US big tech firms ask Biden administration to ease immigration policy for children of visa holders

Big tech companies in the US, including Google, Amazon, Uber, and Salesforce, are urging the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to revise immigration and citizenship rules for the children of highly skilled workers who have grown up in the US over the last couple of decades.

At the moment, when a child of immigrants turns 21, they have to apply for a Green Card or risk being deported back to a country that they have never lived in. In some cases, people have even been asked to return to their country of origin while the Green Card is being processed, according to a report by CNBC.

In a letter to DHS secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the companies asked that the Biden administration “establish more robust aging out policies.” According to the letter, seen by CNBC, more than 200,000 children have grown up in the US due to the immigration of their parents, including those who moved with the high skilled H1B visa prevalently used in the tech industry.

While tech companies have long advocated looser immigration laws to accommadate their global hiring policies, they were more explicit in the letter.

“Earlier this spring, US companies had more than 11 million open jobs – five million more openings than workers,” the companies wrote. “Many of these job vacancies are for highly-skilled positions, and US companies recruit foreign-born workers to fill in the worker shortages."