1) The bill would create a new category of non-immigrant visa called the W visa for owners (W-1) or essential employees (W-2) of start-up companies and their dependent family members (W-3).
2) The bill would exempt applicants holding a PhD in a STEM field from the annual per-country green card limits, enabling them to quickly apply for permanent residency without being subject to the availability of an immigrant visa. This would benefit Indians and Chinese nationals the most.
3) The bill would provide for Temporary Protected Status for certain qualified residents of Hong Kong, as well as Special Immigrant Status for highly-skilled Hong Kong residents, capped at 5,000 per year.
However, this bill is not finalized yet according to [2]:
> But it’s not through to Biden yet: Now the Senate and the House will have to reconcile their competing versions of the bill, and “a final measure is unlikely to be completed before the end of May”
[1] https://www.rnlawgroup.com/immigration-provisions-in-the-ame...
[2] https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2022/03/29/the...
Edit: clarified that these are only in the House version and will have to be reconciled with the Senate version.
I'm always disappointed in this style of visa. These are the kinds of people we want to keep, not make their stay contingent on working at or running a startup. To me, it's really stupid that anything but a tourist/business visit visa should be non-immigrant; all long-term stay visas should provide an easy path to permanent residence (sure, assuming whatever reasonable qualifications are met).
And I wonder if these W-* visas will be similar to the H-* visas, where if you quit or are fired, you need to find similarly-qualifying employment in a disgustingly short amount of time, or you're forced to leave the country. So you end up having very little employment mobility, and many people end up feeling trapped in a job they hate, because finding a new employer that will sponsor your visa isn't always a slam dunk, and plenty of things can happen to screw it up.
All this is just band-aids on the current crap immigration system we have. But no one has the political courage (or capital?) to completely throw out the current system and write a new, sane, humane one from scratch.
Americans don’t want that. A lot of our immigration-related problems is that the executive branch created a de facto permanent immigration system (with modest Congressional acquiesce in the 1990s) out of what was sold to the public as a temporary worker visa.
[0] https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/4521...
[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/4521...
Not saying this pejoratively—my whole family fits this profile. But people don’t think enough about what sorts of folks we’re really bringing in and how that changes our culture.
FTFY
Finally! It was utter idiocy that it wasn't already the law to staple a green card to each PhD diploma earned by a foreigner for my entire life.
Many Chinese are actually against removing the per country green card limits, because Indian applicants are so many times more that keeping the status quo actually give Chinese a better chance of success.
But that was before the cap removal is limited to PhD only. I'm not yet updated on the latest stance.
I wonder if low-quality offshore post-hole-digger diploma mills can create a loophole for this requirement.
See https://foreignaffairs.house.gov/index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&Fil... Page 218, lines 3 to 9:
QUALIFYING INSTITUTIONS .—The term ‘‘qualifying institutions’’ means institutions of higher education that are classified as either very-high research intensive (R1) or high research intensive (R2) status universities by the Carnegie Classification of Academic Institutions.
Watch as this one gets limited and watered down. Foreign PhD graduates are a cheap labor force for STEM universities.
Are we… still giving unfair advantages to foreign nationals and companies that hire foreign nationals over Americans in 2022?
Get lost.
Basically, it allocates a bunch of money for supply chain and production improvements.
Overseas cash reserves are a separate issue that can be fixed by removing the corporate tax. It should be 0%, we would all be better off if that were the case.
I'm not saying the COMPETES Act is good or bad, just that it's going to reshape the China problem a bit.
And for those itching to downvote me: the Chinese people are fine folks. the CCP is a helluva problem.
If we're concerned about over reliance on Chinese manufacture, why not create a tariff?
Even if there was a tariff, new fabs would still cost billions.
Also, how you manipulate trade is governed by lots of treaties and some basic economics (i.e. a tariff would just make more or less everything more expensive and not change the situation much for quite a while)
At some point, we need to increase product competitiveness, which ultimately benefits everyone.
That or sanction china so they can’t build competitive product, like Huawei.
But yeah I would just do both.
I'm sure the coconut water lobbying group (never thought I'd say that phrase) worked its ass off for this. Time to pop the coconut water flavoured champagne.
All to circumvent tariffs on their exports to remain competitive
Well, the distinctly American alternative
If this results in a lot of things soon containing 11% coconut water, I might just snap.
Just wait until the hearings, the media frenzy, when those products are tested and found to contain 9% juice!
Big companies pay lobbyists to add these in. It is no accident that these end up in the tax code.
More specifically, Bai Brands[1], owned by Keurig Dr Pepper.
Bezos may not pay income tax, but all his engineers do...
citation needed
* The America COMPETES Act authorizes the establishment of the Rebuilding Economies and Creating Opportunities for More People to Excel (RECOMPETE) pilot grant program at the Economic Development Administration to form and implement economic development strategies in distressed labor markets and communities to boost long-term economic growth and create lasting, quality jobs.
* The America COMPETES Act includes a substantial investment in funding for the National Science Foundation, directing investments to critical research-enabling infrastructure, including the Mid-Scale Research Infrastructure program.
* The America COMPETES Act directs funding to create a strategic transformer reserve, facilitate domestic manufacturing, and test critical electric grid equipment to reduce vulnerability and increase resiliency in the event of severe damage to the electrical grid.
* The America COMPETES Act includes funding to support research to advance the next generation of energy storage, solar, fusion energy, carbon capture, and bioenergy technologies, among many other areas, to promote clean energy technologies across America and help improve resiliency and modernization of our electrical grid.
* The legislation establishes a new grant program to improve our global competitiveness by increasing equitable access to computer-science education and computational-thinking skills for students enrolled in K-12 public schools.
* The America COMPETES Act also supports early-career scientists conducting research at the institutions of their choice, makes investments in clean energy technology research, and supports technology development at small businesses.
* The bill additionally authorizes $250 million over five years for a new grant program operated by the Department of Education to increase students’ access to postsecondary STEM “pathways” by exposing them to STEM coursework, reducing college costs, and improving postsecondary credit transfers – all Make It In America proposals
* The America COMPETES Act reauthorizes the National Apprenticeship Act and incentivizes new initiatives such as promoting diversity in apprenticeships and increasing women’s participation; encourages building new partnerships among labor unions, educational institutions, and industry to launch new apprenticeship tracks from classrooms and training centers into full-time jobs, all policies championed by Leader Hoyer as part of the Make It In America plan.
* The America COMPETES Act authorizes a telecommunications-sector workforce-training grant program, Improving Minority Participation and Careers in Telecommunications Act (IMPACT), for minority-serving institutions to develop job-training programs in partnership with industry, Registered Apprenticeships, or labor organizations.
* The bill also accelerates efforts to increase diversity and inclusion in STEM by providing research on participation and trajectories of historically underrepresented groups, raising awareness within federal science agencies and higher-education institutions about barriers faced by these groups, and identifies and implements best practices to lower these barriers while creating grants for higher-education institutions to implement reforms to increase diversity.
* The bill would establish a regional technology and innovation hub program at the Department of Commerce, to incentivize collaborative partnerships among local governments, colleges and universities, private industry, non-profits, and community organizations to promote and support regional technology and innovation hubs.
* The America COMPETES Act would establish a Mentor-Protégé Program within the Department of Homeland Security that would create opportunities for small businesses to compete in the Federal marketplace.
[0] https://www.majorityleader.gov/sites/democraticwhip.house.go...
There are a couple of other possibilities as well. Remember when a bunch of Iraq's electrical infra was taken out with graphite fiber bombs[0]?
The idea has been out there for a while, and it wouldn't surprise me to learn that grenade launchers or cheap drones can be used instead of modified Tomahawk missiles.
[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_Item_Veto_Act_of_1996>
" When members of the House of Representatives, the Senate or entire U.S. Congress want to send a stern message, state an opinion or just make a point, they try to pass a "sense of" resolution.
Through simple or concurrent resolutions, both houses of Congress may express formal opinions about subjects of national interest. As such these so-called “sense of” resolutions are officially known as “sense of the House,” “sense of the Senate” or “sense of the Congress” resolutions. "
[1] https://www.thoughtco.com/sense-of-congress-resolutions-3322...
SEC. 2003. SENSE OF CONGRESS.
It is the sense of Congress that--
(1) the National Science Foundation, the Department of
Energy and its National Laboratories, and other key Federal
agencies have carried out vital work supporting basic and
applied research to create knowledge that is a key driver of
the economy of the United States and a critical component of
national security;
(2) openness to diverse perspectives and a focus on freedom
from censorship and political bias will continue to make
educational and research institutions in the United States
beacons to thousands of students from across the world;
(3) increasing research and technology transfer
investments, building regional capacity and reducing geographic
disparity, strengthening supply chains, and increasing
capabilities in key technology focus areas will enhance the
competitive advantage and leadership of the United States in
the global economy;
(4) the Federal Government must utilize the full talent and
potential of the entire Nation by avoiding undue geographic
concentration of research and education funding, encouraging
broader participation of populations underrepresented in STEM,
and collaborating with non-government partners to ensure the
leadership of the United States in technological innovation;
and
(5) authorization and funding for investments in research,
education, technology transfer, intellectual property,
manufacturing, and other core strengths of the United States
innovation ecosystem, including at the National Science
Foundation and the Department of Energy, should be done on a
bipartisan basis.(no affiliation, avid user of the service)
https://govtrackinsider.com/protecting-school-milk-choices-a...
House D was 221 Y, 1 N. R was 1 Y, 209 N, 2 not voting.
Senate D and I was 50 Y, 0 N. R was 18 Y, 28 N, 4 not voting.
This is not going to raise any hell whatsoever for sure (sarcasm).
WTF is going through their heads?
Semiconductor integrity and independence is vital to US national security in the digital age. It's the sensible move, and a move that China and anyone else paying attention has seen coming.
I guess they expect the immigration stuff to be thrown out in reconciliation since the senate version didn't seem to have them.
1) This exacerbates brain-drain from the developing world, creating problems down the line that the developed world will have to reckon with.
2) There are already many university graduates in the US who have trouble finding work. Indeed, employers can often use the fact that foreign workers are 'bound' to their employers to depress wages.
Without addressing 1, the best way to address 2 would be to detach the employment requirements from the W class of visas.
More duty-free exemptions smuggled in this act:
* Sec. 74733. Dog and cat apparel.
* Sec. 74747. Jewelry boxes.
* Sec. 74746. Guitar cases.
* Sec. 74750. Men's leather gloves valued at $18 or more per pair.
* Sec. 74853. Golf bag body flats.
* Sec. 74851. Golf bag bodies with rain hoods and straps.