This is an article from a small industry journal. And yet it contains some juicy gossip:
Quote:
Silicon Valley CEOs who traveled to Washington, D.C., last week to lobby on behalf of their businesses came away with new hope that immigration reform isn’t dead in the water this year.
A delegation of 50 executives organized by Silicon Valley Leadership Group held 64 meetings with representatives and senators to cover immigration reform, curbs on patent trolls, tax reform, transportation and a range of other issues.
Meetings on immigration reform, the legislation most coveted by technology firms thirsting for foreign talent, yielded perhaps the biggest surprise of the trip, according to executives who attended. Going into the trip, CEOs, lobbyists and lawmakers were saying the issue was likely stalled this year.
“We had several meetings that gave us even more hope that calling immigration reform dead this year may be premature,” Silicon Valley Leadership Group CEO Carl Guardino said. “There’s a possibility that Capitol pundits and those often rightly cynical about D.C. will be proven wrong. We will have a sense of that in the next four to six weeks.”
Silicon Valley technology companies and the Obama administration have made immigration reform a primary goal this year. The companies are keen to retain and hire highly skilled workers who are forced to leave the country under the current system.
The administration shares that goal and seeks to rationalize the entire immigration system as the country’s demographics give Latinos greater electoral sway. Republicans fear that losses like the one they suffered in the last general election will continue until they can attract more minority voters.
The Silicon Valley Leadership Group supports a comprehensive reform package that includes a market-based H1-B visa cap and a higher cap on employment-based green cards, according to a briefing document from the organization. It also advocates streamlining visa and green card application processes and eliminating caps on immigration per country by 2015.
The group would also like to see graduates with advanced-degrees and foreign degree holders in science, technology, engineering and math disciplines exempted from the green card cap.
While the Democrat-controlled Senate has passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill, progress in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has stalled. The House is considering piece-by-piece legislation.
The Silicon Valley Leadership Group is agnostic on those approaches, urging action on either as soon as possible, attendees at the meetings said.
“Republicans in the House make it much more likely it’s a chunked up bit of legislation,” said attendee Mark Schroeder, a founder at Santa Clara startup Fastor Systems, which works on solid-state memory products. “Realistically getting it in five pieces is more likely to get it done and the people in the speaker’s office are optimistic.”
It's not the first time immigration reform advocates have had their hopes raised. Republicans have an incentive to appear bullish on the issue as midterm elections loom and any progress would represent a change in approach by Republican House Speaker Johnn Boehner's office.
The window for such action is likely either June or September, according to three people debriefed on the lobbying trip. The dynamics supporting that view are related to the election cycle and the House’s summer break.
Republican members of Congress have long sought a fragmented approach to immigration reform over a comprehensive immigration reform measure including provisions for low-skill undocumented immigrants and border control.
Assuming the House bills aren’t brought to the floor earlier, June would be viable before the Fourth of July break and summer recess. After that, September would be the next window prior to the November elections.
Three attendees who declined to be named because the meetings were off the record said that a member of Boehner’s staff said he was disinclined to push immigration reform forward during the lame duck period between the November election and January.
Impediments to immigration reform getting a House vote remain. Members of the Tea Party and House Republicans from districts with anti-immigrant inclinations could balk at any kind of reform. And Senate Democrats could push back against a fragmented series of bills coming out of the House.
“Half the discussions were on the more depressing side,” said Silicon Valley Bank President Greg Becker, who is the Leadership Group’s co-chair. “The other half was more positive, that something might get done on a piecemeal basis in the House. I’m more optimistic after the meetings.”
If nothing happens in 2014, 2015 still offers hope said San Jose State political science professor Larry Gerston.
“The shock for immigration may come next year because Republicans have ceded the minority vote to Democrats,” Gerston said. “Republicans increasingly understand they have to do something about this to cut into the minority vote.”
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http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/n....html?page=all
Last edited by NK74; 04-26-2014 at 11:19 AM..