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September 10, 2013
The Honorable John Boehner
Speaker
United States House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515
The Honorable Nancy Pelosi
Minority Leader
United States House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515
RE: Support for Immigration Reform
Dear Speaker Boehner and Minority Leader Pelosi:
We, the undersigned chief human resource officers of major corporations doing business in the United States, are writing to urge the House to enact legislation to fix the broken immigration system and work with the Senate to ensure that a bill is signed by the President this year. We believe this would be a long overdue step toward aligning our nation’s immigration policies with
its workforce needs at all skill levels to ensure U.S. global competitiveness, and we are hopeful that the House will address these needs. The Senate bill is not a perfect measure and many of us hope to work with the House to enact more favorable provisions in certain areas.
Two years ago, the HR Policy Association, which represents the most senior human resource executives at the largest companies in the United States—and of which we are all members—issued a Blueprint for Jobs in the 21st Century, which provided a number of recommendations for restoring growth and competitiveness in the U.S. Among these was a recommendation that
immigration reform “address the reality that there is a global war for talent and that countries are competing to attract and retain the human capital essential to a culture of productivity and innovation.” The report contained a number of recommendations aimed at attracting and retaining immigrants with strong science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills. The Senate bill includes strong provisions along the lines of our recommendations, and we would encourage the House to adopt a similar approach.
Even with the economy still recovering, many of our companies continue to have difficulty finding sufficient American workers to fill certain lesser-skilled positions. Thus, in addition to addressing the need for more highly skilled immigrants, we strongly support efforts to bolster the availability of a workforce at all skills levels, through a separate visa program as well as by
creating a path to legal status for those already here. Finally, we urge you to improve the EVerify system so employers can rely on its results without fear of legal liability and to preserve federal preemption to ensure uniform application of the enforcement rules across the country. . . .
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