https://greencardlegal.com/green-card-steps/Some of the country's biggest technology companies are urging the Biden administration to enact a new policy that would allow the children of highly skilled foreign employees to remain in the U.S. legally after they turn 21 without a green card.

On Tuesday (June 7) open a letter to the department of homeland security secretary Alejandro DE Mayo cass (Alejandro Mayorkas), some big technology companies joint's asked the federal government to develop a more powerful policy, make the company's work in the United States without a green card children of foreign high-tech talent from the existing conditions of the us.

Under current U.S. law, once they turn 21, the children, who came to the United States with their parents on skilled worker visas, lose their legal residency status and will have to obtain temporary status or leave the country.

"Now we urge policymakers to also address the needs of the more than 200,000 children of highly skilled migrants who are at risk of being missed by the immigration system." "The tech giants said in the letter. The letter was signed by Google, Amazon, IBM, Salesforce and Uber, among others.

The companies note that there are more than 200,000 such children in the United States who grew up with their parents on visas, including H-1B visas, which are particularly common in the technology industry.

Once the children turn 21, they must apply for green cards and follow the green card steps.

The U.S. tech industry has long supported immigration, but this time it focused on the pressing needs of U.S. employers at a time of widespread labor shortages.

"Earlier this spring, U.S. companies had more than 11 million job openings -- five million more than there were workers." "Many of these job openings are high-skill positions, and U.S. companies recruit foreign-born workers to fill labor shortages," the companies wrote. These job openings are especially important because of the pandemic as the United States seeks to maintain its world leadership in innovation and creativity."

The tech giants also noted that the children of employees on high-tech talent visas "face tough choices" and that "their parents will either separate from their children or abandon their careers and any plans to seek permanent residence in the United States."

To put the numbers into perspective, temporary visa holders made up about 9 percent of the U.S. workforce for computer occupations like electrical engineers or programmers in 2019, according to an analysis by the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonprofit that supports immigration reform. That's up from about 4% in 2003.