JEWISH KING JESUS IS COMING AT THE RAPTURE FOR US IN THE CLOUDS-DON'T MISS IT FOR THE WORLD.THE BIBLE TAKEN LITERALLY- WHEN THE PLAIN SENSE MAKES GOOD SENSE-SEEK NO OTHER SENSE-LEST YOU END UP IN NONSENSE.GET SAVED NOW- CALL ON JESUS TODAY.THE ONLY SAVIOR OF THE WHOLE EARTH - NO OTHER. 1 COR 15:23-JESUS THE FIRST FRUITS-CHRISTIANS RAPTURED TO JESUS-FIRST FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT-23 But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming.ROMANS 8:23 And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.(THE PRE-TRIB RAPTURE)
OH OH ISLAM IS A FAKE MADEUP RELIGION IN 800BC. NOT 600BC.
ISLAM I BELIEVE IS A MADE UP FAKE CHRISTIAN RELGION IMMITATION.DREAMPT UP IN 600BC. (WATCH 2ND)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EaopH_EPfc
ARABS-NAME AN IMPORTANT ARAB IN HISTORY (WATCH 1ST)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deiShtWReYE
WELL LEADERS OF THE WORLD ESPECIALLY IN THE WESTERN COUNTRIES. AND WITH THE OPEN BORDER POLICY IN AMERICA AND CANADA. MANY MILLIONS OF MIGRANTS ARE COMING INTO OUR COUNTRIES. WELL I HAVE A GREAT IDEA TO KEEP TRACK OF EVERY MIGRANT IN CANADA AND AMERICA. ITS CALLED A MICROCHIP IMPLANT UNDER THEIR SKIN. YOU PUT THE MICROCHIP IMPLANT UNDER THE MIGRANTS SKIN IN MEXICO. THEN THEIR ALLOWED TO MIGRATE TO CANADA OR AMERICA AS LONG AS THEY HAVE MICROCHIP IMPLANT UNDER THEIR SKIN. THEN YOU CAN KEEP TRACK OF THEM 24 HOURS A DAY. YOU WILL BE ABLE TO KNOW WERE THEY ARE AT ALL TIMES 24 HOURS A DAY. THIS IS THE ONLY WAY TO CONTROL THE MUSLIM TERRORIST THAT COME INTO OUR COUNTRY. IF THEY DO A TERRORIST ATTACK IN OUR COUNTRY. ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS FOLLOW THE MICROCHIP RIGHT TO THE TERRORIST.
MICROCHIPPING MIGRANTS SAVES CHILDRENS LIVES.
WELL
WE ALL KNOW THAT THE LEFT WING NUTJOB LUNATICAS USE THE CHILDREN AS A
CRUTCH ALL THE TIME WHEN THEIR TRYING TO GET OUR EMOTIONS GOING. WELL
THIS SOLUTION I AM TALKING ABOUT HERE-WILL REALLY SAVE THE LIVE OF SEX
TRAFFICED CHILDREN AT THE AMERICA-CANADIAN BORDERS. LIKE I SAID 2 DAYS
AGO WE MUST START MICROCHIPPING ALL MIGRANTS THAT COME INTO CANADA AND
AMERICAN BORDERS. NOT ONLY CAN YOU KEEP TRACK OF ALL THE MUSLIM
COCKROACHES 24 HOURS A DAY. BUT YOU CAN WITH A MICROCHIP IN ALL THE
CHILDREN COMING ACCROSS THE BORDERS. YOU CAN SAVE ALL THE SEX TRAFFICED
CHILDREN FROM BEING PEDALLED OUT BY THE MEXICAN CARTELS. YOU WILL BE
ABLE TO SEE ALL KINDS OF CHILDREN WHO ARE IN SAME BUILDING WITH THE
MICROCHIPS IN THEM. YOU WILL KNOW THERES SOMETHING SUSPICIOUS GOING ON
IN THAT PLACE. AND POLICE CAN RAID THAT PLACE. AND KILL THE SEX
TRAFFICERS. AND WITH A MICROCHIP IN THESE MIGRANTS. THEY WILL NOT HAVE
TO CARRY CASH WITH THEM. THE CASH WILL BE PLACED BY A BANK INSIDE THEIR
MICHIP IMPLANT. THE MICROCHIP IMPLANT IS JUST A NORMAL CONVIENCE UNTILL
THE WORLD DICTATOR POLITICIAN COMES ON THE SCENE AFTER THE TRUE
CHRISTIANS ARE RAPTURED TO HEAVEN. BEFORE THE 7 YEAR TRIBULATION PERIOD.
EVEN THEN THE MICROCHIP IMPLANT WILL NOT BE FORCED IN YOUR BODY UNTIL
THE MIDPOINT OF THE 7 YR TRIBULATION PERIOD. WHEN THE WORLD DICTATOR HAS
A FALSE RESURRECTION. AND SATAN BRINGS HIM BACK TO LIFE. 3 DAYS LATER.
THEN COMES GODS STRONG DELUTION ON THE WORLD. THAT WHOEVER IS NOT SAVED.
WILL BELIEVE THE WORLD LEADER IS GOD TO THEIR DAMNATION IN THE LAKE OF
FIRE FOREVER. SO THE MIGRANTS CAN ACCEPT THE MICROCHIP IMPLANT NOW AT
THE BORDER NO PROBLEM. AND CANADA AND AMERICA WILL BE A LOT SAFER. AND
THE CHILDREN CAN BE SAVED FROM BEING SEX TRAFFICED AT THE BORDER.
I FORGOT TO MENTION I HAVE ONE MORE SUGGESTION TO CONTROL THE BORDER SITUATION. NOT ONLY SHOULD ALL THE COCKROACHES BE MICROCHIPPED BUT WE IN CANADA AND AMERICA MUST ONLY ALLOW MUSLIM MALES 6 YEARS OLD OR YOUNGER IN OUR COUNTRIES. THESE MUSLIMS ARE TAUGHT TO HATE THE WEST AND ISRAEL AT A YOUNG AGE. WE MUST ONLY ALLOW MUSLIM WOMEN TO COME INTO OUR WESTERN COUNTRIES. BY DOING THIS AND MICROCHIPPING EVERYBODY THAT COMES TO THE WESTERN COUNTRIES. WE CAN TRACK THE MIGRANTS 24 HOURS A DAY.
Biden
wants an industrial renaissance. He can’t do it without immigration
reform.Intel’s planned microchip plant outside Columbus, Ohio, is the
administration’s poster child for reviving high-tech manufacturing. But
failure to allow a small number of foreign-born doctorates to stay in
the U.S. could cause the effort to fizzle.A graphic of a computer chip
is displayed behind President Joe Biden.President Joe Biden's dream of
turning the United States into a hub of microchip manufacturing lacks a
key ingredient — a small yet critical core of high-skilled workers. | By
Brendan Bordelon and Eleanor Mueller-Updated: 08/11/2022 06:01 PM EDT
JOHNSTOWN,
Ohio — Just 15 minutes outside of downtown Columbus, the suburbs
abruptly evaporate. Past a bizarre mix of soybean fields, sprawling
office parks and lonely clapboard churches is a field where the Biden
administration — with help from one of the world’s largest tech
companies — hopes to turn the U.S. into a hub of microchip
manufacturing.In his State of the Union address in March, President Joe
Biden called this 1,000-acre spread of corn stalks and farmhouses a
“field of dreams.” Within three years, it will house two Intel-operated
chip facilities together worth $20 billion — and Intel is promising to
invest $80 billion more now that Washington has sweetened the deal with
subsidies. It’s all part of a nationwide effort to head off another
microchip shortage, shore up the free world’s advanced industrial base
in the face of a rising China and claw back thousands of high-end
manufacturing jobs from Asia.Construction site.Within three years,
Johnstown, Ohio will house two Intel-operated chip facilities together
worth $20 billion. | Brendan Bordelon/POLITICO-But even as Biden signs
into law more than $52 billion in “incentives” designed to lure
chipmakers to the U.S., an unusual alliance of industry lobbyists,
hard-core China hawks and science advocates says the president’s dream
lacks a key ingredient — a small yet critical core of high-skilled
workers. It’s a politically troubling irony: To achieve the long-sought
goal of returning high-end manufacturing to the United States, the
country must, paradoxically, attract more foreign workers.“For high-tech
industry in general — which of course, includes the chip industry — the
workforce is a huge problem,” said Julia Phillips, a member of the
National Science Board. “It’s almost a perfect storm.”From electrical
engineering to computer science, the U.S. currently does not produce
enough doctorates and master’s degrees in the science, technology,
engineering and math fields who can go on to work in U.S.-based
microchip plants. Decades of declining investments in STEM education
means the U.S. now produces fewer native-born recipients of advanced
STEM degrees than most of its international rivals.Foreign nationals,
including many educated in the U.S., have traditionally filled that gap.
But a bewildering and anachronistic immigration system, historic
backlogs in visa processing and rising anti-immigrant sentiment have
combined to choke off the flow of foreign STEM talent precisely when a
fresh surge is needed.Powerful members of both parties have diagnosed
the problem and floated potential fixes. But they have so far been
stymied by the politics of immigration, where a handful of lawmakers
stand in the way of reforms few are willing to risk their careers to
achieve. With a short window to attract global chip companies already
starting to close, a growing chorus is warning Congress they’re running
out of time.“These semiconductor investments won’t pay off if Congress
doesn’t fix the talent bottleneck,” said Jeremy Neufeld, a senior
immigration fellow at the Institute for Progress think tank.President
Joe Biden stands with Intel CEO Patrick Gelsinger.A sense of urgency is
starting to outweigh the reluctance of companies, like Patrick
Gelsinger's Intel, to advocate directly for immigration reform. | Andrew
Harnik/AP Photo-Given the hot-button nature of immigration fights, the
chip industry has typically been hesitant to advocate directly for
reform. But as they pump billions of dollars into U.S. projects and
contemplate far more expensive plans, a sense of urgency is starting to
outweigh that reluctance.“We are seeing greater and greater numbers of
our employees waiting longer and longer for green cards,” said David
Shahoulian, Intel’s head of workforce policy. “At some point it will
become even more difficult to attract and retain folks. That will be a
problem for us; it will be a problem for the rest of the tech
industry.”“At some point, you’ll just see more offshoring of these types
of positions,” Shahoulian said.A Booming Technology-Microchips (often
called “semiconductors” by wonkier types) aren’t anything new. Since the
1960s, scientists — working first for the U.S. government and later for
private industry — have tacked transistors onto wafers of silicon or
other semiconducting materials to produce computer circuits. What has
changed is the power and ubiquity of these chips.The number of
transistors researchers can fit on a chip roughly doubles every two
years, a phenomenon known as Moore’s Law. In recent years, that has led
to absurdly powerful chips bristling with transistors — IBM’s latest
chip packs them at two-nanometer intervals into a space roughly the size
of a fingernail. Two nanometers is thinner than a strand of human DNA,
or about how long a fingernail grows in two seconds.A rapid boost in
processing power stuffed into ever-smaller packages led to the
information technology boom of the 1990s. And things have only
accelerated since — microchips remain the primary driver of advances in
smartphones and missiles, but they’re also increasingly integrated into
household appliances like toaster ovens, thermostats and toilets. Even
the most inexpensive cars on the market now contain hundreds of
microchips, and electric or luxury vehicles are loaded with thousands.It
all adds up to a commodity widely viewed as the bedrock of the new
digital economy. Like fossil fuels before them, any country that
controls the production of chips possesses key advantages on the global
stage.Workers wearing masks labor at a factory.The Chinese government
has also been pouring billions of dollars into a crash program to boost
its own lackluster chip industry. | Chen Yuxuan/Xinhua via AP-Until
fairly recently, the U.S. was one of those countries. But while chips
are still largely designed in America, its capacity to produce them has
declined precipitously. Only 12 percent of the world’s microchip
production takes place in the U.S., down from 37 percent in 1990. That
percentage declines further when you exclude “legacy” chips with wider
spaces between transistors — the vast majority of bleeding-edge chips
are manufactured in Taiwan, and most factories not found on that island
reside in Asian nations like South Korea, China and Japan.For a long
time, few in Washington worried about America’s flagging chip
production. Manufacturing in the U.S. is expensive, and offshoring
production to Asia while keeping R&D stateside was a good way to cut
costs.Two things changed that calculus: the Covid-19 pandemic and
rising tensions between the U.S. and China.Abrupt work stoppages sparked
by viral spread in Asia sent shockwaves through finely tuned global
supply chains. The flow of microchips ceased almost overnight, and then
struggled to restart under new Covid surges and ill-timed extreme
weather events. Combined with a spike in demand for microelectronics
(sparked by generous government payouts to citizens stuck at home), the
manufacturing stutter kicked off a chip shortage from which the world is
still recovering.Even before the pandemic, growing animosity between
Washington and Beijing caused officials to question the wisdom of ceding
chip production to Asia. China’s increasingly bellicose threats against
Taiwan caused some to conjure up nightmare scenarios of an invasion or
blockade that would sever the West from its supply of chips. The Chinese
government was also pouring billions of dollars into a crash program to
boost its own lackluster chip industry, prompting fears that America’s
top foreign adversary could one day corner the market.By 2020 the wheels
had begun to turn on Capitol Hill. In January 2021, lawmakers passed as
part of their annual defense bill the CHIPS for America Act,
legislation authorizing federal payouts for chip manufacturers. But they
then struggled to finance those subsidies. Although they quickly
settled on more than $52 billion for chip manufacturing and research,
lawmakers had trouble decoupling those sweeteners from sprawling
anti-China “competitiveness” bills that stalled for over a year.Samsung
Electronics Co. Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong speaks.Samsung, which Lee
Jae-yong is vice chair of, is suggesting it will expand its new $17
billion chip plant outside of Austin, Texas, to a whopping $200 billion
investment. | Pool photo by Kim Min-HeeBut those subsidies, as well as
new tax credits for the chip industry, were finally sent to Biden’s desk
in late July. Intel isn’t the only company that’s promised to
supercharge U.S. projects once that money comes through — Samsung, for
example, is suggesting it will expand its new $17 billion chip plant
outside of Austin, Texas, to a nearly $200 billion investment. Lawmakers
are already touting the subsidies as a key step toward an American
renaissance in high-tech manufacturing.Quietly, however, many of those
same lawmakers — along with industry lobbyists and national security
experts — fear all the chip subsidies in the world will fall flat
without enough high-skilled STEM workers. And they accuse Congress of
failing to seize multiple opportunities to address the problem.STEM help
wanted-In Columbus, just miles from the Johnstown field where Intel is
breaking ground, most officials don’t mince words: The tech workers
needed to staff two microchip factories, let alone eight, don’t exist in
the region at the levels needed.“We’re going to need a STEM workforce,”
admitted Jon Husted, Ohio’s Republican lieutenant governor.But Husted
and others say they’re optimistic the network of higher ed institutions
spread across Columbus — including Ohio State University and Columbus
State Community College — can beef up the region’s workforce fast.“I
feel like we’re built for this,” said David Harrison, president of
Columbus State Community College. He highlighted the repeated refrain
from Intel officials that 70 percent of the 3,000 jobs needed to fill
the first two factories will be “technician-level” jobs requiring
two-year associate degrees. “These are our jobs,” Harrison said.Harrison
is anxious, however, over how quickly he and other leaders in higher ed
are expected to convince thousands of students to sign up for the
required STEM courses and join Intel after graduation. The first two
factories are slated to be fully operational within three years, and
will need significant numbers of workers well before then. He said his
university still lacks the requisite infrastructure for instruction on
chip manufacturing — “we’re missing some wafer processing, clean rooms,
those kinds of things” — and explained that funding recently provided by
Intel and the National Science Foundation won’t be enough. Columbus
State will need more support from Washington.“I don’t know that there’s a
great Plan B right now,” said Harrison, adding that the new facilities
will run into “the tens of millions.”A lack of native STEM talent isn’t
unique to the Columbus area. Across the country, particularly in regions
where the chip industry is planning to relocate, officials are fretting
over a perceived lack of skilled technicians. In February, the
Taiwanese Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation cited a shortage of
skilled workers when announcing a six-month delay in the move-in date
for their new plant in Arizona.“Whether it’s a licensure program, a
two-year program or a Ph.D., at all levels, there is a shortfall in
high-tech STEM talent,” said Phillips. The NSB member highlighted the
“missing millions of people that are not going into STEM fields — that
basically are shut out, even beginning in K-12, because they’re not
exposed in a way that attracts them to the field.”Industry groups, like
the National Association of Manufacturers, have long argued a
two-pronged approach is necessary when it comes to staffing the
high-tech sector: Reevaluating immigration policy while also investing
heavily in workforce development-The abandoned House and Senate
competitiveness bills both included provisions that would have enhanced
federal support for STEM education and training. Among other things, the
House bill would have expanded Pell Grant eligibility to students
pursuing career-training programs.“We have for decades incentivized
degree attainment and not necessarily skills attainment,” said Robyn
Boerstling, NAM’s vice president of infrastructure, innovation and human
resources policy. “There are manufacturing jobs today that could be
filled with six weeks of training, or six months, or six years; we need
all of the above.”But those provisions were scrapped, after Senate
leadership decided a conference between the two chambers on the bills
was too unwieldy to reach agreement before the August recess.Katie
Spiker, managing director of government affairs at National Skills
Coalition, said the abandoned Pell Grant expansion shows Congress “has
not responded to worker needs in the way that we need them to.” Amid
criticisms that the existing workforce development system is unwieldy
and ineffective, the decision to scrap new upgrades is a continuation of
a trend of disinvesting in workers who hope to obtain the skills they
need to meet employer demand.“And it becomes an issue that only
compounds itself over time,” Spiker said. “As technology changes, people
need to change and evolve their skills.”“If we’re not getting people
skilled up now, then we won’t have people that are going to be able to
evolve and skill up into the next generation of manufacturing that we’ll
do five years from now.”Congress finally sent the smaller Chips and
Science Act — which includes the chip subsidies and tax credits, $200
million to develop a microchip workforce and a slate of R&D
provisions — to the president’s desk in late July. The bill is expected
to enhance the domestic STEM pool (at least on the margins). But it
likely falls short of the generational investments many believe are
needed.
“You could make some dent in it in six years,” said
Phillips. “But if you really want to solve the problem, it’s closer to a
20-year investment. And the ability of this country to invest in
anything for 20 years is not phenomenal.”Immigration Arms Race-The
microchip industry is in the midst of a global reshuffling that’s
expected to last a better part of the decade — and the U.S. isn’t the
only country rolling out the red carpet. Europe, Canada, Japan and other
regions are also worried about their security, and preparing sweeteners
for microchip firms to set up shop in their borders. Cobbling together
an effective STEM workforce in a short time frame will be key to
persuading companies to choose America instead.That will be challenging
at the technician level, which represents around 70 percent of workers
in most microchip factories. But those jobs require only two-year
degrees — and over a six-year period, it’s possible a sustained
education and recruitment effort can produce enough STEM workers to at
least keep the lights on.It’s a different story entirely for Ph.D.s and
master’s degrees, which take much longer to earn and which industry reps
say make up a smaller but crucial component of a factory’s
workforce.Gabriela Cruz Thompson, Intel Labs’ senior director of
university research and collaboration,said about 15 percent of factory
workers must have doctorates or master’s degrees in fields such as
material and electrical engineering, computer science, physics and
chemistry. Students coming out of American universities with those
degrees are largely foreign nationals — and increasingly, they’re
graduating without an immigration status that lets them work in the
U.S., and with no clear pathway to achieving that status.Employees
working in a factory.About 15 percent of factory workers must have
doctorates in fields such as material and electrical engineering,
computer science, physics and chemistry. | Walden Kirsch/Intel
Corporation-A National Science Board estimate from earlier this year
shows a steadily rising proportion of foreign-born students with
advanced STEM skills. That’s especially true for degrees crucial to the
chip industry — nearly 60 percent of computer science Ph.D.s are foreign
born, as are more than 50 percent of engineering doctorates.“We are
absolutely reliant on being able to hire foreign nationals to fill those
needs,” said Intel’s Shahoulian. Like many in the chip industry,
Shaoulian contends there simply aren’t enough high-skilled STEM
professionals with legal status to simultaneously serve America’s
existing tech giants and an influx of microchip firms.Some academics,
such as Howard University’s Ron Hira, suggest the shortage of workers
with STEM degrees is overblown, and industry simply seeks to import
cheaper, foreign-born labor. But that view contrasts with those held by
policymakers on Capitol Hill or people in the scientific and research
communities. In a report published in late July by the Government
Accountability Office, all 17 of the experts surveyed agreed the lack of
a high-skilled STEM workforce was a barrier to new microchip projects
in the U.S. — and most said some type of immigration reform would be
needed.Many, if not most, of the foreign nationals earning advanced STEM
degrees from U.S. universities would prefer to stay and work in the
country. But America’s immigration system is turning away these workers
in record numbers — and at the worst possible time.Ravi (not his real
name, given his tenuous immigration status) is an Indian national.
Nearly three years ago, he graduated from a STEM master’s program at a
prestigious eastern university before moving to California to work as a
design verification lead at an international chip company. He’s applied
three times for an H-1B visa, a high-skilled immigration program used
extensively by U.S. tech companies. But those visas are apportioned via a
lottery, and Ravi lost each time. His current visa only allows him to
work through the end of year — so Ravi is giving up and moving to
Canada, where he’s agreed to take a job with another chip company. Given
his skill set, he expects to quickly receive permanent legal
status.“The application process is incredibly simple there,” said Ravi,
noting that Canadian officials were apologetic over their brief 12-week
processing time (they’re swamped by refugee applications, he said).If
given the choice, Ravi said he would’ve probably stayed in California.
But his story now serves as a cautionary tale for his younger brother
back home. “Once he sort of completed his undergrad back in India, he
did mention that he is looking at more immigration-friendly countries,”
Ravi said. “He’s giving Canada more thought, at this point, than the
United States.”Ravi’s story is far from unique, particularly for Indian
nationals. The U.S. imposes annual per-country caps on green cards — and
between a yearly crush of applicants and a persistent processing
backlog, Indians (regardless of their education or skill level) can
expect to wait as long as 80 years for permanent legal status. A report
released earlier this year by the libertarian Cato Institute found more
than 1.4 million skilled immigrants are now stuck in green card
backlogs, just a slight drop from 2020’s all-time high of more than 1.5
million.The third rail of U.S. politics-The chip industry has shared its
anxiety over America’s slipping STEM workforce with Washington,
repeatedly asking Congress to make it easier for high-skilled talent to
stay. But unlike their lobbying for subsidies and tax breaks — which has
gotten downright pushy at times — they’ve done so very quietly. While
chip lobbyists have spent months telling anyone who will listen why the
$52 billion in financial incentives are a “strategic imperative,”
they’ve only recently been willing to discuss their immigration concerns
on the record.In late July, nine major chip companies planned to send
an open letter to congressional leadership warning that the shortage of
high-skilled STEM workers “has truly never been more acute” and urging
lawmakers to “enact much-needed green card reforms.” But the letter was
pulled at the last minute, after some companies worried about wading
into a tense immigration debate at the wrong time.Leaders in the
national security community have been less shy. In May, more than four
dozen former officials sent a leader to congressional leadership urging
them to shore up America’s slipping immigration edge before Chinese
technology leapfrogs ours. “With the world’s best STEM talent on its
side, it will be very hard for America to lose,” they wrote. “Without
it, it will be very hard for America to win.”The former officials
exhorted lawmakers to take up and pass provisions in the House
competitiveness bill that would’ve lifted green card caps for foreign
nationals with STEM Ph.D.s or master’s degrees. It’d be a relatively
small number of people — a February study from Georgetown University’s
Center for Security and Emerging Technology suggested the chip industry
would only need around 3,500 foreign-born workers to effectively staff
new U.S.-based factories.“This is such a small pool of people that
there’s already an artificial cap on it,” said Klon Kitchen, a senior
fellow focused on technology and national security at the conservative
American Enterprise Institute.Kitchen suggested the Republican Party’s
wariness toward immigration shouldn’t apply to these high-skilled
workers, and some elected Republicans agree. Sen. John Cornyn, whose
state of Texas is poised to gain from the expansion of chip plants
outside Austin, took up the torch — and almost immediately got
burned.Sen. Chuck Grassley, Iowa’s senior Republican senator, blocked
repeated attempts by Cornyn, Democrats and others to include the green
card provision in the final competitiveness package. Finding relief for a
small slice of the immigrant community, Grassley reasoned, “weakens the
possibility to get comprehensive immigration reform down the road.” He
refused to budge even after Biden administration officials warned him of
the national security consequences in a classified June 16 briefing,
which was convened specifically for him. The effort has been left for
dead (though a push to shoehorn a related provision into the year-end
defense bill is ongoing).Many of Grassley’s erstwhile allies are
frustrated with his approach. “We’ve been talking about comprehensive
immigration reform for how many decades?” asked Kitchen, who said he’s
“not inclined” to let America’s security concerns “tread water in the
background” while Congress does nothing to advance broader immigration
bills.Most Republicans in Congress agree with Kitchen. But so far it’s
Cornyn, not Grassley, who’s paid a price. After helping broker a deal on
gun control legislation in June, Cornyn was attacked by Breitbart and
others on his party’s right flank for telling a Democratic colleague
immigration would be next.Sen. John Cornyn listens.Sen. John Cornyn,
whose state of Texas is poised to gain from the expansion of chip plants
outside Austin, has supported immigration for high-skilled STEM
workers. | Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images “Immigration is one of the most
contentious issues here in Congress, and we’ve shown ourselves
completely incapable of dealing with it on a rational basis,” Cornyn
said in July. The senator said he’d largely given up on persuading
Grassley to abandon his opposition to new STEM immigration provisions.
“I would love to have a conversation about merit-based immigration,”
Cornyn said. “But I don’t think, under the current circumstances, that’s
possible.”Cornyn blamed that in part on the far right’s reflexive
outrage to any easing of immigration restrictions. “Just about anything
you say or do will get you in trouble around here these days,” he
said.Given that reality, few Republicans are willing to stick their
necks out on the issue.“If you look at the messaging coming out of [the
National Republican Senatorial Committee] or [the Republican Attorneys
General Association], it’s all ‘border, border, border,’” said Rebecca
Shi, executive director of the American Business Immigration Coalition.
Shi said even moderate Republicans hesitate to publicly advance
arguments “championing these sensible visas for Ph.D. STEM talents for
integrated circuits for semiconductors. ”“They’re like … ‘I can’t say
those phrases until after the elections,’” Shi said.That skittishness
extends to state-level officials — Ohio’s Husted spent some time
expounding on the benefits of “bringing talented people here to do the
work in America, rather than having companies leave America to have it
done somewhere else.” He suggested that boosting STEM immigration would
be key to Intel’s success in his state. But when asked whether he’s
taken that message to Ohio’s congressional delegation — after all, he
said he’d been pestering them to pass the chip subsidies — Husted
hedged.“My job is to do all I can for the people of the state of Ohio.
There are other people whose job it is to message those other things,”
Husted said. “But if asked, you heard what my answer is.”Of course,
Republicans also pin some of the blame on Democrats. “The administration
ignores the fire at the border and the chaos there, which makes it very
hard to have a conversation about controlling immigration flows,”
Cornyn said.And while Democratic lawmakers reject that specific concern,
some admit their side hasn’t prioritized STEM immigration as it
should.“Neither team has completely clean hands,” said Sen. Mark Warner,
the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Warner noted that
Democrats have also sought to hold back STEM immigration fixes as “part
of a sweetener” so that business-friendly Republicans would in turn back
pathways to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. He also dinged the
chip companies, claiming the issue is “not always as straightforward”
as the industry would like to frame it and that tech companies sometimes
hope to pay less for foreign-born talent.But Warner still supports the
effort to lift green card caps for STEM workers. “Without that
high-skilled immigration, it’s not like those jobs are going to
disappear,” he said. “They’re just gonna move to another country.”And
despite their rhetoric, it’s hard to deny that congressional Republicans
are largely responsible for continued inaction on high-skilled
immigration — even as their allies in the national security space become
increasingly insistent.Stuck on STEM immigration-Though they’ve had to
shrink their ambitions, lawmakers working to lift green card caps for
STEM immigrants haven’t given up. A jurisdictional squabble between
committees in July prevented advocates from including in the House’s
year-end defense bill a provision that would’ve nixed the caps for
Ph.D.s in “critical” STEM fields. They’re now hoping to shoehorn the
provision into the Senate’s defense bill instead, and have tapped
Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina as their champion in the
upper chamber.But Tillis is already facing pushback from the right. And
despite widespread support, few truly believe there’s enough momentum to
overcome Grassley and a handful of other lawmakers willing to block any
action.“Most members on both sides recognize that this is a problem
they need to resolve,” said Intel’s Shahoulian. “They’re just not at a
point yet where they’re willing to compromise and take the political
hits that come with it.”A portion of land in Johnstown, Ohio.Intel is
still plowing ahead in Johnstown — backhoes are churning up dirt,
farmers have been bought out of homes owned by their families for
generations and the extensive water and electric infrastructure required
for eight chip factories is being laid. | Gene J. Puskar/AP Photo-The
global chip industry is moving in the meantime. While most companies are
still planning to set up shop in the U.S. regardless of what happens
with STEM immigration, Shahoulian said inaction on that front will
inevitably limit the scale of investments by Intel and other
firms.“You’re already seeing that dynamic playing out,” he said. “You’re
seeing companies set up offices in Canada, set up offices elsewhere,
move R&D work elsewhere in the world, because it is easier to retain
talent elsewhere than it is here.”“This is an issue that will
progressively get worse,” Shahoulian said. “It’s not like there will be
some drop-dead deadline. But yeah, it’s getting difficult.”Intel is
still plowing ahead in Johnstown — backhoes are churning up dirt,
farmers have been bought out of homes owned by their families for
generations and the extensive water and electric infrastructure required
for eight chip factories is being laid. Whether those bets will pay off
in the long-term may rest on Congress’ ability to thread the needle on
STEM immigration. And there’s little optimism at the moment.Sen. Maria
Cantwell, the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, said she sometimes
wishes she could “shake everybody and tell them to wake up.” But she
believes economic and geopolitical realities will force Congress to open
the door to high-skilled foreign workers — eventually.“I think the
question is whether you do that now or in 10 years,” Cantwell said. “And
you’ll be damn sorry if you wait for 10 years.”CORRECTION: An earlier
version of this article misstated the last name and title of Gabriela
Cruz Thompson. She is Intel Labs’ senior director of university research
and collaboration.