The State House News service is reporting on a presentation to the Legislature’s Biotechnology Caucus by a group of academics studying the Massachusetts life science industry. Early reports from the study indicate that, “visa obstacles facing foreign workers are posing challenges to life sciences companies.”

This diagnosis mirrors one that the Chamber made several years ago in our report, “Sustaining Greater Boston’s Life Science Leadership.”  Our analyses identified the same problems with a lack of foreign visas for highly skilled workers that today’s presentation illustrates.

Since 2005, the Chamber has been lobbying Congress to raise the cap on these H-1B visas, in order to address critical labor shortages that exist in the life science industry.

The H-1B visa program currently allows 65,000 skilled foreign workers to enter the U.S. annually to work in a "specialty occupation" for up to six years. This spring, the cap for H-1B visa petitions for FY 2008 was reached on the very first day of filing, continuing a trend of exhausting the availability of these visas before the start of the fiscal year.

The presence of a robust H-1B visa program is critical to the long-term global competitiveness of our region and country, as the majority of students earning advanced mathematics, computer science, and engineering degrees at U.S. schools are foreign-born. Highly-educated workers are the lifeblood of Greater Boston’s dynamic and knowledge-based economy, and we as a region have much to lose if our companies are unable to recruit these talented students graduating from our world-class colleges and universities.

In addition, current immigration policy is jeopardizing the future competitiveness of the regional and national innovation economies. Foreign-born professionals significantly contribute to economic growth and job creation – starting one-quarter of the venture-backed U.S. public companies over the past 15 years. By blocking these would-be entrepreneurs from joining the U.S. workforce, we are squandering an opportunity to capture the next generation of visionaries, and hindering innovation in a variety of fields.

In light of the similar findings presented to the Biotech Caucus today, the Chamber will continue to work with our Congressional delegation and chamber executives from across the country in order to enact meaningful skilled worker visa reform.