STEM Jobs Act of 2012

Floor Speech

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Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of this piece of legislation.

All over America, Americans are having to make priority decisions in their families. The fact is this Congress needs to make some priority decisions. It is not only the right, but the responsibility, of this Congress and this Nation to make sure that our immigration policy is good for America first and foremost.

This bill will replace a failed system that actually gambled with America's future by having a lottery. It replaces it with bringing good scientists in. Let me just give you the numbers from just recently.

This is going to create 55,000 jobs. Do we want to have 6,000 Iranians coming here or do you want 6,000 scientists and researchers coming in? Do we want to set aside an area where we have over 2,000 Moroccans being given a set-aside for their country rather than treating individuals that have proven that they have an asset that we need in this country?

The real issue here is, Mr. Speaker, whether we are willing to correct a mistake of the past to move forward with a fair system that judges individuals based on their merit, not based on the country that they're coming from.

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