• SEMI urges Congress to pass high-skills immigration reform this year, including an H-1B visa and green card cap increases.

• SEMI supports efforts to update the U.S. immigration system as it relates to high-skills immigration. The present system needs to be changed to ensure that graduates in the critical fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) are able to pursue their careers in the United States. Currently, these workers are admitted under the H-1B visa program. However, H-1B visa shortages continue, limiting U.S. employers’ access to highly-educated workers.
• The semiconductor equipment and materials industry is heavily dependent on the best and brightest individuals. The industry requires a specialized skill set and seeks to hire U.S. citizens with advanced STEM degrees; however, many of these degree holders are foreign nationals. We have always been an industry built by global brainpower with immigrants from all regions of the world. Currently, more than 50 percent of all engineering doctoral degrees awarded by U.S. engineering colleges are to foreign nationals and one-third of all science and engineering PhD holders in U.S. private industry were foreign born, to cite two examples. Our competitiveness is weakened if we are unable to compete for global talent.
• Under current law, the H-1B visa allotment is capped at 65,000 and an additional 20,000 are available to graduates of U.S. universities with Masters or PhD degrees. On the first day that applications were accepted for FY08, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) received about 150,000 applications. Unless accepted as part of the current allotment, no new H-1Bs can be hired until October 2008. This is the third year in a row that the cap has been hit on or before the start of the fiscal year.
• It is critical to the U.S. economy that we have an efficient immigration system that welcomes highly-educated foreign nationals to the U.S. workforce, rather than sending them to work for overseas competitors.
• SEMI does not have an official position on comprehensive reform; however, SEMI supports high-skills immigration provisions contained in a larger bill.
• Time is of the essence, since passage of such contentious legislation is quite unlikely in 2008 given the presidential election.

For information on current legislation, click here.

Last updated: June 21, 2007