Highly skilled Indians get smooth passage to US in new immigration bill

Targeting highly skilled talents from India and China, a bi-partisan group of US lawmakers have introduced a new bill in the Congress to create more than 125,000 new visas to attract global talents to America.

The bill called Startup 3.0 proposes to help increase America's access to talent by creating a new set of conditional visas for 75,000 immigrant entrepreneurs and 50,000 foreign STEM (Science technology, engineering and math) graduate students.

This will create half a million new American jobs, claimed authors of the bill, early this week.

The bill has the support of top US companies and organisations like Microsoft, Google, National Small Business Association (NSBA), CTIA, Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), Financial Services Forum, Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), TechAmercia, Information Technology Industry (ITI), Compete America, Silicon Valley Leadership Group, and TechNet.

Startup 3.0 allows qualified companies to apply research and development tax credits to their payroll tax liability, up to USD 250,000.

For small startups, it also makes permanent the 100 per cent capital gains tax exemption on investments that are held for more than 5 years, in addition to the 28 per cent exemption on qualified small business stock.

These provisions will unlock over USD 7.5 billion in new investments which will result in more innovation and jobs.

Finally, the bill helps cut red tape, by requiring a cost-benefit analysis of any significant rule being proposed by a federal or independent agency.

"Too often we educate the world's best and brightest in STEM fields, only to send them back to countries like India and China to open businesses and compete against us.

This bill will keep top talent here in the US to build businesses that hire Americans, and drive US innovation and competitiveness," Congressman Grimm said.

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