Immigration Reform: President Trump Calls Tech Giants for a Meeting
Tech giants like Tim Cook of Apple and Jeff Bezos of Amazon are invited to a tech summit at the White House. During the meeting, tech leaders are expected to raise issues on immigration. What topics are they expected to cover?
The American Technology Council is about to take place, and tech CEOs are expected to discuss with President Donald Trump issues about immigration reform. The inaugural meeting will give the CEOs perfect opportunity to be heard.
One of the issues that needs to be discussed is the reformation laws around H-1B visas. If these laws were to be discussed and addressed, tech giants can have more people join their companies. Foreign workers could fill a lot of job vacancies currently available in the tech industry. Besides filling vacancies, new innovative ideas coming from these foreign workers could help technological developments.
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However, President Trump is known to be keen on his policy about migrant workers. One of his agendas even before he was president is to have American companies employ only American workers. This policy has caused the current review happening on the H-1B visa program. "Right now, H-1B visas are awarded in a totally random lottery — and that's wrong," said President Trump at Kenosha, Wisconsin. "Instead, they should be given to the most-skilled and highest-paid applicants, and they should never, ever be used to replace Americans," he added.
Meanwhile, according to Congressman Ro Khanna, tech leaders should push the importance of immigration to increase economic growth. "There's no way we can have 3 percent (economic) growth without immigration, it's just impossible," said Khanna.
The H1-B program allows American companies to accept foreign workers with specialized skills to work in the country. It was created by the Immigration Act of 1990 and aims to make sure that businesses will not use the law to replace workers with cheaper foreign labor.
