Press Gaggle by Scott McClellan, John Marburger, Director of Office of Science & Technology Policy and Claude Allen, Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy
Excerpts from Press Gaggle Aboard Air Force One
En route Maplewood, Minnesota
11:01 A.M. EST
…
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.”
…
“Q On the immigration initiative, how many — you said 65,000 visas, H1B visas are issued?
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.”
The U.S. Immigration Law Blog by Ashwin Sharma 