August 2008 Issue

The Beauty and the Brain: The Unlikely Pair
A New York Congressman’s quest to protect foreign models

By Amal Marjani Bennett-Judge

With Congress approval ratings at in all time low, the foreign beauty humanitarian New York Congressman’s Anthony Weiner proposed a new bill that was passed by the House Judiciary Committee to help more foreign models sashay down Manhattan’s catwalks and more computer genius to fix America’s technological difficulties.

With Weiner’s new bill, he plans to fix a tragic glitch made by Congress in 1990 that made foreign beauties compete with foreign geeks for the over-subscribed H-1B visas. According to Republican Lamar Smith, he thinks that “whoever thought it wise to combine computer programmers and fashion models in one visa category” was watching reality dating television show the Beauty and the Geek.

With HR 4080, Weiner plans to reclassify these fashion models into their own special immigration category. According to the Economist article this bill will allow “a thousand models to strut their stuff in America each year compared with just 349 in 2007, half the annual number admitted between 2000 and 2005.”


Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York

Currently, there is only 65,000 H-1B visas available annually. The top users of these visas include Infosys and Microsoft. However, even with these technology companies obtaining many of these visas, there are still complaints that there are just not enough visas for these informational technology workers. Last year, Microsoft chairperson, Bill Gates asked the Senate to allow more foreign scientists into the US to help solve the “critical shortage of scientific talent.”

However, under HR 4080, Weiner plans help solve this crisis by categorizing models in the P-4 category. This category includes what Weiner calls a group of people with “distinguish merit and ability” that needs to enter the US for a couple of weeks. Some of these people include actors, musicians, and sports figures.


Nevertheless, there are many critics of this bill. One of these people includes Iowa Congressman Steve King.

King argues that “this bill should be called the ugly American act” because the bill is base “on the premise that there aren’t enough attractive people in the United States.” Furthermore, he adds that “is it possible our schools aren’t producing enough young adults that can navigate a runway?”

Brazilian born model Gisele Bundchen

However, even with heavy critics like King, the House Judiciary Committee approved the bill by 20 to 3. Because of this, Smith joked that models will “no doubt” be wild for the bachelor for getting this legislation approved. It looks as though Weiner, the brain, and some lucky beauty might be attending some posh parties in the New York skylines and the California ’s Hills in Weiner’s honor.

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