Believe you me, if the big immigration reform effort in Washington were just about bringing in new STEM workers via an expanded or reformed visa system, it woul

Believe you me, if the big immigration reform effort in Washington were just about bringing in new STEM workers via an expanded or reformed visa system, it would be done by now. Certainly a majority of Republicans and Democrats are for it in the abstract. Mitt Romney wanted to "staple a green card" to every STEM graduate's diploma. But that's not what the debate's about, and it's fairly silly to claim otherwise. The debate is whether or not any immigration reform will be "comprehensive", the Washington euphemism for amnesty and normalization of the existing illegal population. There is a not insignificant block of both Democrats and Republicans who will not allow anything short of a "comprehensive" bill to pass because they believe it's the only shot to achieve such normalization. There's also a reasonable argument often made that opening the doors to STEM graduates and other "desirable" workers while forcing the existing illegal population to continue to skirt the law is de facto discriminatory, because of the way the demographics of those two groups line up. Zuck & Co. are taking the reverse position: They're pushing for the STEM reform they want just in case this time reform really does make it over the hump, and are happy to push for normalization as well, since it is the only likely path to that result. Anyway, I don't know how I feel about normalization, but I do know that any nation that has skilled workers who will contribute much, much more than they take lining up to get in would be crazy not to let them in.