Another Legislative Victory
For those of you following the bills that would update Statute 177, the Unclaimed Property Statute, Tuesday was a very good day. AB 419 passed the full Assembly 94-0, making it the 2nd bill to pass the full Assembly. Below is a summary of where each piece of legislation stands.
AB 417 - Scheduled for Executive Session in Assembly Committee on Judiciary and Ethics – March 1.
AB 418 – Passed by the Assembly Committee on Homeland Security and State Affairs and the full Assembly.
AB 419 – Passed by the Assembly Committee on Homeland Security and State Affairs and the full Assembly.
The 3 companion bills (SBs 294, 295, and 296) are awaiting an Executive Committee hearing in the Senate Committee on Judicary, Utilities, Commerce, and Government Operations.
Background:
2/17 – Update 6, Legislative Update
2/09 – Update 5, ABs 418 and 419 Earn Unanimous Approval
2/02 – Update 4, Testimony on AB 417
1/26 – Testimony on SBs 294, 295, and 296
What would these bills do?
AB 417/SB 294 establishes a uniform review process in the event that an unclaimed property claimant disagrees with the administrator’s decision regarding the status of a claim.
AB 418/SB 295 requires heirfinders to submit a copy of their agreement with the unclaimed property owner to the Unclaimed Property Program for purposes of legal verification.
AB 419/SB 296 allows the Unclaimed Property Administrator to assess a 12% interest penalty on unclaimed property holders who willfully neglect to turn over unclaimed property to my office. The statute used to require the administrator to assess an 18% interest penalty. The added discretion this statute gives to the Unclaimed Property Administrator will allow my office to increase compliance with holder reporting laws through education, without penalizing businesses who found themselves in violation through ignorance of the law.
The Economy & You #22: How Immigration Policy Hurts the Economy
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Recently, I was reading an article written by Alex Tabarrok in The Atlantic magazine about our country’s immigration policy that left me scratching my head. It seems that U.S. policy regarding what many would consider the world’s best and brightest as counterintuitive.
It is well known that our colleges and universities welcome students from across the world to study and learn. These students come for a premiere education, and the cost does not come cheap. Still, our nation’s immigration policy does little to help keep these recent graduates in the United States.
Consider the following: every year the United States authorizes approximately 140,000 employment visas for immigrants with graduate degrees, professional degrees, and other skills. With a workforce of 150 million, the number of skill based visas is incredibly low. To make matters worse, these 140,000 visas must also cover the spouses and children of that high-skilled worker. The result is that these highly skilled immigrants can wait years before they are granted a visa. What is likely the most egregious part, is that there is a cap on the number of visas allowed per country regardless of the size of its population. This means that the same number of visas - 2,803 -are allocated to Spain, Senegal and Singapore as are allocated to China and India with populations over 1 billion people.
Why wouldn’t the U.S. want to attract and retain those immigrants that have the skills that to grow our economy. According to the article, 25% of the new companies in the technology and science fields are founded by immigrants who are often graduates of our universities. These immigrants and the firms they found create more jobs and higher wages for Americans.
Currently, immigration policy does little to keep high-skilled immigrants. While the U.S. limits high skill visas to 140,000, we welcome over 1.1 million legal immigrants each year. One of the best ways for the United States to remain competitive is to change our focus on immigration from family-based to a work-based system.
The U.S. could establish a system that would provide foreign-born students that graduate with advance degrees from American colleges and universities a path to permanent residency. America has taught and trained these students to become the best and the brightest, we should be doing what we can to benefit from this investment. This is especially true in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. As our economy continues to evolve into an intellectual economy, those nations with the brightest and most creative stand to grow and prosper. The U.S. must take steps to ensure that we are truly the land of opportunity.
