US Immigration News

A group of conservative activists travelled to Washington D.C. on Tuesday 4th December 2012 to lobby Republican Party officials on immigration. Surprisingly, the activists, known as The National Immigration Forum, were trying to persuade the Party to rethink its opposition to immigration.

The House of Representatives, controlled by the Republican Party, has passed the STEM Jobs Act. This act would, if it became law, allow 55,000 more highly skilled graduates to get US 'green cards' or permanent resident visas.

However, it seems unlikely that the Act will ever come into force because the Democratic Party has said that it opposes the bill. President Obama has said that, if the bill is passed by the Senate, he will veto it.

The US could create 8.8m new jobs by issuing 100,000 green cards to graduates says Peter Cohan, a management consultant, author and lecturer.

Mr Cohan was writing in Forbes magazine. He cites research from the Kaufman Foundation which suggests that highly skilled immigrants tend to be more entrepreneurial than native born Americans. 25.3% of technology and engineering start-ups between 1995 and 2005 had at least one immigrant as a founder. These companies had sales of US$52bn and employed 450,000 workers in 2005.

President Obama told a news conference on Tuesday 27th November 2012 that he intended to reform the US's immigration system. He was speaking at a joint press conference with the Mexican president elect Enrique Pena Nieto.

President Obama has been re-elected and will be inaugurated as president again in January. But, in the last days of the President's first term as president, there is some hope that legislation will be passed that would see 55,000 more green cards being granted to science graduates every year.

President Obama has said that he hopes to reform the US skilled immigration system. He has not given any details but has said that he hopes to do it soon, taking advantage of the fact that the Republicans seem to be willing to reform the entire immigration regime in the wake of their election defeat.