Tech companies ‘will be happy with the high-skilled immigration provisions’ in his immigration bill: Schumer

Comprehensive immigration reform has re-entered the public’s and Congress’ consciousness, but Charles Schumer, the senior Senate Democrat from New York, assures the national tech community that any immigration legislation will not be passed if it deals only with high-skilled workers.

The Hill reports:

“If there’s an attempt to try and just pass a bill to deal with high-end, high-tech immigration, guess who will be furious: the Hispanic community,” Schumer said. …
He told the technology companies that they will be happy with the high-skilled immigration provisions in his comprehensive bill. “You won’t get everything you want, but you will get almost everything you want,” Schumer said. The senior Democrat said he expects to release the legislation by the end of the month. [more]

Those following the immigration reform debate know that two separate, more focused bills, the Immigration Innovation Act and the Startup Act 3.0, have been proposed by separate groups of U.S. Senators. The bills, as reported on Technically Baltimore, include provisions that would, respectively, increase the number of available H-1B visas and create two new visa categories making it easier for immigrant-entrepreneurs and foreign nationals holding advanced degrees in STEM fields to obtain green cards.
In the Kauffman Foundation‘s estimation, however, immigration reform will be incomplete without legislation that takes into account high-skilled immigrants. A report published by the foundation in February said that introduction of the “Startup Visa” — what passage of the Startup Act 3.0 would create — could create between 500,000 and 1.6 million new jobs in the U.S. over the next decade.