Tech firms sweat details on immigration reform

Many in the industry are feverishly working to change provisions of the Gang of Eight bill. | AP Photo

Tech groups and their lobbyists declined to speak on the record about their efforts to change the Senate bill, and a spokeswoman for the Senate Judiciary Committee declined to comment.

There have been some public hints of the industry’s misgivings. Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel, hit on the “unintended consequences” theme in his testimony during a Senate Judiciary hearing last month.

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“When I hear people raising concerns, it’s what the Department of Labor may look at in years later,” Smith said. “It’s that kind of uncertainty that gives people pause.”

Critics say the H-1B program is being overused to hire cheap workers from abroad, and they reject what they see as the tech industry’s push to weaken the bill’s proposed restrictions.

The industry’s revision efforts “clearly expose the tech community as being the enemy of U.S. workers,” said Paul Almeida, president of the Department for Professional Employees at the AFL-CIO. “They don’t want to have to offer jobs to U.S. workers who are equally or better qualified than H-1B workers, and they don’t want to have to demonstrate that H-1B workers are not being used to displace U.S. workers.”

But tech industry lobbyists say in key places the bill shows a lack of practical understanding about their hiring needs — and that the quickest way to get people on the job is to offer them a temporary visa because green cards require a lengthier bureaucratic process.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the Judiciary Committee’s ranking member, is considering filing an amendment dealing with some of the high-tech provisions of the bill, according to his office. Tech lobbyists hope Hatch will introduce language from the Immigration Innovation Act, known as I-Squared, which he introduced with other senators in January.

I-Squared, which has broad support in Silicon Valley, would raise the cap on H-1B visas much higher than the Gang of Eight bill and doesn’t include new restrictions on the H-1B program. A Hatch spokesman declined to comment on the amendment specifics.

The tech industry is trying to tread a different path than it did during the failed effort to pass comprehensive immigration reform in 2007, when it was more publicly critical of legislation. This time, the industry wants to be broadly supportive of reform while quietly pressing for specific fixes, mindful that any bill has a long road before it reaches the president’s desk.

“We are walking and chewing gum,” said Scott Corley, executive director of Compete America, a tech industry group whose members include Microsoft, Intel and Google. “We are supporting a solid framework and fighting for specific but important changes.”