Last week we welcomed another one of Silicon Valley’s representatives to the Googleplex, Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), for a fireside chat with our CEO Eric Schmidt. Covering the 16th district just south of our Mountain View headquarters (Rep. Lofgren thanked Eric for keeping so many of her constituents employed), she has been a longstanding champion of many of the tech policy issues Google cares about.
Eric and Rep. Lofgren discussed a range of hot topics facing Congress right now. Especially noteworthy were her comments -- and continuing efforts -- around reforming immigration policy for highly skilled labor, a troubling roadblock for Google's and other tech companies' efforts to hire the best and brightest regardless of where they're from. As one of our favorite immigration lawyer-turned-Congresswoman pointed out, when we’ve invested in graduate-level educations for foreign nationals who want to stay here and contribute to our economy, what sense does it make to send them immediately home?
Lofgren has been a steadfast a critic of the president's warrantless wiretapping program, and much of the lively conversation focused on whether Congress should give retroactive immunity to telcos who broke the law by participating in the program. Lofgren engaged with the perspectives of Googlers in the audience, including one from our Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf, who formerly worked at carrier MCI.
For more on the immigration issue and other insights from Rep. Lofgren, check out the full conversation:
With Google in the constituent seat, our CEO used the opportunity to quiz Rep. Eshoo about some of the tech policy priorities on our plate: the possibility for progress on patent reform this session, the importance of raising the cap on H-1B visas for highly skilled workers, and our shared interest in ensuring the Internet remains a neutral and open platform.
We took the opportunity to celebrate the recent victory in extending the moratorium on Internet taxes -- an issue Rep. Eshoo has championed -- and discussed current trends in technology. It’s not very often that you hear a Member of Congress discuss the benefits of cloud computing (more accessible, less expensive), and the importance of crafting Internet policy so that no one "stands in the way of what a consumer wishes to consume and how they wish to use something." We were impressed.
Eric and Rep. Eshoo also touched on the critical role that the next president will play in shaping policy priorities in Washington in coming years, reminding us all of the importance of our participation in the upcoming election (here at Google, we’ve had lots of reminders of that with our presidential candidate visits to Mountain View and continued efforts to highlight election information through our products ).
With so much going on in Washington these days, of course the conversation spanned lots of other topics, from our strategy in Iraq, to children’s health care, to the partisan environment in Congress. Check it out for yourself:
