Nearly 200 companies, associations and individuals asked Congress and President-elect Joe Biden to let Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals participants remain in the U.S. “As our country looks to the future and we consider how to build a more prosperous, just, and fair nation, we urge both Congress and the new administration to make clear their commitment to reforming our nation’s outdated, broken immigration system,” they said Tuesday: “We especially call on Congress to come together and quickly provide a pathway to citizenship that would allow Dreamers to stay in the U.S. and become fully integrated.” Apple, Best Buy, Facebook, Google, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Target, Verizon and Walmart signed, with BSA|The Software Alliance, the Information Technology Industry Council, the National Retail Federation and the Retail Industry Leaders Association.
The Trump administration’s decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program should “spark” Congress to enact a “humane” immigration law “that attracts and enables the world's best and brightest to innovate, build companies, create jobs and drive economic growth,” CTA President Gary Shapiro said in a statement Tuesday. “Dreamers are an important part of this equation,” he said. DACA recipients are “employed at major tech companies such as Apple and Microsoft” and are “innovating and paying their share into Social Security and Medicare,” Shapiro said. Reports estimate 91 percent of DACA recipients are employed, and at least 75 percent of the largest companies in America have at least one DACA employee, he said. “Our representatives in Washington can make a real difference and create a better tomorrow for our nation and these hardworking dreamers. The time has come for a bipartisan solution that fixes our broken immigration system, defines a pathway for dreamers to earn a place in our society and addresses our nation's labor shortage. Inaction is not a winning immigration strategy." Other tech and media groups and companies also criticized the DACA decision.
Tech groups generally hailed President Donald Trump’s executive order for its clause urging federal agencies to recommend “reforms to help ensure that H-1B visas are awarded to the most-skilled or highest-paid petition beneficiaries.” The Entertainment Software Association thinks an “expansive H1-B visa program, free of abuse, will drive technological advancements and allow brilliant innovators from around the world to strengthen the growing American economy,” ESA said in a Wednesday statement. ESA encourages the White House and federal agencies “to emphasize these goals as they look at potential reform,” it said. “ESA will strongly advocate for policies that energize and expand growth opportunities for our nation’s world-leading technology sector.” CTA President Gary Shapiro thinks Trump “has rightfully brought attention to the abuses in the H-1B tech worker visa program, demonstrating the need for administrative and legislative reform to this important program,” he said in a Tuesday statement. “Our country needs a new approach to skilled immigration -- one based on merit and not a random lottery, an idea shared by President Trump. Congress must take the lead by passing reforms that keep our system fair, effective and efficient. There is bipartisan support to crack down on abusers who are outsourcing American jobs, but Congress must also advance meaningful reforms that recognize the critical role highly skilled foreign workers play in growing our economy, creating American jobs and maintaining our nation's competitiveness.” H1-B immigrants “turbocharge U.S. innovation and create jobs,” said Dean Garfield, CEO of the Information Technology Industry Council, in a Tuesday statement. “We need to recognize the value H-1B employees contribute through their ingenuity to our innovation ecosystem -- they help innovate and grow America’s tech economy,” said Garfield. He cited estimates that half the 87 startup companies valued at more than $1 billion in the U.S. “were founded by at least one immigrant, many of whom first came to the country on H-1B visas, and each of these companies now employs on average 760 U.S. workers,” he said.
The H-1B visa "impasse" should be the "easiest” of all the “controversial elements” of proposed immigration reform for Congress to fix, said Tom Giovanetti, Institute for Policy Innovation president, in a Thursday blog post. Moving H-1B visa allocations from the current first-come, first-served system of “arbitrary” caps “to a market-clearing auction should settle the debate over our economy's demand for skilled immigrant labor, add to economic growth, and provide a revenue source to fund further immigration reform,” he said. “If H-1B visas were auctioned to employers each year in a sealed bid process, with the bids allocated from highest to lowest until the available permits were exhausted, supply and demand would establish the market-clearing price for the right to hire a skilled immigrant worker,” he said. “Because of the likely higher fees resulting from the auction mechanism, employers would have no incentive to hire an immigrant worker if an equivalent American worker were available.”