U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema speaks during a hearing before Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee September 14, 2022 in Washington, DC. || Photo by Alex Wong || Getty Images
By Taylor Tasler || KTAR.com
Amidst an effort at the state and federal levels to make Arizona a manufacturing hub comes a struggle to staff a skilled workforce. However, Arizona’s senior U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema said she might have a solution.
During a roundtable discussion on Friday with manufacturers, including Intel, leaders detailed the challenges they face when trying to hire skilled workers. They added many of the students currently enrolled in STEM programs are students from foreign countries, leading to challenges to keep them in the U.S. after graduation.
“Right now, we’re paying for young men and women, both American-born and foreign-born, to become educated in our community. It makes no sense at all that after we invest all those thousands of dollars in higher education, we send these individuals back to their home countries to compete against us on the global stage,” Sinema said.
Instead, she would like to see reform for nonimmigrant visas and temporary workers programs while creating a legal pathway for immigration.
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“We should be stapling a green card to their diplomas and keeping those bright minds right here in our country, working for our national defense, for our economy, for our ability to compete globally,” Sinema said.
Sinema added this is a key part of the immigration framework she is currently working on.
