Bloomberg calls for four-part immigration reform

{mosads}Bloomberg called on Congress to increase the proportion of green cards that are awarded for economic instead of family-reunification reasons. He said that currently only some 7 percent of permanent-resident cards are in practice given for the purpose of attracting talented workers and business people.

“That’s why I think we should dramatically expand the numbers of green cards available for the best of the best — the highest-skilled workers we need to join the U.S. economy permanently,” he said. He said the cap on such visas by country should be done away with as well.

Second, Bloomberg wants graduate students in science, technology, engineering or math to be offered green cards automatically.

Additionally, the mayor called on Congress to offer more temporary visas to entrepreneurs.

Bloomberg said that he favors comprehensive immigration reform but even piecemeal approaches are better than nothing.

He said there are “plenty of statistics” to disprove union arguments that increasing temporary-worker visas increases unemployment for Americans. He said the visas are used in creative or technical fields and boosting talent there increases unionized manufacturing and service-sector jobs.

“They create products that then people manufacture and service, and that is where the union membership tends to be,” he said.