House vote to boost sci-tech visas lays bare political rifts on immigration

House passage of an immigration bill that swaps a lottery designed to diversity America’s immigrant population for visas targeted to students advanced in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) lays bare a yawning divide between Democrats and Republicans on the principles and process of immigration reform.

The Republican-backed measure, which passed Friday 245 to 139 (with 27 Democrats joining all but five Republicans in support), makes an immigration trade: 55,000 visas available through a State Department visa lottery, which go to people from nations underrepresented in the overall US immigrant population, will instead go to advanced graduates in STEM fields attending top American research universities. In addition, the bill permits, in some circumstances, noncitizen family members of naturalized US citizens to stay in the United States while awaiting their own permanent status.

The legislation has almost no hope of being considered in the Senate, given significant Democratic opposition.

Democrats and Republicans – and the high-tech companies who have lobbied vigorously for visas for employees they covet – agree that boosting the number of STEM visas is a worthy goal. Yet ahead of the vote, members of the two parties sparred on the House floor over their philosophical fractures on immigration policy.

Republicans see the STEM measure as an example of the best way forward on immigration reform: one step at a time to address pieces of the immigration puzzle.  

“This was the first step forward in terms of trying to address the need for modernization in our visa laws,” said majority leader Eric Cantor (R) of Virginia after the vote. “We have a system of lottery that, frankly, I think is properly replaced with a system that rewards those who want to come here to help create jobs.”

Republicans emphasized that it's worthwhile to remove visas from a program in which applicants have with no educational requirements and to give them to individuals of high value to American industry. Rep. Darrell Issa (R) of California said on the House floor that Democrats were “looking at the numbers, rather than the merit” of potential immigrants.

Republicans complain that comprehensive reforms, such as those Democrats tout, have failed in the past and that incremental change is the best way forward.  

“What stopped [reform] from happening was the size of it, the scope of it. [Democrats] said, ‘We have to do everything,’ ” Representative Issa said later in an interview, reflecting on past efforts to reform immigration law. “Doing everything allowed somebody to not like some part of anything. What we’ve done here today and what we need to do ... we need to break up the elephant into bite-size pieces.”

Why is that a problem for Democrats? First, they are steamed that the first immigration vote since the election came with zero consultation with House liberals.

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