Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Senate Colloquy: Senator Coons joins bipartisan call to boost U.S. competitiveness through immigration reform
As Delivered by Senator Coons on January 29, 2013
Mr. President, for decades, the United States enjoyed the commanding advantage of being home to all the world's top universities, particularly in science and technology, engineering and math in the so-called STEM fields and we were the best place for the graduates of those universities and their advanced science programs to stay and launch a new business, but today that field has changed. And our competitors are vying to provide more supportive environments for innovators, inventions, and start-up companies. There has been a sea change in the field of opportunity back home for those foreign nationals who in increasing numbers are educated in the United States and whom we then force to return to the nation of origin.
So even though many of the most talented young people from around the globe still pour into the United States to obtain their masters or doctoral degrees in STEM, now more than ever they are not just tempted to take their education home with them and start businesses elsewhere, they are attracted by their home countries and forced by our outdated immigration system. What an unwise way to compete in the global economy. Our outdated immigration system hasn't adapted to the modern world.
Half of all masters and doctoral degrees in STEM fields in American universities are today earned by foreign-born students who then face an uncertain, expensive and unwieldy path to pursuing their dreams in the United States. Our country is hemorrhaging innovations and the inventors who make them, and the jobs that come with them, because America's immigration laws have failed to keep up with the demands of the modern age. We cannot afford to keep educating the world's brightest students at our leading universities, which I'll remind you are subsidized by U.S. tax dollars and American charitable giving, and then telling them they cannot repay those investments by contributing to the U.S. workforce. It’s both bad policy and bad business.
That's why I've been working on this issue, since I arrived to the Senate, introducing three bills and called for the creation of a new class of green cards for immigrants who have earned and advanced STEM degree from an American university. I was especially glad to see that the bipartisan framework released yesterday, by Senators McCain, Schumer, Rubio, and others, which moves us towards comprehensive immigration reform - embraces this vital core premise.
I also welcome President Obama's contributions to this discussion and look forward to hearing what he has to say today in Las Vegas. There is indeed broad bipartisan agreement that it's long past time to reform our immigration system to make room for foreign-born, American-educated experts who want to apply their skills, start businesses, and raise their families here. At the same time, we have to dramatically improve STEM education available to American citizens, to fill this dramatic gap in these fields.
As Senator Hatch said just a few minutes ago, if you take the example of computer science, by 2020 the U.S. economy will need 120,000 men and women who fill these jobs. Yet just 40,000 graduates with degrees in computer science will be Americans. How to fill that gap?
The bipartisan legislation we introduce today tackles both sides of this problem by reforming our outdated immigration system to allow highly skilled engineers and researchers to stay here rather than leaving and taking their jobs and future opportunities with them and by funneling the hundreds of millions of dollars of fees these experts pay for their green cards back into improving U.S.-based STEM education. It’s a win-win. The Immigration Innovation Act of 2013 will open the door, will recapture unused green cards, and will move away from the outdated model of country caps and overall caps. To better compete with countries like our neighbors to the north in Canada where these caps don’t exist. Microsoft is eager to open a new, massive development facility at our expansive loss.
One of the most important parts of this legislation, as I mentioned, is that we're using fees from these newly expanded H-1B visas and green cards to fund state initiatives on STEM. This will keep America at the cutting edge of science and technology and fuel economic growth for this country and generations to come. While each of the coauthors of this legislation have made substantial contributions, I'm especially grateful to Senator Hatch for his leadership.
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I join the Senator from Florida in thanking and recognizing the junior Senator from Florida, Senator Rubio, for his great work on the issues of job creation and innovation through Startup 2.0 and other bills we have worked on together, but also through the comprehensive framework that was released yesterday. The framework released by Senator Schumer and McCain, Senator Rubio, and others, takes the right approach to ensuring that the United States has a modern, efficient, effective and compassionate immigration system.
I was glad to see it addressed as family-based immigration challenges, including creating an expedited path to citizenship for young people brought here as children through no fault of their own, people we rightly call ‘Dreamers.’ While the Immigration Innovation Act we are introducing today recognizes the vital and critical contributions that immigrants have made and will continue to make in highly technical fields, we also must recognize the essential contributions that immigrants make along the entire labor spectrum across the whole breadth of this country, to building this country up in the past and to giving it a brighter future.
As you heard from Senator Klobuchar before, if Team U.S.A. is to play competitively globally, we need the best and brightest contributors to our future. Why would we educate the best inventors and innovators in the world and send many of them back to compete with us from other countries rather than embracing them here and allowing them to invent, to invest, and create companies and jobs here in the United States?
While I am eager to move ahead on family-focused reform, I am equally eager to have us move ahead with reform for STEM degree holders. Comprehensive immigration reform is a necessity for the hard-working people of Delaware and around the country. For those who want nothing more than to play by the rules, build a better life for their children, and contribute to the American Dream.
That is, Mr. President, what any of us would want, the chance to work hard, to see our children grow up happy and healthy with the education and opportunities that make their dreams come true and to contribute to a stronger America. That's why I am committed to a comprehensive overhaul of our immigration system, one that supports children and families, as well as our economy and our vital technology sector and that welcomes immigrants into the rich fabric of this country, as the United States has done since our founding.
As someone who trained in chemistry, as someone who worked for a high-technology materials-based science company, as someone who met just yesterday with a Delaware company complaining of the challenges that visa caps and limits place on their ability to do research and development and to compete in the global economy, I just want to say I’m grateful for the leadership Senator Hatch and Senator Klobuchar and Senator Rubio have shown in crafting this piece, this vital piece of the total picture of comprehensive immigration reform.
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