all employment based visa categories growing, it is imperative that meaningful reform occur this year,” Hoffman continued.  “Compete America urges both the House and Senate to move forward with bipartisan legislation to provide a permanent fix to the visa programs for highly educated foreign professionals.”

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.