LOS ANGELES. - More than one hundred companies and U.S. technology partnerships signed a letter today that was sent to the White House, Congress and the U.S Senate requesting a rapid process of the immigration reform bill that will facilitate the recruitment of highly qualified foreigners.

The letter was delivered by TechNet on behalf of companies like Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Hewlett-Packard, eBay, Oracle, Intel and Qualcomm during their annual meeting with politicians in Washington, which was also attended by U.S. President, Barack Obama.

In the document that was also published on TechNet's website, it thanked both Democrats and Republicans for their efforts in reforming the current immigration system, which technology executives considered "expired and ineffective" and who are all hoping for new legislation this year.

"Many highly qualified immigrants who want to stay in the U.S. are forced to leave because they are unable to obtain permanent visas. Some do not bother to come given the shortage of visas and the long waits for green cards", said the written letter that did not contained the support of Apple.

According to internet and computing industry executives, the granting of visas for highly skilled immigrants should be only subject to market needs, rather than administrative constraints which how it is currently being dealt with.

"Only five companies (IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle and Qualcomm) have 10,000 job openings together. Each of these jobs has the potential to create many others, directly or indirectly," said in the letter.

According to the Partnership for a New American Economy, it is estimated that by 2018 the U.S. labor market will be unable to fill 230,000 jobs for engineers, scientists and mathematicians.

Annually, 65,000 people are granted temporary work visas. And by June of last year companies had already applied for almost all the available seats for the 2013 fiscal year (October to October), according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Editorial@sandiegored.com

Omar.Martinez@sandiegored.com