Sophie Alcorn, attorney, author and founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley, California, is an award-winning Certified Specialist Attorney in Immigration and Nationality Law by the State Bar Board of Legal Specialization. Sophie is passionate about transcending borders, expanding opportunity, and connecting the world by practicing compassionate, visionary, and expert immigration law. Connect with Sophie on LinkedIn and Twitter.

I’m super excited that President Biden’s latest executive order, which he signed on Monday, seeks to create “a coordinated, federal government-wide approach” to develop and use AI and includes efforts to “attract the world’s AI talent to our shores — not just to study, but to stay — so that the companies and technologies of the future are made in America.”

The most direct way to do that would be to raise the number of H-1B specialty occupation visas and employment-based green cards that are available each year to individuals studying and working in the AI field. However, raising the caps on visas and green cards can only be done through congressional action. Given the gridlock in Congress, that’s become far less likely, so the administration is improving the immigration process through executive action to meet the country’s national security goals and to maintain global leadership in artificial intelligence.

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