Speech #1100038439

Over half of masters and Ph.D. degrees in the United States go to foreign students each year. foreign students who study in the United States. China graduates four times as many engineers as we do. and within a few years approximately 90 percent of all scientists and engineers in the world will be in Asia. Foreign students help us fill the gap right nowa gap we are going to try to make up through growing more of our own talent right here through the great provisions of this legislationbut then our immigration policy. as currently constituted. forces these best and brightest students. these foreign students. to return home because there are no hightech visas. Our immigration policy has not adapted to the changing international environment or this global competition. Only 65.000 visas are issued each year to this category of the best and the brightest. For the past few years. the cap has been reached before the fiscal year even begins. But this year. on April 1. 2007. there was a loud outcry for immediate relief in our highly skilled immigration policies because that was the day the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service announced the 2008 cap for H1B visas was met. That is right. because the United States has already met the cap for HlB visas. foreign students graduating from our universities this spring are virtually shut out of the U.S. job market. We hit that cap on the very day the opportunity for filing for those types of visas was presented. This situation is unprecedented. What it means is employers cannot hire highly educated workers for up to 1 year. until the next allotment of visas becomes available. With global competition. of course. these workers have a lot of other options as to where to go. They can go to England.