Houston, TX (Law Firm Newswire) May 11, 2012 - As legal immigration reform legislation like the Startup Act slowly makes its way through the United States Congress, advocates for reform as an economic recovery driver are frustrated by Washington’s inaction.

“The issues at stake when it comes to reforming our visa programs are nothing less than issues of national economic importance,” said Houston immigration lawyer Annie Banerjee. “This is an opportunity to reform the laws that allow highly skilled foreign workers to come to the United States or stay here and help build stronger American companies or start new companies here. Failure to act on this opportunity is a failure of the government of the United States to get out of the way of growing businesses that strive to hire more people and inject more into the American economy.”

The Startup Act, a bipartisan bill that has been cosponsored by Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., is designed to boost the U.S. economy by adding new work visa programs as well as making it easier to secure financing for startup businesses.

The new bill would create a new work visa to augment the H1-B visa that is the current and inefficient method for skilled workers from other countries to come to or stay in the United States and work. The new work visa would be available for as many as 50,000 foreign-born students who graduate from universities in the United States with degrees in the STEM disciplines – science, technology, engineering and math.

“The Startup Act is a perfect place to begin the hard work of reforming our country’s legal immigration laws,” Banerjee said. “The United States is still the world power in which every young entrepreneur wants to start a new company. Our current policies force startup companies to launch in Canada or even overseas where they can recruit intellectual capital uninterrupted.”

Annie Banerjee is a Houston immigration lawyer specializing in helping people become United States citizens. The law offices assist in visas and other legal immigration requirements as well. To learn more, visit http://www.visatous.com.

Law Offices of Annie Banerjee
131 Brooks Street, Suite #300
Sugar Land, Texas 77478
Phone: (281) 242-9139