In recent years, we have seen the expansion of the global marketplace where market productivity has increasingly become dependent on technology. Our country’s ability to maintain the technical manpower needed to compete internationally has become and continues to be a critical issue. Furthermore, a significant number of the students who pursue advanced science and technology degrees in the United States are foreign-born students.
As a result, the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) visa program has been proposed to grant visas to foreign students who graduate from U.S. universities with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering and math fields. There is merit to the STEM objective of allowing those highly skilled workers with advanced degrees to remain and work in the United States. Retaining these individuals should help to keep the United States competitive in the world economy. However, the STEM proposal does not establish any new visas for these individuals. Instead, the STEM proposal inexplicably reallocates the Diversity Visa Program visas created by the Immigration Act of 1990; and, as presently proposed, would effectively end the Diversity Visa Program.
