News Release

IEEE-USA commends House members for bill aimed at foreign nationals who earn Ph.D.

Business Announcement

IEEE-USA

WASHINGTON (7 April 2008)-- IEEE-USA commends Reps. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) and Michael McCaul (R-Texas) for introducing the “New American Innovators Act.”

H.R. 5634 would exempt any foreign national who has earned a Ph.D. from a U.S. educational institution within the previous three years from numerical limitations on employment-based visas (green cards). This would facilitate their transition from temporary student (non-immigrant) status to legal permanent resident (immigrant).

“IEEE-USA supports efforts to bolster U.S. competitiveness by providing an easy and accessible way for foreign-born scientists and engineers who have earned doctorate degrees in the United States to become citizens,” IEEE-USA President Russ Lefevre said. “Many of these skilled workers will start companies that have the potential to boost the U.S. engineering enterprise through innovation and job creation.”

In a 1 April guest column on The Huffington Post, Kennedy wrote:

“American universities regularly graduate American students of the highest quality, and our economy has reaped the benefits for decades. But American universities also produce foreign graduates of equally high quality. Our economy has benefited from their talents as well. In fact, between 1995 and 2005 one quarter of all start-up engineering and technology firms in the United States had at least one foreign-born founder. By 2005, these companies produced $52 billion in sales and employed 450,000 workers.”

See the entire column at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-patrick-kennedy/bring-on-the-best-and-the_b_94383.html.

IEEE-USA’s support of H.R. 5634 is consistent with a letter it signed with the Semiconductor Industry Association in October 2007. In it, both groups called on Congress to facilitate the retention of highly skilled immigrants. See http://www.ieeeusa.org/communications/releases/2007/101107.asp.

In contrast to the “New American Innovators Act,” the H-1B non-immigrant admissions program, which has been widely discussed in recent news stories, only provides companies with temporary (3-6 years) access to workers from abroad and thus doesn’t address the long-term staffing needs of U.S. industry.

Some of these companies, as noted recently in BusinessWeek, “bring low-cost workers to the U.S., train them in the offices of U.S. clients, and then rotate them back home after a year or two so they can provide tech support and other services from abroad.”

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See the article at http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_11/b4075062465238.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily.

H.R. 5634 was referred to the House Judiciary Committee on 13 March. You can view it by going to http://thomas.loc.gov/ and searching by bill number.

IEEE-USA advances the public good and promotes the careers and public policy interests of more than 215,000 engineers, scientists and allied professionals who are U.S. members of the IEEE. IEEE-USA is part of the IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional society with 370,000 members in 160 countries. See http://www.ieeeusa.org.


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