Visas for Top Graduates: A View From Capitol Hill

Representative Lamar Smith defends his bill to allow the brightest foreign students to stay in America.

In “Visas for Scientists, With a Catch” (editorial, Sept. 27), you claim that there is a catch with the STEM Jobs Act, which I sponsored, but you are simply fishing for opposition.

According to a recent poll, three in four likely voters think that we should allow the top foreign graduates of American universities with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering and math — known as STEM fields — to remain in the United States. And that’s exactly what the STEM Jobs Act does.

Gallup recently reported that four out of five Americans also do not want to see higher levels of immigration. That’s why the STEM Jobs Act eliminates the fraud-ridden diversity visa program and reallocates these visas to those who could help make us more competitive in the global economy.

We should eliminate the diversity visa lottery because it bases our immigration system on the luck of the draw by selecting people at random to receive green cards. No family ties to the United States or strong skill set are required to be eligible. And former State Department officials and the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office have found the lottery to be an open invitation to fraud and a jackpot for terrorists.

The United States has the most generous legal immigration system in the world; we admit more than one million legal immigrants each year. We should maintain this generosity, but we need to make our immigration system smarter by allowing the best and brightest foreign graduates to stay here.

Unfortunately, some Democrats voted to send the best and brightest foreign graduates back home to work for our global competitors. Their vote against this bill is a vote against economic growth and job creation.

-  Nytimes.com