Seeks immigration reform for highly skilled workers.
Bureau Report
WASHINGTON, DC: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is uniting with Silicon Valley business leaders for an upcoming “virtual march on Washington,” for immigration reform targeting highly skilled foreign workers.
This April, a coalition of business leaders coordinated by Bloomberg’s foundation, Partnership for a New American Economy, will launch an online education offensive encouraging people to contact legislators about the need for reform, reported the Silicon Valley Business Journal. Social media will be key to the push, with Facebook and Twitter helping to facilitate the event, said John Feinblatt, Bloomberg’s chief policy adviser and head of the Partnership for a New American Economy.
Silicon Valley venture capitalist Mike Maples and angel investor Ron Conway have already signed on, as have Silicon Valley Bank and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, which lobbies on immigration reform. The Valley also successfully mobilized online activists during the fight over controversial online anti-piracy bills in 2012.
“Tech leaders ought to be using technology to try to influence the debate,” Feinblatt was quoted as saying. He said the group is announcing the project now with the goal of generating more supporters before the main event in April.
Venture capitalist Somesh Dash, a principal with Institutional Venture Partners, is a member of the Partnership for a New American Economy and helping organize the virtual march on Washington, said the Journal.
“My intro to (the Partnership) was through a classmate at Stanford,” Dash said, referring to Stanford alum Amit Aharoni. Aharoni, a native of Israel who launched a startup after graduation, was denied a U.S. visa to stay and develop the company.
Ahraroni briefly worked on the company in Canada before securing a green card after the Partnership for a New American Economy publicized his case as an example of failures in the current immigration system.
Dash – a Silicon Valley native whose own parents immigrated from India – says some of his firm’s most successful investments have been in companies with a foreign founder. He says his main priority with the virtual march is to ensure tech workers aren’t left out of a broad discussion about immigration reform going on in Washington, which also includes controversial issues like border security and illegal immigration, said the Journal.
“We wanted to create a platform,” Dash said, explaining that the initial goal is driving people to the website for the initiative, then also developing pages and hashtags for Facebook and Twitter to attract more participants. “We want Silicon Valley to get collectively involved.”
Both Dash and Feinblatt said the goal of the march is not to dictate the shape reform actually takes, since both comprehensive reform and stand-alone bills for tech talent are on the table in Washington, said the report.
The group’s website calls for green cards for foreign nationals receiving advanced U.S. degrees, visas for entrepreneurs and more visas for “temporary high skilled workers.”