Obama meets again with tech bigwigs

By Daniel Strauss and Jennifer Martinez - 03/14/13 06:06 PM ET

President Obama met with a number of top technology CEOs and senior executives on Thursday to discuss policy issues that are key for the industry this year.

Obama and senior White House officials sat down with NASDAQ executive vice president Bruce Aust, AOL co-founder Steve Case, who now runs the investment firm Revolution, as well as Cisco CEO John Chambers, venture capitalist John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Marvell Technologies co-founder Weili Dai, TechNet CEO Rey Ramsey and Oracle COO Safra Catz.

The meeting was the second one between top officials from the technology industry and the president in two days. On Wednesday the president met with a group of 13 CEOs from a range of industries, including the teleommunications and banking sectors, to discuss efforts to improve the nation's cybersecurity. The attendees included AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, Xerox Corp CEO Ursula Burns and Northrup Grumman CEO Wesley Bush.

Case released a statement saying the discussion was on a range of tech-related topics.

"I was encouraged by today's meeting with President Obama, senior White House officials, and members of the technology community," Case said in his statement. "We discussed a range of policy reforms that will help improve the environment for entrepreneurship in the United States."

The discussion also focused on reforming the country's immigration system and the existing immigration rules for highly educated and skilled foreign workers, Case continued.

"In particular, we spoke at length about the urgent need to fix our high skilled immigration system, so that the world’s most talented innovators and entrepreneurs can contribute to job creation here in the United States." Case continued. "We noted immigration is not just a problem to solve; it's also an opportunity to seize, to ensure we remain the world's most entrepreneurial nation."

Case also mentioned the bipartisan group of senators that have been working on a large immigration reform bill. The group is commonly referred to as the "Gang of Eight."

"We applauded the president for his focus on immigration and indicated we are grateful that the Senate's bipartisan 'Gang of Eight' appears to be making progress on a comprehensive immigration bill that includes a robust package of high-skilled reforms," Case added. "This is a moment, and we need to seize it."

Ramsey of TechNet, a trade organization that represents top tech companies, said in a statement that the president also talked about the need for tax reform and improvement to education programs in the so-called STEM fields--science, technology, match and engineering.