[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 6]
[House]
[Pages 7903-7904]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




             IT'S TIME FOR COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM

  (Mr. SWALWELL of California asked and was given permission to address 
the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. SWALWELL of California. I rise today to ask Speaker Boehner to 
recognize that the time is now for this House to take up comprehensive 
immigration reform.
  I spent all of last week on an innovation road show. I went up and 
down Silicon Valley--and I have northern Silicon Valley in my 
district--and I listened to the job creators, I listened to the 
innovators. And one message is clear: we have unfilled jobs here in 
America that require immigration fixes, require increasing the H-1B 
visas so that we can create jobs behind high-skilled immigrants.
  We know that Silicon Valley was built on a three-legged stool: access 
to

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capital, brain trusts, and a risk-taking culture. And we know that 
immigrants build jobs behind them. They have that brain trust. They 
have that risk-taking culture. Forty percent of the largest companies 
in America were built by immigrants or the children of immigrants.
  It's time to also put the 11.5 million Americans who are undocumented 
on a pathway to citizenship. I've been on the ground. I've talked to 
the innovators, and I hear their cry.
  The time is now. So for the sake of our economy, and the sake of our 
communities, the right thing to do is to put these undocumented 
immigrants on a path to citizenship and to make sure that we can take 
high-skilled workers from across the world, put them in our country, 
and create thousands of new jobs behind them.

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