Senate passed the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill

June 27, 2013. The U.S. Senate passed the immigration bill, the S. 744, the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act, popularly known as Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) bill, with a vote of 68-32. Earlier today, Senators voted 68-32 to invoke cloture, limiting debate on the bill.  The bill now moves to the House of Representatives, where it is likely to face strong opposition. In May, 2013, we published a detail article outlining the changes proposed by this bill.

Leaders representing major technology companies including Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Cisco hailed the passage of the bill which will boost economic growth and attract high skilled workers. A bipartisan policy and political network of technology CEOs that promotes the growth of the innovation economy, congratulated the U.S. Senate for approving historic immigration reform legislation. John Chambers, Chairman and CEO of Cisco and co-chair of TechNet said, “in passing this legislation on a strong bipartisan basis, the Senate broke the logjam on immigration and high-skilled worker reforms,”. “Today, the Senate took a significant step toward reforming our nation’s outdated immigration policies,” said Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. [See Technet release here]

However, there is some skepticism about the bill from other industry groups. “The Bill unfairly targets American companies trying to remain globally competitive by reducing their ability to contract with global IT service providers and restricting their access to the international expertise they need,” said Ron Sommers, president of U.S. India Business Coucil (USIBC). “Such restrictions could stifle US innovation, slow local job creation and force companies to move jobs overseas,” Somers warned. ” [Source: The Economics Times]

The Bill has to be passed by the U.S. House of Representatives and then the President will sign the Bill to become a law. It is mostly likeley that the House might propose number of amendments to the Bill.