Progress made on immigration reform
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.