Visa Lawyer Blog
Tech companies and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have bemoaned the shortage of American students earning advanced degrees in math, engineering and science; half of all graduate students in those subjects at U.S. universities are foreign-born.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) introduced a bill Wednesday that would pave the way for up to 55,000 foreign graduate students at American universities to obtain a green card.
Issa’s bill would make it easier for those graduate students to stay in the country after earning their degree by allowing up to 55,000 graduates holding advanced degrees from U.S. universities to earn green cards, provided they have found employment “in the sciences or medicine.”
According to the text of the legislation, applicants must have earned a degree inside the U.S. within the previous five years and must have found a position that “will substantially benefit prospectively the national economy of the United States.”
Many international graduate students wishing to stay in the U.S. after completing their degree attempt to find employment with a U.S. firm willing to sponsor them for an H-1B visa. Let us hope this much needed Bill will go somewhere.