Speech #960123538

Mr. Speaker. the main concern of this Congress. and several others before this. has been how to improve our sagging economy. I believe one way is to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act. which presently discourages foreign entrepreneurs from entering the United States to establish business enterorises and create jobs for American workers. This could be alleviated by brief language amending the Immigration Act. solving problems currently faced by thousands of entrepreneurs seeking to establish and manage businesses here. The Immigration Act does not specifically deal with aliens who seek to enter the United States on a permanent residence basis as entrepreneurs. Administratively. however. they are characterized as "investors" and are recognized as prospective immigrants who are cxempt from the labor certification provisions. The exemption is premised on the fact that. by their very definition. they will not be performing skilled or unskilled labor which would be taking jobs away from Americans. In fact. of course. their investments create jobs for Americans. Immigrant visas for permanent residence fall into two classifications. preference and nonpreference. Visas under the worldwide ceiling of 290.000 are distributed according to a sevencategory preference system which gives priority to family members. certain professionals with special skills. hardtofind workers and refugees. The visas are made available under the preference system on a firstcome. firstserved basis. not to exceed 20.000 per country per year. The problem I am addressing concerns the way in which the preference system works regarding the entry of investors. Investors are generally not considered to qualify under the third or sixth preference categories (respectively. members of the professions or persons of exceptional ability in the sciences and arts. and skilled and unskilled workers in short supply). The first. second. and fifth categories give priority to family members and the seventh gives priority to refugees. Hence. investors qualify only under the nonpreference portion. The key point here is that nonpreference visas are granted only when prospective immigrants in the preference categories are not using up all of a countrys annual allocations. And in recent years no such slots have been available. for demand in the preference categories has used up the entire allocation from almost all nations. Nonpreference applicants have been put on waiting lists. but the chances of their names being called in the foreseeable future are. for all practical purposes. virtually nil. The worldwide backlog of applications in the nonpreference category stands in excess of 360.000. While no figures are avallable to detail how many of these are applications from investors. it does give an indication of the gravity of the situation. There is the distinct possibility that visas in the nonpreference category will never again become available unless there is a change in the immigrant preference system. Until we do change that system. we are effectively excluding many who could bring entrepreneurial ckills and invest much needed capital in new or existing business enterprises in the United States. I suggest that we amend the Immigration Act to ameliorate this problem. I propose that investors be able to come in under the third preference. a category for which slots are currently available. and for which no displacement of other immigrants from most countries would occur. To this end. I have introduced two alternative bills which would amend the Immigration Act to allow foreign investors to come in under the third preference. The first bill would allow investors to immigrate if they invested or are in the process of investing a "substantial" amount of capital in an enterprise in the United States. The second would allow investors who have invested. or are in the process of investing. $200.000 or more in an enterprise in the United States to immigrate. It is my hope that the Judiciary Committee will see fit to select one of these options and recommend it to the House for our consideration. Both bills stipulate that the investors must be principal managers of the businesses to insure that they have a sufficient interest in the business and are not just trying to buy their way into the country.