With the president s immigration action Thursday night, comprehensive reform will be harder to pass.
Instead, what will likely happen is the piecemeal approach to immigration, something the tech industry has not supported the past couple years.
But tech will have to do what it has become good at — wait and see. Up first is how the GOP reaction to Obama s executive order plays out.
Silicon Valley is underwhelmed by the president s immigration order, as the San Jose Mercury News reported.
It would have been hard for the president to raise the current 65,000 cap on H-1B temporary work visas without Congress s approval.
But tech had hopes the president would authorize unused H-1B visas from years past.
That didn t happen. In fact, the AFL-CIO objected to that tech industry sweetener, arguing it would hurt U.S. workers, Politico reported.
What Obama did, from the industry s point of view, were minor tweaks.
Obama s decision to temporarily expand the visa program for foreign graduates in tech and science could help tech companies, reports Bloomberg.
TechNet s Linda Moore said her group is encouraged by the plan to make work authorizations portable.
But Carl Guardino, president and CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, told the Merc, I m not sure how this benefits our region or the nation s innovation economy.
Photo: President Obama in Washington in 2013. (Associated Press)
