Aneesh Chopra, whose father immigrated from India as an engineer and earned three patents, argues that fixing immigration is essential for American innovation. He proposes automatic green cards for STEM graduates, startup visas for entrepreneurs, and clearing the legal backlog. About 15% of his university audience are on immigration status.
Chapters
I did want to pause for a moment and talk a bit about our immigration system. How many of you in this room are students here under some form of immigration status? Probably from the hands, maybe 15%. I want to speak to you because on a personal level, this is how my father came to this country as an engineer at Villanova. Dad holds three patents, and because he had the opportunity to pursue the American dream, we have the chance to be in this gay country. I have the job reporting to the President of the United States in one generation. That's the story of America. We have a broken immigration system. And the President just a few weeks back called on all of us to have a civil conversation to talk about why and how we can move this conversation forward and actually fix what's broken. The President spoke at length about the broad, comprehensive nature of this challenge, but he highlighted the importance of high skilled immigration and he introduced a set of policy initiatives that we stand for as an administration that we believe speak to all of you. For example, how about we staple a green card when you graduate with a PhD or a master's in STEM fields. What about a startup visa program that allows you to stay in this country if you can raise the capital and scale up a business hiring American workers? How about we fix the legal immigration system to clear out the backlog and to address some of the challenges about how we allow families in or out through the legal system and how do we strengthen that which works and fix what's broken in initiatives like the H1B program? The President has called for all of this to happen. It's personal for me because I added in there the picture of me When I was 11, I visited India for the first time. That's my little. That's my dad's village. No indoor plumbing typical at the time. They were refugees when India and Pakistan bifurcated at the turn of India's independence and Pakistan's independence. And so this is a real challenge for our country and to the 15% of you in the room, the President understands and has called for us to address this and has many of you in mind when we look to fix this system.
