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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future
scientific meetings, the technology alert list, reciprocity agreements, and changes in status.
Action C-5: Provide a 1-year automatic visa extension to internationalstudents who receive doctorates or the equivalent in science, technology,engineering, mathematics, or other fields of national need at qualified USinstitutions to remain in the United States to seek employment. If thesestudents are offered jobs by US-based employers and pass a security screening test, they should be provided automatic work permits and expeditedresidence status. If students are unable to obtain employment within 1 year, their visas would expire.
Action C-6: Institute a new skills-based, preferential immigration option. Doctoral-level education and science and engineering skills would substantially raise an applicant’s chances and priority in obtaining US citizenship. In the interim, the number of H-1B visas should be increased by 10,000, and the additional visas should be available for industry to hire science and engineering applicants with doctorates from US universities.8
Action C-7: Reform the current system of “deemed exports.” The new system should provide international students and researchers engaged in fundamental research in the United States with access to information and research equipment in US industrial, academic, and national laboratories comparable with the access provided to US citizens and permanent residents in a similar status. It would, of course, exclude information and facilities restricted under national-security regulations. In addition, the effect of deemed-exports9 regulations on the education and fundamental research work of international students and scholars should be limited by removing from the deemed-exports technology list all technology items (information and equipment) that are available for purchase on the overseas open market from foreign or US companies or that have manuals that are available in the public domain, in libraries, over the Internet, or from manufacturers.
8
Since the report was released, the committee has learned that the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2005, signed into law on December 8, 2004, exempts individuals that have received a master’s or higher education degree from a US university from the statutory cap (up to 20,000). The bill also raised the H-1B fee and allocated funds to train American workers. The committee believes that this provision is sufficient to respond to its recommendation—even though the 10,000 additional visas recommended is specifically for science and engineering doctoral candidates from US universities, which is a narrower subgroup.
9
The controls governed by the Export Administration Act and its implementing regulations extend to the transfer of technology. Technology includes “specific information necessary for the ‘development,’ ‘production,’ or ‘use’ of a product.” Providing information that is subject to export controls—for example, about some kinds of computer hardware—to a foreign national within the United States may be “deemed” an export, and that transfer requires an export license. The primary responsibility for administering controls on deemed exports lies with the Department of Commerce, but other agencies have regulatory authority as well.
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