Week ahead: Tech braces for next immigration fight

The tech world is eyeing the next round in the fight over immigration.

On Thursday night, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to reinstate President Trump’s ban on visitors from seven Muslim majority countries. The administration on Friday decided not to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.

It was a victory for the tech industry, which had forcefully criticized Trump’s actions, culminating in an amicus brief signed by over 100 tech companies.

But the fight over immigration isn’t over for tech.

{mosads}Trump on Friday hinted at a new travel ban in the works.

“We’ll be doing something very rapidly having to do with additional security for our country,” Trump said during a joint press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. “You’ll be seeing that some time next week.”

Also on Trump’s docket is a potential executive order that could restrict the H-1B program, which provides visas to high-skilled workers. The tech industry has been heavily dependent on the visas to attract workers from around the world.

Trump’s stance on the visas has Silicon Valley looking for clarity. On the campaign trail, he called for policies that would create jobs for Americans, but also suggested he was open to attracting high-skilled workers

A leaked draft of an order restricting high-skilled visas circulated earlier this month, though, and sparked more worry among tech leaders.

The draft of the order was titled “Protecting American jobs and workers by strengthening the integrity of foreign worker visa programs,” and emphasized focusing on jobs for domestic workers.

The order said that visas for foreign workers “should be administered in a manner” that “prioritizes the protection of Americans — our forgotten working people — and the jobs they hold.”

The draft specified that the Departments of Labor and Homeland Security would move forward to scrutinize the H-1B visa program and strengthen enforcement.

Industry quickly sounded the alarm.

GoDaddy CEO Blake Irving wrote that the potential order “risks serious consequences for US-based tech companies’ ability to hire elite global talent.”

“We should harness the talents of foreign-born entrepreneurs and students to benefit our economy and our communities, rather than pushing them to other countries to compete against us,” the Mark Zuckerberg-supported immigration advocacy group Fwd.us wrote in a statement to The Hill.

Tech interests will be watching closely for Trump’s next move on immigration and any potential move to restrict worker visas.

Expect the Federal Communications Commission to stay in the spotlight. New Chairman Ajit Pai has been busy with a slew of actions rolling back Obama-era initiatives and reforming the agency.

He’s already dropped the former Democratic chairman’s proposal to reform television set-top boxes and ended a probe into data plans at Verizon and AT&T, which critics claimed ran afoul of net neutrality rules.

In recent days, he’s also issued a series of agency reforms supporters say will make the agency more transparent.

All eyes will be on Pai for his next step.

Federal cybersecurity will also be in focus in the week ahead.

A House Science Subcommittee will hold a hearing on Tuesday about strengthening the government’s cyber practices.

The hearing could be a testy affair with Democrats pushing Republican committee leaders to broaden the scope of the hearing to cover President Trump’s own cybersecurity practices.

In a letter to the committee on Thursday, Democrats referenced reports that Trump sometimes uses an unsecured Android phone and questions about the security of his Twitter feed, to call for a deeper look.

Republicans have dismissed those calls, but Democrats may use the hearing to shine a light on Trump and cybersecurity.

The hearing also comes as the tech world looks for clues into an expected executive order on cybersecurity.

The administration briefed reporters on the order in January and Trump was scheduled to sign it, but the signing was delayed, with little public word since then on its fate.

In recent weeks, other drafts of the executive order have circulated, including measures that would call for audits of federal agencies, set up a the Office of Management and Budget as a chief cyber risk officer for the government.

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