Hope rises for high-skilled immigrants to the U.S

Senator Orrin Hatch

By ERIN MERSHON & KATE TUMMARELLO

 

Columbus, OH. Sen. Orrin Hatch, a member of the Republican Party for Utah State, is set to reintroduce his high-skilled immigration bill Wednesday, his office tells Morning Tech, which would check off the top items on the tech industry’s immigration wishlist.
Hatch’s Immigration Innovation — or I-Squared — Act would raise the yearly cap on H-1B, or “high-skilled,” visas from 65,000 to up to 195,000 and remove limits on the number of high-skilled visas for employees with advanced degrees.
Tech companies, led by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, have been asking Congress for years to increase the high-skilled caps, pointing to a surplus of high-tech jobs.
Hatch’s bill would also enable visa holders’ spouses to work, increase visa holders’ ability to move between jobs, recapture unused green cards from previous years and eliminate yearly per-country caps for employment-based visa petitioners.
The bill already has bipartisan backing, with Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar, Chris Coons and Richard Blumenthal, as well as Republican Sens. Jeff Flake and Marco Rubio, as original co-sponsors. The bill is the first tech immigration bill this Congress, and it comes after President Barack Obama announced executive actions late last year that largely focused on undocumented immigrants and fell short of the tech industry’s lofty hopes.