King Supports the STEM Jobs Act of 2012

Washington, DC- Congressman Steve King spoke on the House floor in support of H.R. 6429, the STEM Jobs Act of 2012, before voting in favor of the bill today. The STEM Jobs Act eliminates the Diversity Visa lottery and redirects up to 55,000 green cards a year to foreign graduates of qualified U.S. universities who receive their doctorate or masters degrees in science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) fields.  To view Congressman King's speech, click the video or link below:

To view Congressman King's Speech, click here.

"I have served on the Immigration Subcommittee for ten years. In that period of time I have sat in on dozens and scores and perhaps hundreds of hearings during that period of time and gathered information and a knowledge base on these issues. I walked into this issue as a freshman Member of Congress ten years ago with this statement: 'The immigration policy that we have in this country needs to be designed to enhance the economic, the social and the cultural well being of the United States of America.' In fact, every country's immigration policy should fit that standard. We can have debates about the definitions of those three words that are part of that direction, but what's going on here is eliminating a really foolish policy that we had. I have long been for the repeal of the Visa Diversity Lottery program and I have long been for setting up a system so that we can promote the economic, social, and cultural well being of the United States through our policies.

Some of the information in hearings we only control with our immigration policy depending on whose numbers you want to look at. Between 7 and 11 percent of the legal immigrants coming into this country are on merit. We only control between 7 and 11 percent of the legal immigration to this country on merit. The rest of that doesn't have anything to do with the merits and how they contribute to the U.S. This bill does do that. I support H.R. 6429 and I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of it."