Judd Gregg

“ I've made the point throughout the discussion of this bill that from my standpoint, a good piece of immigration legislation has to accomplish essentially four things. The first it has to do is make the borders secure. There's no reason that we cannot secure the southern border. The northern border is a bigger problem because of its length and its topography, but the southern border can be secured. ”

“ I think the merit system is exactly the approach we should take and the point system is exactly the approach we should take. But I still don't understand why somebody who's worked as an agriculture worker for five years gets the same points as somebody who has worked with a physics degree. It seems to me if you're going to weight this properly in a merit system based system -- we're not talking the guest worker program here. We're talking the merit system proposals. ”

“ In fact, the National Science Foundation has pointed out that we need these type of people, that we're woefully short of the people in the math, science, and technology areas. We're not producing the numbers we need to out of our own university system. ”

“ You know, one of the people I admire around here the most because he has been such an extraordinary force, even though I disagree with him so often, I still admire him immensely is the Senator from Massachusetts, how he's maintained the energy and the commitment to his causes over such a long period of time is beyond me. ”

“ But the H1B program, for some reason has opposition. I look across the aisle and I think, this should be a logical thing for both sides of the aisle to be supportive of- the concept of bringing in-- insourcing jobs rather than outsourcing jobs ought to be attractive to the other side of the aisle. The concept to create opportunities should attract both sides of the aisle. There seems to be some undercurrent that they're taking away American jobs. They aren't. In fact they're adding to American jobs. ”

“ I would hope that before this bill goes much further that we correct the problems that are in this bill relative to the H1B program and make it a much more expansive program and make it a much more flexible program and one which will allow us to bring these talented people here so that they can create jobs and make our economy stronger along the lines of what Bill Gates has suggested is necessary and which I strongly endorse. ”

“ If you're trained as an astrophysicist, you're going to be able do a lot of things in our society and move within the job area and under of course the rules of an H1B application you've got to be able to move in a way that you're not displacing Americans. ”

“ I mean we're not going to, as a practical matter, take 12 million people or maybe even 15 million people who are here illegally, assuming we could even find them, and deport them. I mean that's just simply not going to happen in our culture. ”

“ Most of the H1B applications -- 45% -- are computer science people. The next biggest group is teachers. 11%, I think, are teachers. And so industries, businesses, entrepreneurs, and colleges, and schools that need these folks to make their businesses work and to give them the opportunity to create jobs, whether it is in New Hampshire or Washington state or across this country, need to be able to attract these people into the country. ”

“ So why not go overseas and see if we can't find these people to come here and participate. And in fact there's such a demand for these people, that under the present system they're only allowed 65,000 of these applications every year plus 20,000 add-on for highly talented people. ”

“ And, in addition there's been a tax on an H1B program that claims that there is warehousing of these types of folks -- I guess that's probably a pejorative, but that's the term that I think- involving Indian companies that collect a large number of people together with these degrees and then get applications for H1Bs. ”