Congress works. Or so it seemed for a day this week when the House of Representatives voted 389 to 15 to ease restrictions on the entry of highly skilled immigrants to the U.S.
The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2011 was sponsored by conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats alike. It avoided the political pitfalls of comprehensive immigration reform by focusing instead on a very narrow yet necessary change, eliminating country-specific caps on immigrant engineers, computer scientists and the like. In a measure of its broad support, the legislation is backed by technology companies, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and pro-immigration groups.