[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 12481-12482]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       SILICON VALLEY IMMIGRATION

  Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, the need for economic growth remains one of 
the most pressing and challenging issues we face today in our country. 
Unfortunately, over the past decade economic growth has been stagnant, 
creating difficulties for small businesses, for working families, for 
recent college graduates, and for entrepreneurs.
  If I have a goal here, it is to make certain every American has the 
opportunity to pursue what we all know is the American dream. For that 
to be possible, we need a growing economy that accomplishes many 
things, including creating the opportunity for people to go to work, to 
pay off their loans, to feed their families, to put food on their 
families' table, and to save for their future.
  Last month the Senate had an opportunity to do something positive 
about our economy. We spent a significant amount of time addressing 
this issue of immigration, trying to fix our Nation's broken 
immigration system.
  Sensible and overdue improvements to our Nation's immigration laws 
will spur economic growth and create American jobs. This is why I have 
been so interested to see how highly skilled and entrepreneurial 
immigrants create jobs and contribute to the U.S. economy. It is that 
aspect of our Nation's broken immigration system I wish to talk about 
today.
  There is an economic imperative to improve our Nation's immigration 
laws. Many of our Nation's leading businesses struggle to find the 
talent they need to grow and compete in global markets. According to 
the Partnership for a New American Economy, American businesses are 
projected to need an estimated 800,000 workers with advanced STEM 
degrees by 2018 but will only find 550,000 American graduates with an 
advanced STEM education.
  First and foremost, we must do more to prepare Americans for careers 
in science, technology, and engineering. I have been encouraged that 
several immigration proposals before Congress aim to improve STEM 
education for Americans so that one day we will no longer be required 
to seek outside labor to meet our country's needs.
  In the short term, we must work to equip Americans with the skills of 
the 21st century. We also need to create a path for highly skilled 
foreign students to stay in the United States, where their ideas, 
talents, and intellect can fuel American economic growth.
  Legislation I introduced with Senator Warner of Virginia called 
Startup Act 3.0 creates visas for foreign students who graduate from an 
American university with a master's or Ph.D. in science, technology, 
engineering, or mathematics. These skilled workers would be granted 
conditional status contingent on them filling a needed gap in the U.S. 
workforce. This will help growing American companies secure the talent 
they need now for current job openings. Without this help companies 
will have to look elsewhere, will find it difficult to find the 
qualified workers they need, and will likely open locations overseas, 
taking the jobs with them.
  When I was in Silicon Valley last year, I met with executives at 
Facebook. They told me they were ready to hire close to 80 foreign-born 
but U.S.-educated individuals in California, but their H-1B visas were 
not granted. Rather than forgo these skilled workers, the company hired 
them anyway. That caught my attention, but the story is that they 
placed them in Dublin, Ireland, not in the United States. Facebook was 
ultimately able to get visas for these

[[Page 12482]]

workers after training them in Ireland, but all too often companies end 
up housing the jobs permanently overseas. When this happens, it is not 
only those specific jobs that are lost. In this case we didn't just 
lose 80 jobs but also the many supporting jobs and economic activity 
associated with those jobs.
  Even more damaging, more damning, more frustrating to me is that many 
of these highly skilled workers who are now employed in some other 
country will become entrepreneurs that will start successful businesses 
there, not in the United States. Of the 80 engineers working in Dublin, 
Ireland, for Facebook, I have no doubt but that one or more of them 
will be the next originator, the next innovator for companies such as 
Facebook. We want them in the United States creating that opportunity 
here for Americans.
  Immigrants to the United States have a long history of creating 
businesses in our country. Today, 1 in every 10 Americans employed at a 
privately owned U.S. company works at an immigrant-owned firm. 
Immigrants are more than twice as likely as native-born Americans to 
start a business. Of the current Fortune 500 companies, more than 40 
percent were founded by a first- or second-generation American. Ranked 
No. 73 on that list is Google, which was cofounded in 1998 by Sergey 
Brin, an immigrant from Russia. Sergey and his cofounder Larry Page 
developed Google as Ph.D. students while at Stanford University. Google 
is now the world's top search engine, generates more than $50 billion 
in revenue annually, and employs tens of thousands. We need to create 
an immigration system that welcomes more immigrants like Sergey Brin.
  Our bill, Startup Act 3.0, creates an entrepreneur's visa for 
foreign-born entrepreneurs currently in the United States. Those 
individuals with a good idea, capital, and a willingness to hire 
Americans would be able to stay in the United States and grow their 
businesses here. Each immigrant entrepreneur would be required to 
create jobs for Americans. Providing a way for an immigrant 
entrepreneur to stay in the United States and create American jobs 
makes economic sense.
  Earlier this year the Kauffman Foundation, headquartered in Kansas 
City, studied the economic impact of the entrepreneur's visa in Startup 
Act 3.0. Using conservative estimates, the Kauffman Foundation predicts 
that the entrepreneur's visa alone could generate 500,000 to 1.6 
million new jobs during the next 10 years. These are real jobs with 
real economic impact that could boost GDP, by their estimate, by 1.5 
percent or more. When we talk about economic growth and creating 
opportunity, a boost in GDP by 1.5 percent is a major accomplishment.
  Recognizing this potential, several bills create visas for immigrant 
entrepreneurs. It is important that these visas be structured in a way 
to facilitate job creation. Unnecessarily high investment and revenue 
requirements and burdensome mandates, such as having to submit a 
business plan to Washington, DC, bureaucrats, threaten to diminish the 
impact these entrepreneurial visas could have.
  Although well-intentioned, the INVEST visa created in the Senate 
immigration bill fell prey to some of these traps. To improve that 
idea, I developed an amendment with the help of entrepreneurs, 
investors, and startup policy experts. This amendment would reduce 
paperwork and reporting requirements so that entrepreneurs could spend 
more time building their businesses, allow entrepreneurs to secure 
initial investment from those closest to them, add flexibility to the 
way in which startup employees are compensated to account for 
geographic and industry differences, and clarify that the jobs created 
by immigrant entrepreneurs must be held by Americans. A list of more 
than 30 startup companies, investors, and business leaders and 
immigration attorneys supported this amendment.
  Sadly, like many other amendments, it was blocked from even receiving 
consideration. But in the end, that may not matter. The Speaker of the 
House has said the Senate immigration bill is ``dead on arrival.'' 
Instead of taking up Senate legislation, the House is pursuing, 
perhaps, a more thoughtful, methodical approach to immigration--writing 
several targeted bills that address aspects of our broken immigration 
system.
  Congress crafts better policy when it is done in manageable bite 
sizes. In my view we do not have to look far in the past to see what 
happens when Congress bites off more than it can chew. Implementation 
of the Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank offer two examples of the 
unintended consequences of passing giant bills with multi-thousand 
pages that are poorly understood. In fact, it was the 1986 
comprehensive immigration bill that left us with the many problems we 
are attempting to fix today. Passing a series of smaller more targeted 
immigration bills will result in better policy and achieve better 
results for the American people.
  Moreover, there is broad agreement within Congress on many aspects of 
immigration policy. Last year the House of Representatives passed two 
immigration bills. One would have repurposed visas from the diversity 
lottery to STEM visas for some of our most talented foreign-born U.S. 
graduates. Another would have eliminated the employment-based, green 
card per-country cap allowing American employers to have access to the 
best talent regardless of where a potential employee was born.
  This bill passed 389 to 15 in the House. Yet neither received a vote 
in the Senate because of adherence to the approach that says we can't 
do anything unless we do everything. This line of thinking has 
prevented progress on important challenges facing our country for a 
long time.
  Republicans and Democrats agree that creating opportunities for 
highly skilled and entrepreneurial immigrants to contribute to our 
economy is beneficial to America. I strongly hope Congress will finally 
come together and pass what we can agree upon now while continuing to 
work on the issues that divide us. In my view, we can no longer allow 
ourselves to be hostage to the all-or-nothing strategy or wait until 
after the next election.
  Right now other countries are taking advantage of our inability to 
solve problems and are exploiting our broken immigration system. Since 
I arrived in the Senate in 2011, at least seven countries have changed 
their policies and laws to better attract highly skilled and 
entrepreneurial immigrants. One of those countries, Canada, even went 
so far as to buy a billboard in Silicon Valley in an attempt to poach 
the best and brightest.
  We must address this problem, and the best way to do so is in a 
measured and incremental way. The benefits to our Nation's economy will 
be great and the goodwill produced by working in a bipartisan manner on 
targeted solutions will sow the seeds of trust necessary to solve the 
problems where disagreement remains.
  So we will see what happens now in the immigration debate, but my 
hope is that if we are unable to pass so-called broad-based immigration 
reform, if we are unable to come up with sensible solutions in an 
understandable legislative package, let's at least work to accomplish 
those things on which there is broad agreement and continue to solve 
those problems where there remains disagreement today.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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