Cat shows support for immigration reform bill
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- Published on Thursday, 08 August 2013 15:30
- Written by Paul Gordon
A pair of heavy hitters in the business and political arenas joined Thursday to urge the U.S. House of Representatives to adopt the Senate-approved immigration reform bill because of its benefits to the economy.
Doug Oberhelman, chairman and CEO of Caterpillar Inc., met with U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., to give his support of the bipartisan Senate bill approved earlier this year and now awaiting House action.
"This is a very good, common sense bill and approach to immigration," Oberhelman said during a brief news conference that followed their meeting and tour of the Caterpillar Visitors Center.
"World economic conditions are important to us," Oberhelman noted while standing in front of the full-size model mining truck that is the centerpiece of the Visitors Center. "These trucks are made in Decatur but the vast majority of them are exported."
Durbin said sensible immigration laws that would allow foreign students to stay in the United States and work after graduating college would enable Caterpillar and other companies to hire the best people in the world. As it is, he said, these companies help train the students through college coursework and internships only to lose them to their worldwide competitors "because after they graduate we see them off to the airport and tell them goodbye."
He added, "We have got to recognize the need for the best workers in the world. We need to focus on that like a laser. There is a direct link between immigration reform and economic growth in the United States."
The two praised each other for the leadership the other has shown in regard to the immigration issue. Oberhelman has in the past called for more work visas to be allowed for foreign engineers while Durbin was a member of the Senate Gang of Eight, the bipartisan group of Senators that produced the immigration reform bill, a difficult issue he said had defied Congress for decades.
The bill, Durbin said, "would allow millions who live and work in our country to come out of the shadows and earn their place here. We need this bill for the security of our country and the competitiveness of our economy. This is our best chance in a generation to enact comprehensive immigration reform."
He vowed to continue working on the issue with House members on a bipartisan effort to get a low to President Obama for his signature.
Senate approval of the bill, Durbin added, "showed that bipartisanship is not dead" and that Congress can still take on important issues on a bipartisan basis. "It's now up to the House to continue the momentum. I urge my colleagues to work together in a bipartisan fashion and vote to bring our country's immigration system into the 21st century."
Durbin's office said Illinois is projected to need to fill more than 300,000 science, technology, engineering and math jobs in the next five years, but more than 40 percent of the students in those fields now are international students and temporary immigrants. The Senate bill would allow employers to sponsor for a green card any of those students if they graduate from a U.S. college and will be working in one of those fields.
The bill also would nearly double the cap on visas allowed for skilled workers, from 65,000 to 115,000. At the same time it toughens requirements for first recruiting U.S. workers before hiring foreign workers and cracks down on using foreign workers to outsource American jobs.
The bill also would require an employer who hiring a high-skilled foreign worker to pay a fee into as fund to help train Americans for those jobs.
A new agricultural guest worker section of the bill would aim to stabilize agricultural workforces and Durbin's office said regional economic models estimate that would create more than 1,700 jobs and increase Illinois residents' by $101 million.
The Senate bill would provide a pathway for undocumented immigrants now living and working in the U.S. to work toward citizenship, provided they pay several fees, have committed no major crimes, are working and are learning English. It would take 13 years from the time an application is filed to attain citizenship, Durbin said.
