With the fate of the bill that promises comprehensive immigration reform hanging in the balance in Washington, both the White House and tech industry lobbyists have set their sights on two key groups in the hopes of generating more support for the bill.
This week, Hispanic business leaders will be in the nation's capital for an all-day hearing with top Obama administration officials in another effort by the administration to keep the bill moving forward.
The comprehensive immigration reform bill, which provides a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants, earned a major victory last week when the Senate Judiciary Committee approved the bill in the amendment-adding process. Now, with the bill scheduled to get to the floor of the Senate for what could be a lengthy debate this summer, President Obama seeks to help keep the support the bill has received from Hispanic leaders by meeting with Latino businesspeople Wednesday for the inaugural Hispanic Business Leaders Forum.
Immigration will almost certainly be brought up at the meeting with business leaders, but the White House has also made clear that the focus of the meeting will be to talk about the critical economic issues still facing the nation.
One of the challenges facing President Obama is how close to stay to the bill without pushing it too hard as part of his agenda, as Republican support for the bill, while slightly growing, is rather delicate at the moment.
"He could have just come in and said, 'Look this is my priority and I think I won the election by virtue of the fact I'm for it,'" Marshall Fitz, director of immigration policy at the Center for American Progress, told Bloomberg News. "But the political reality that he's reading is that he would have had this immediate backlash."
On the Republican front, the tech industry has begun to key in on six crucial GOP senators in the hopes of passing the bill in the Senate via an unbreakable supermajority.
The Hill.com notes that tech companies--which have largely expressed their support for the bill--are trying to garner the necessary GOP votes in the Senate necessary to ensure the bill's passage by a vote of 70, or close to it.
For those reasons, lobbyists for the tech industry have been looking to sway Sens. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., Susan Collins, R-Maine, Jerry Moran, R-Kans., Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Rob Portman, R-Ohio, to support the bill. Sens. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., and Dean Heller, R-Nev. are also senators being wooed by the tech sector.
Unlike some of the stauncher GOP senators opposed to immigration reform, lobbyists are inclined to think that the aforementioned senators are more open to the bill.
For example, Sen. Ayotte's state, New Hampshire, has offices for tech giants Microsoft, Intel and Oracle. For that reason, lobbyists think that immigration reform, which could bring in more high-skilled workers for those companies in New Hampshire, is a topic where they could get added support in such places.
"A fair number of H-1Bs that are in the green card queue work in these places because they're mostly research and development centers," a tech lobbyist told The Hill.com. "This is a perfect example about why the bill is important. It would ensure these people get permanent residency."
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