Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary committee held a hearing entitled, "Immigration Reforms Needed to Protect Skilled American Workers." As the name suggests, the goal of this hearing was to undercut the claims being made by an entire industry— that they cannot find the skilled workers they need in America and thus need to hire foreign workers.
We know our members live and breathe this issue every day and that talented workers with the necessary skills for existing jobs are hard to find. The data shows that we face a shortage of qualified high-skilled workers. This shortage goes beyond the lack of STEM degrees being acquired by U.S. born students, but also the lack of special technical skill sets. We also know that for every STEM job in the U.S., 2.6 other jobs are created for U.S.-born workers. For each H-1B job there is 1.83 more jobs created for U.S-born workers. If we can't fill our high-tech jobs, we are losing not one, but all of those jobs. However, these jobs are not being lost entirely, they are being moved to other countries that have a more welcoming immigration policy. If we continue down this path, we will struggle to remain competitive in a global economy.
For this reason, we continue to support the bipartisan I-Squared legislation that was introduced earlier this year and written about here. We remain committed to working with Congress on passing common sense, meaningful, high-skilled immigration reform. Although yesterday's hearing was emotionally and politically charged, we appreciate the thoughtful statements and questions of the Senators on the committee who we continue to work with to ensure we have a skilled workforce today while building our talent pipeline for tomorrow.
To watch the hearing or to review opening statements please click here.
