11:01 A.M. EST

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Claude Allen, Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy: "The last piece of the puzzle is in immigration. The President's proposal calls for being able to recruit the world's best and brightest to come to America to work alongside America's best and brightest in terms of science, engineering and high skilled laborers to come in under this proposal. And so we will be working to work with Congress the H1B program, which is the high skilled labor visas, which right now is about 65,000 visas a year. They are consumed very quickly at the first of the year, and we need to look at increasing that to do that. We're looking also at other visa initiatives, working with Congress to address that, as well, for skilled laborers, high skilled laborers to come into the country."

MR. ALLEN: That's the current number.

Q Okay. And what do you want to increase it to?

MR. ALLEN: Well, we'll let the President talk about that today; you'll hear him talk about that. But, again, we have not looked at a specific number as yet. I know the President may have one that he's spoken about that we've looked at. But, historically, we have had -- between 2001 and 2003 there was about 119,000 -- let me make sure of that number -- 195,000, I'm sorry -- 195,000 H1B visas between '01 and '03.

We anticipate that the 65,000 clearly is too low. You would want to bump that up.

Q Wasn't that that huge number difference during that time -- wasn't that during the bubble of Silicon Valley, a lot of third world --

MR. ALLEN: That's correct. That's correct -- that many --

DR. MARBURGER: -- and you need significantly more than we have.

MR. ALLEN: Some of reports have called for increases of 10,000; others between 20,000 and 40,000. So there is a number of options on the table to be considered. But we'll work with Congress on that."

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