Back to Work - Bill Clinton [74]
40. Increase the preparation and recruitment of, and incentives for, more young Americans to get degrees and take jobs in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields. For example, we should forgive student loans in return for a certain number of years’ work in these areas. Decades ago, we did the same thing to lure young doctors to medically underserved parts of the country, and it worked.
41. Keep pushing for comprehensive immigration reform, and in the meantime grant more H-1B visas to immigrants in STEM fields until we have enough qualified citizens to fill the openings. President Obama has improved border enforcement and increased deportation of illegal immigrants. It’s time to give those who are working, raising kids, and paying taxes a path to citizenship. If Congress can’t agree to that, at least immigrants who have jobs and pay taxes should be able to get work permits while we work on the larger problems, a proposal President Reagan supported in the 1980s. We should also encourage gifted young immigrants who’ve grown up here to get a college education and become productive citizens. Pulling students out of college and sending them home, or making it too expensive to go by denying them in-state tuition at colleges in that state where they grew up and their parents pay taxes is not going to help our economy. Remember, it’s an advantage for the United States to have a workforce younger than those of Japan and Europe.
Meanwhile, the immigrants who fill the STEM jobs will help to increase employment for citizens, increase exports, and bring back manufacturing, so we should issue as many H-1B visas as necessary to fill the STEM jobs that can’t be filled by Americans.
42. Bring more tourists to the United States. Spending on global travel is already at $1 trillion and is projected to double by 2020, with almost three hundred million people a year traveling outside their own countries. An increased effort in this area should have strong support. According to a study by the U.S. Travel Association, overseas visitors spend an average of $4,000 on U.S. services and products, and one new job is created for every thirty-five new visitors. Unlike most countries that derive a lot of income from tourism, the United States didn’t have a national effort to market itself abroad until early 2010, when Congress passed, with a large bipartisan majority, and the president signed the Travel Promotion Act. The act created the Corporation for Travel Promotion (CTP), a public-private partnership overseen by a board of directors appointed by the secretary of commerce and funded, not by U.S. taxpayers, but from $10 of the fees paid by visitors from visa waiver countries and private-sector contributions on a fifty-fifty basis.
Because of the widespread belief that it is more difficult to come to the United States after 9/11 and other negative stereotypes, we need to accurately brand the United States as a desirable travel destination and reach out to the millions of people who still feel a strong kinship to our country. The CTP’s first marketing efforts will begin later this year at an international travel event in London.
It’s important that the entire government, from the White House on down, support this effort. The State Department is already putting staff resources into it as part of its commercial-diplomacy push. And it’s critical that the travel industry in every state participate aggressively in trade shows, social media outreach,