The U.S. House Friday approved a Republican-backed STEM visa bill, but the legislation has likely reached a dead-end.
The White House opposes the bill and the Senate is unlikely to take it up in the current lame duck session.
The Republican-sponsored bill, the STEM Jobs Act (H.R. 6429), was approved by 245-139 votes.
This bill, authored by U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), creates up to 55,000 STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) visas annually for advanced degree foreign graduates of U.S. universities.
The White House likes the idea of STEM visas, but it wants the legislation to be part of a comprehensive immigration bill. Democrats are fearful of fracturing industry support for immigration reform if they treat employment visas in separate bills.
Smith, in a statement following passage, said that "we could boost economic growth and spur job creation by allowing American employers to more easily hire some of the most qualified foreign graduates of U.S. universities. These students have the ability to start a company that creates jobs or come up with an invention that could jump-start a whole new industry."
This bill was opposed by Democrats on number of specific points, including its elimination of the diversity lottery that awards about 55,000 visas annually.
Those visas would have been repurposed for the STEM program.
Patrick Thibodeau covers SaaS and enterprise applications, outsourcing, government IT policies, data centers and IT workforce issues for Computerworld. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @DCgov, or subscribe to Patrick's RSS feed . His e-mail address is pthibodeau@computerworld.com.
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