Huff Pushes Entrepreneur Visa Bill for Legal Immigrants

Senate Republican Leader Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar, is spearheading an effort to get Congress to pass a bill that would create an entrepreneur visa program for legal immigrants.

The state Senate Monday voted unanimously to pass legislation to press Congress to pass and the president to sign the bi-partisan Startup Act 3.0, which Huff called in a news release "the strongest, most comprehensive jobs and high-skilled immigration reform bill on the table in Congress."

All of the Republicans in the state Senate are serving as joint authors of SJR 9, which seeks to promote the legislation before Congress.

The Startup Act 3.0, recently re-introduced in the 113th Congress by U.S. senators Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Mark Warner (D-Va) and co-authored by Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), creates an entrepreneur's visa for legal immigrants that would enable them to stay in the country to open businesses, according to Huff.

The bill emphasizes luring legal immigrants who are in the science, technology, engineering and math fields.

“The Startup Act means job opportunities for California families,” Huff said in a statement. “According to a white paper released by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, it has the potential to add between 500,000 and 1.6 million new jobs for Americans over the next 10 years. California has one of the worst unemployment rates in the nation. California needs this opportunity.”

Huff cites the recent influx of H-1B visa applications as a reason why the proposed legislation is needed. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is allowed to issue 85,000 of the visas for high-skilled foreign-born workers but recently received 124,000 applications in five days, Huff said.  The excess applications forced a lottery system, leaving some out of luck for the coveted visas.

Huff's resolution states the following:

“The United States economy has been enriched by the innovative and entrepreneurial spirit of immigrants from around the world. Foreign nationals residing in the United States were named as inventors or co-inventors in one-quarter of all patent applications filed in 2006. Fifty-two percent of Silicon Valley startups between 1995 and 2005 were founded or cofounded by immigrants, generating $52 billion in revenues and employing 450,000 workers.”

By passing Startup Act 3.0, Congress can help solve the issues with the H-1B visa system, Huff said. 

“Businesses created by high-skilled immigrants have long been a source of jobs for all Californians,” he said. “Unfortunately, our old and unworkable visa policies are hurting our state. In the past seven years, the national rate of startups by immigrants has dropped to 42 percent. The number of foreign nationals with advanced degrees awaiting permanent residence status in the U.S. has grown to over one million."