COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM ACT OF 2007--Continued -- (Senate - June 06, 2007)
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AMENDMENT NO. 1374
Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside, and I call up amendment No. 1374.
Mr. President, this bill does a laudable job in setting up a new merit-based system for the future. That is the right thing to do for our country, but the bill misses the mark.
Our country needs an immigration system that recognizes we want to attract the best and the brightest from around the world. We have been doing that for many years because we recognize that people who are smart, who are talented, when they come to this country they actually create jobs in this country. They create opportunities for other people in this country.
The current bill unfortunately misses the mark on this merit system. The current bill is actually worse than current law. This bill today is worse than current law, and that is why the high-tech community across the country has come out in opposition to the provisions of the merit-based system in this bill. I want to tell a small anecdote that will illustrate the problems with our current system on attracting talent.
In my office today, a gentleman by the name of Bill Watkins from Seagate Corporation out of California just opened a new branch in Singapore and hired U.S. graduates, foreign students who graduated from MIT and other universities. The reason he hired them to go to Singapore, where he will pay them less money than he would have paid them in the United States, the reason he sent those jobs overseas is because of our immigration policy that basically will educate you in the United States, but then after we educate you, we will send you home.
The amendment I offer today says we are going to actually value people who are educated here, especially in the science and mathematics and engineering fields--we call those the stem fields--in the health sciences fields, we are going to give you even more points than the current bill does so that into the future we will attract the best and the brightest from around the world. It is the idea of being a brain drain to the rest of the world. People from all over the world want to come to America. We want the best and the brightest to come to America because of this fact--whether it is low-skilled or high-skilled workers, 4 percent of the jobs, 4 percent of the people who have jobs in the future will create the jobs for the other 96 percent of Americans. Those are the talented people we want to attract.
Over half of the start-ups in Silicon Valley in the last 10 years have come from immigrants. Those people, when they start up companies, create jobs in America. They create opportunities, some high skilled, some low skilled, but they are creating opportunities for people to pursue the American dream. So while the current bill is going in the right direction, it misses the mark.
So my amendment says we are going to reward those in the sciences, those in the technical fields, those who have a Ph.D. in electrical engineering. We are going to give you enough points to virtually guarantee entrance into this country. It is a good thing. It is why the high-tech community is supporting my amendment.
We also put in this amendment, if you are an immigrant, if you are one of these Z visa holders, we actually want you to be rewarded for doing military service. So we are going to offer another amendment to make sure they can do military service, and then when they do that, we want to reward them
to come into this country. To serve in our military should be the greatest honor, and we should reward people with legal permanent status, the ability to get legal permanent status.
We have a shortage of nurses in this country. We give more rewards for people in the health sciences as well in our amendment.
I think this is a critical amendment to improve this bill. If we are going to do a comprehensive immigration reform bill, we certainly shouldn't make it worse than current law, and this bill is worse than current law when it comes to high-tech workers coming into this country. So I would urge all of our colleagues to support this amendment. I know it is a delicate balance that we have between the various people who have brought this bill together, but I truly believe this is an improvement on not only current law, but it is also a great improvement on the current bill.
I reserve the remainder of my time.
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AMENDMENT NO. 1374
Under the previous order, there will now be 2 minutes of debate equally divided on amendment No. 1374, offered by the junior Senator from Nevada, Mr. Ensign.
Who yields time? The Senator from Nevada is recognized.
Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, my amendment goes to the merit-based system. We have a serious problem in this country where we are graduating incredible engineers from our high-tech universities. When they graduate, we say: You must go home.
I had a company in my office today from Silicon Valley. They are opening an office in Singapore, hiring American graduates, foreign-born graduates from American universities, opening in Singapore because they cannot hire them in this country. There are not enough visas.
My amendment fixes the merit-based system and says we want to attract the best and the brightest from around the world. The high-tech community supports my amendment because they think the underlying bill is flawed.
Mr. President, India and China will graduate 600,000 to 700,000 engineers. We will be graduating 65,000 to 70,000. Half of ours are foreign-born. We do not have enough of that brain power coming into this country like we have had in the past. Those who came here will come here and create opportunities for other people in the United States.