Progress made on immigration reform
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June 30, 2013 |
By U.S. Congressman Raul Labrador
Last week, the House Judiciary Committee – which
I sit on – continued to make important progress
on the issue of immigration reform.
While the U.S. Senate passed a bulky,
thousand-page immigration bill that repeats the
mistakes of the 1986 immigration law, the
Judiciary Committee approved a pair of smaller,
common-sense immigration reform laws as part of
our effort to reform the system in a
responsible, step-by-step way.
On Wednesday, the Committee approved – with my
support – H.R. 1772, the Legal Workforce Act.
This bill would discourage illegal immigration
by ensuring jobs are only made available to
those who are legally authorized to work in the
U.S. Specifically, it requires employers to
check the work eligibility of all future hires
through the E-Verify system.
Today, over 450,000 American employers
voluntarily use E-Verify, a web-based program
that quickly confirms 99.7 percent of
work-eligible employees and takes less than two
minutes to use.
While we should always be wary about adding
requirements onto employers, E-Verify has a
proven track of record of success, and by making
sure that jobs are filled by those who are
genuinely eligible to work in the U.S., it will
be a net benefit to our economy. To learn more
about the Legal Workforce Act,
click here.
On Thursday, the Committee approved – with my
support – H.R. 2131, the SKILLS Visa Act, which
will bolster our economy and spur innovation by
allowing the best and brightest foreign
graduates of American universities to stay in
the U.S.
In a fiercely-competitive global economy,
America needs to be the magnet for the best
minds in the world.
And yet, right now, our immigration system
actually closes doors – instead of opening them
– to highly-skilled workers who are educated
right here in America and want to stay in
America, but are forced to return to their home
countries to work for our competitors.
The bill we approved this week allows more of
these talented, highly-skilled workers to stay
in America and contribute to our economy –
especially in the critical STEM fields, which
are the key drivers of American growth and
innovation.
Specifically, it increases green cards for STEM
grads, increases and strengthens the H-1B visa
program, and establishes a new entrepreneur visa
program, while eliminating nonsensical
immigration programs, such as the diversity visa
lottery. To learn more about the SKILLS Visa
Act,
click here.
This week’s bills are in addition to the ones we
approved last week to improve our immigration
system: The SAFE Act, which bolsters interior
enforcement of our immigration laws, and the AG
Act, which improves the temporary agricultural
guestworker program.
Altogether, the House Judiciary Committee –
under the leadership of Chairman Bob Goodlatte –
has done solid work advancing solutions to fix
our broken system.
And we’re not done yet. We still have a lot of
work to do, including making sure the bills we
passed this month are considered by the House,
and then brought to conference with the Senate.
As the Judiciary Committee and Congress continue
to move forward with immigration reform, please
know that I will keep you informed every step of
the way and I welcome your thoughts and
suggestions.
It’s not enough that we pass immigration reform.
We need to pass legislation that makes the
system work.
I will keep doing all I can to make sure we get
it right. |
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