Ralph Lee Abraham: “Mr. President, the H-1B visa program, which we will be addressing today when we vote on the American Competitiveness in…”

“Mr. President, the H-1B visa program, which we will be addressing today when we vote on the American Competitiveness in the Twenty-first Century Act, is the subject of much interesting debate in our country today. One thing everybody agrees on is we face a serious worker shortage with respect to high-tech employment and skilled labor in America today. Most of the recent studies that have been produced on this subject indicate there are perhaps as many as 1 million unfilled positions in information technology today. The projections are that we will be creating somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 new positions in these areas in each of the next 10 years. Yet in spite of the very lucrative and, I think, substantive nature of these jobs, our training programs, our college programs, our high school programs are not producing enough American workers to fill these posts today. This presents us with a short-term problem and a long-term challenge.”