> Republicans are "trying to pretend they're pro-immigrant by this bill, knowing that it goes nowhere," said U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, the top Democrat on the House immigration subcommittee.

I run a visa-related site so I try to follow these things closely. There actually were 3 different candidates for such a STEM visa bill. Basically the republicans are trying to pass one that the senate is unlikely to accept at this point, hoping that efforts to muster up another bill following this will be exhausted. Failing that, they'll have passed a bill that satisfies their lobbyists.

Previously, Lamar smith tried to pass a different STEM visa bill that was failed under suspension, but was backed by Apple, HP, Intel, IBM, Oracle, etc.

We'll see how this goes.

I plan to do a writeup on this soon.