Green Cards for 55,000 Foreign Graduates of U.S. Colleges

Radio Commentary, 90.7, 91.7 New Life FM, December 14, 2012 – By Sue Ella Deadwyler

Good morning, Jim.  On November 30th , the U.S. House passed the STEM Act, H.R. 6429 which would give 55,000 green cards to foreign students that graduate with a doctor’s or master’s degree from a U.S. university.  So, U.S. graduates with a
degree in science, technology, engineering or math would have to compete with foreigners for jobs in their own country.
 
The STEM Act introduced by House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, was praised by Virginia Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who claims it’s an opportunity to bring high-skilled immigrants into our
workforce, boost the economy and reunite families, meaning foreign students’ families would get green cards, too.  Only five Republicans voted AGAINST it and 27 Democrats voted FOR it.

It’s a slap in every American’s face to say the world’s best and brightest minds are in foreign countries.  If that’s true, why aren’t foreign students educated by intellectuals in their own country’s universities.  Mr. Cantor said immigrants contributed to 72 percent of patents filed by four American companies, but he failed to say Americans would have been working in those jobs and developing those patents, if the four American companies had hired American citizens instead of foreigners.American brain-power has given the U.S. and the entire world innumerable life-changing inventions: such as, Eli Whitney’s cotton gin in 1793; Cyrus McCormick’s reaper in 1829, John Deere’s steel-surface plow in 1846, James Oliver’s iron plow 20 years later and Joseph Glidden’s barbed wire fencing in 1873.  In 1840 Samuel Morse received a patent for the telegraph and four years later sent a telegram to Washington, D.C. that said, “What hath God wrought.”  
 
In 1876 Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone.  Americans invented the Kodak, the Polaroid, the Xerox copier, the transistor, the analog computer, the steamboat, the bicycle, the Pullman train car, the air brake, the Model T Ford,
the electric light bulb, washing machine, electric fan, air conditioning and even the ice cream cone, which was invented at the 1904 World’s Fair.  

I could go on and on with American inventions, but I close with this.  It’s great to help foreigners, but Congress has no right to give 55,000 foreigners to take jobs American graduates need.  Call Senator Chambliss and Senator Isakson and ask them to vote NO when H.R. 6429 gets to the Senate floor.  For Georgia Insight I’m Sue Ella Deadwyler, your Capitol correspondent.