Republican Party Platform Supports More STEM Visas and Includes Consideration of Guestworker Provision

The Republican Party’s platform for 2012, which was formally approved at the Republican National Convention during the last week in August, supports granting more work visas to holders of advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) from other nations. The platform also supports encouraging foreign students who graduate from an American university with an advanced STEM degree to remain in the United States.

The platform also states that a Republican administration and Congress would partner with local governments through cooperative enforcement agreements and “will consider, in light of both current needs and historic practice, the utility of a legal and reliable source of foreign labor where needed through a new guest worker program.”

The platform states that the presence of “millions of unidentified persons” poses grave risks to the safety and sovereignty of the United States. “Our highest priority, therefore, is to secure the rule of law both at our borders and at ports of entry.” The platform supports Republican legislation to give the Department of Homeland Security long-term detention authority “to keep dangerous but undeportable aliens off our streets,” along with expediting expulsion of criminal aliens and making gang membership a deportable offense.

The platform opposes “any form of amnesty.” It supports the mandatory use of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program before granting any State or federal government entitlement or IRS refund. The platform “insist[s] upon enforcement at the workplace through verification systems so that jobs can be available to all legal workers. Use of the E-Verify program – an Internet-based system that verifies the employment authorization and identity of employees – must be made mandatory nationwide.” The platform also supports state enforcement efforts in the workplace.

“State efforts to reduce illegal immigration must be encouraged, not attacked,” the platform says. “The pending Department of Justice lawsuits against Arizona, Alabama, South Carolina, and Utah must be dismissed immediately. The double-layered fencing on the border that was enacted by Congress in 2006, but never completed, must finally be built. In order to restore the rule of law, federal funding should be denied to sanctuary cities that violate federal law and endanger their own citizens, and federal funding should be denied to universities that provide in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens, in open defiance of federal law.”

The platform also supports English as the nation’s official language.