STEM students should get green cards

STEM students should get green cardsAmerican experts yesterday called for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) students to be given a green card, removing country-specific jobs and recapturing unused US visas in order to create new jobs in the United States and spur economic growth.

Bruce A Morrison from the Morrison Public Affairs Group argued before the Enforcement of the House Judiciary Committee and the House Subcommittee on Immigration Policy that it would be a good idea to make green cards an easier route for sponsoring employers rather than be so reliant for long periods on H-1B status.  Morrison has recommended the creation of a new category for STEM students with advanced degrees from high-quality American universities in order to prevent them from being affected by the green cards caps.

Morrison says that pre-country limits on employment-based visas should be removed in recognition of the fact that the largest talent pools tend to come from the world’s biggest countries such as China and India, and that the United States should want talented innovators regardless of which country they come from.  “Create incentives for employers to petition for green cards at the beginning of employment of skilled foreign-born employees, rather than keeping them in temporary status for most of a decade,” he says.

The United States is at high risk of losing coveted entrepreneurs to other countries because of the current legal migration policy, according to the general partner of Canaan Partners, Indian-American Deepak Kamra.