Comment on FR Doc # 2013-02113

There are many universities that request Federal grants and then, once the grant is accepted, find non-citizens (often living outside the U.S.) to come to the U.S. to fill the positions, by using an H-1B visa asserting that those individuals are uniquely qualified to fill the position. - It seems inappropriate in that it seems to be circumventing one of the core purposes of Federal grant funding, which is to improve the workforce of U.S. citizens. -It seems inappropriate to provide taxpayer dollars to non-citizens to take essentially jobs away from citizens. - It seems inappropriate for a grant requester to assert that they can do the research with their staff and then later replace the proposed staff with new H1B visa staff that were not even employed by the organization or even living in the U.S. Please note that I am a tolerant person and value diversity in all forms. I acknowledge that there are some benefits to having non-U.S. citizens learn/research at U.S. universities. However, they often drive down labor prices, which disincentivizes potential careers in science. For example, a 20-year old citizen who is considering a career in science may say, "I cannot afford to live at those labor rates", while a person from a lesser developed country would welcome those low U.S. labor rates because they are relatively higher than their country's. That depressed set of labor rates (caused by H1B visa abuse) has a significant impact on our Nation's ability to attract young people into science. It is not as simple as "foreigners taking jobs", it is the contributing to the reduction of labor rates, which is almost as bad over time. Please acknowledge this concept in the regulation and update the grant request documentation accordingly to reduce the risk of this. If possible, ideally, there would be no (or at least limited/capped) H1B visas for Federally funded grant work. This is a complicated issue; please at least address the existence of it. -NL : )