Obama speaks with CEOS about immigration reform

Mar 15, 2013, 12:09pm PDT Updated: Mar 15, 2013, 1:45pm PDT

President Obama talks immigration reform with Silicon Valley CEOs

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President Obama met with leaders from Silicon Valley this week, who advocated for more visas for highly skilled workers.

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By Luke Stangel

A group of nearly 30 technology executives are in Washington D.C. this week, chatting up lawmakers about easing the immigration rules for highly skilled tech workers.
On Thursday, the group – which included Cisco CEO John Chambers and Kleiner Perkins partner John Doerr – met briefly with President Obama [http://bit.ly/10RolXW] to talk immigration reform and how to spur technology innovation.
They also met with lawmakers from the House and Senate, delivering an immigration reform letter signed by more than 100 executives, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer.
Silicon Valley’s biggest tech companies attract a steady stream of H1B engineers: highly skilled immigrant workers from outside the U.S. here on H1B visas. Each year, the government opens up 65,000 H1B visas for foreign workers with bachelor’s degrees, and 20,000 H1B visas for workers with master’s degrees.
The executives, led by the public policy group TechNet, want the government to open up more H1B visas.

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