NASDAQ Gen. Counsel Highlights Need for Immigration Reform Before Senate Committee

Testimony of Edward S. Knight, General Counsel and Executive Vice President, NASDAQ OMX Group, before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, December 1, 2011.

In representing Partnership member NASDAQ at this hearing, Gen. Counsel Edward Knight calls for the need for immigration reform in his official testimony :

"The United States achieved its economic prominence by inviting the best and the brightest from around the globe to unleash their creative capabilities on American soil and contribute to the American mosaic, culturally, politically and economically. Immigrants have been some of the greatest contributors to business, science and technology in American Society. 25% of technology and engineering companies from 1995 to 2005 had at least one immigrant key founder. Our economy and NASDAQ itself have directly benefited from the contributions of foreign-born talent. Looking just at the Fortune 500 companies, we found at least 14 active NASDAQ companies that have foreign-born founders. These companies represent over $522 billion in market capitalization and employ almost 500,000 workers. Legal immigration is a source of economic growth in the United States and NASDAQ OMX is concerned that continued entanglement in the illegal immigration debate will only exacerbate our already anemic economy. Every year we send approximately 17,000 STEM graduate students back to their home countries after educating them here in the finest universities in the world. It is critical that we reform our immigration system to accommodate these graduates. If U.S. companies cannot hire them here, they will hire them for the same job overseas."

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