[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 128 (Thursday, September 20, 2012)]
[House]
[Page H6155]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       CREATE A STEM VISA PROGRAM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Gutierrez) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GUTIERREZ. Mr. Speaker, today we will vote on a Republican 
proposal to provide green cards to certain immigrants and to cut the 
same number of green cards available to other legal immigrants.
  How do we determine who gets more green cards and who gets fewer?
  For my Republican friends, that's easy. They will provide more green 
cards to a very narrow number of immigrants they can tolerate--smart 
immigrants who have been educated in U.S. colleges and universities. 
They will make other legal immigrants--ones they can't tolerate--pay 
for that increase.
  Meanwhile, Democrats have introduced bills that would also provide 
green cards to the immigrants who have been educated in U.S. colleges 
and universities. Our Democratic proposal, however, does not take green 
cards away from other deserving immigrants who want to come legally and 
contribute to this country.
  On our side of the aisle, we respect all immigrants. Our bill 
recognizes the value of all of them to our economy and, indeed, to our 
future. We should not educate some of the world's most talented people 
in the STEM fields--that's science, technology, engineering, and math--
and then send them away to work in foreign lands to compete against us.
  Democrats strongly support providing these visas as a way of helping 
the U.S. economy and creating jobs, not just for the immigrants but for 
the U.S. workers they will employ and the economic activity they will 
generate. Democrats want progress. We want visas for STEM graduates. We 
will work in a bipartisan manner with Republicans to get it done. It's 
a smart policy, and it's a just policy. Let me be clear. There is no 
economic reason--no budget reason, no jobs reason--to punish other 
immigrants because we give out STEM visas. Absolutely none. Let me try 
to make it simple.
  Let's pretend we're not talking about immigrants, because any time 
some of my Republican friends hear the word ``immigrants,'' they 
immediately want to punish someone. So let's say, instead of 
immigrants, we're talking about a family of three children, of three 
honest and hardworking children. One child wants to go to college to 
become an industrial engineer, and another wants to go to college to 
become a math professor. The third--a diligent, industrious child--
doesn't want to go to college. Let's say he wants to start a 
landscaping business. He wants to work with the land and get his hands 
dirty.
  The Republican plan is simple--to help the kids going to college and 
to cut the other kid off. He's out. Tough luck. He's not smart enough 
for this family. The Democratic plan is just as simple. We need 
scientists, engineers and mathematicians, but we need other workers, 
too--construction workers, machinists, chefs, entrepreneurs. We need 
immigrants from all over the world--from every continent, including 
Africa. Everyone who works hard helps our economy, so let's be helpful 
to everyone. That's the Democratic belief, but that's not the 
Republican plan today.
  Maybe we shouldn't be surprised. After all, this proposal comes from 
a party whose Presidential nominee doesn't care about 47 percent of 
America. Call it the Mitt Romney deadbeat doctrine in which half of all 
Americans are freeloaders. Maybe that's all we need to know about this 
Republican plan. I suppose, in the Republican world, STEM visas are for 
the half of America that works, and the other visas are for the 
deadbeats that Mitt Romney doesn't care about--you know, the 
freeloaders like your parents on Social Security or your son or 
daughter with that student loan or the Pell Grant--or like my parents, 
who came from Puerto Rico with only an elementary school education, but 
who worked hard every day and put two kids through college and one of 
them in the Congress of the United States. Yes, those deadbeats. If my 
parents had needed visas to come to this country today under this new 
plan, they would never have gotten a chance.
  We are changing the rules about who can--and more importantly--about 
who cannot come to America. So unless you view the world through Mitt 
Romney's ``us versus them'' vision of America, there is no reason to 
cut visas today. None. I want to stand up for the Zoe Lofgren provision 
of immigration--the Democratic vision of immigration. We're not divided 
into a country where people who gather at a fancy country club and 
write $50,000 checks to political candidates are good and where the 
people who stand to run and serve them the food are bad. America is not 
half deadbeats. We are one America, and we have a chance to prove it 
today.
  Democrats are offering a sensible plan that doesn't divide us. It 
values all work from all immigrants. It achieves our common goal of 
creating a STEM visa program, keeping more scientists and engineers 
right here in America, making us stronger. In Mitt Romney's world, if 
you help one person, you have to punish another. I think that's wrong. 
I urge my colleagues to pass a fair and sensible plan to create a STEM 
visa program, and let's do it without punishing a single person.

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