Speech #1130120552

No. What they are going to do is build that factory in India and employ a thousand people there instead of employing a thousand Americans. so we need to change our global tax system. We need to ease the immigration of highlyskilled immigrants. Mr. Speaker. I am for comprehensive immigration reform. but I am not for the kind of immigration reform the President is talking about. Mr. Speaker. we have the most liberal legal immigration system in the world. We allow 1.2 million legal immigrants every year. The problem with our system is that most every OECD country that has looked at this has decided they are going to use immigration as a mechanism to be more competitive. Other countries are already working on this. So what they do is they say. "Okay. You can immigrate into our country if you have a skill that we need. They allow people with high skill sets and high education to come to the front of the line to immigrate." Our immigration system is exactly the reverse. It is completely counterintuitive. Sixtyfive percent of the immigration that we allow is not based on skill set but based on family relationship. Only 12 percent of our immigration is based on skill set. and what is the result? The result of that. as I have read. is that as many as 42 percent of the new applications for Medicaid come from immigrants. At a disproportionately large amount. legal immigrants rely on our social safety net. and that makes us less rather than more competitive. We need comprehensive immigration reform. but what that means to me is that we need to base our immigration largely on skill set. I am not saying eliminate immigration based on family relationship. but I am saying make that a much smaller piece of the pie. Another problem with our immigration system is with our student visa program. We have the best universities in the world. People come from all over. In fact. I think I read yesterday that there were a record number of foreign students in American universities. So the problem is when they get their degree and after their student visa expires. under our immigration system. we require that they go back to their home country. We prevent them from staying here. They have to go back to their home country for a period of years before they can even apply to come back to the United States.