"how do we finally get that ‘staple the green card to the diploma’ rule into law, so that we don't see highly skilled foreign nationals with Ph.D.s and master’s degrees from our universities fleeing this country" Ponnuru mentioned some of this, but Cantor waved off the details. “Every week we are passing legislation in the House, sending it to the Senate,” he said. (“Sending” is a nice way to put it—the bills, such as June’s “ fetal pain” legislation, are DOA.) When asked about immigration, Cantor insisted that his House really was working on the legislation, whatever the audience might have been told on NPR. “There have already been five bills we've seen marked up in committee that will be sent to the floor,” said Cantor. “There was a bill that had to do with agricultural workers, guest workers who had to come to the country and have the ability to do so. A bill very relevant to some of the discussions here at Aspen about how do we encourage more skilled workers to be here, how do we finally get that ‘staple the green card to the diploma’ rule into law, so that we don't see highly skilled foreign nationals with Ph.D.s and master’s degrees from our universities fleeing this country, taking their venture capital with them. And many other bills on employer enforcement, border enforcement, interior enforcement. And then we'll get to the very difficult issues that we've got to resolve. One of those I feel very passionately about, and that's the kids.” This was a revealing answer. Back in February, in his omnibus speech about a GOP that could “make life work,” Cantor mentioned the Aspen-friendly skilled-worker stuff, but he didn’t say immigration reform would start there. “A good place to start,” he’d said, “is with the kids.” He’d tried to be a thought leader, but the Republican conference wasn’t led.