Business Leaders Request More Work Visas From Congress

On July 26, U.S. business leaders pressed a Senate panel to reform immigration laws to allow more work visas for highly skilled workers.

NASDAQ Chief Executive Robert Greifeld said that largely due to restrictive immigration policies, each year, 17,000 American-trained masters and doctoral students leave the U.S. to find work elsewhere. Mr. Greifeld indicated that job creation would flow from a “default setting that you are welcome if you possess skills and knowledge that we need to solve problems and create solutions for the economy.”

Brad Smith, the vice president of legal and corporate affairs for Microsoft, said that Microsoft faces increasing pressure to move jobs overseas because the company can’t find enough qualified U.S. citizens and can’t get enough visas to fill the positions.

Senators Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.), Sen. Charles Grassley (R., Iowa),  and John Cornyn (R., Texas) all indicated that they might be inclined to make changes in the H-1B visa program to allow for more visas to be available to higher-level graduates in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

To read the Wall Street Journal article on the business leaders’ presentation, click here.

For more information on H-1B visas, click here.