Alejandro Mayorkas, chief of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a unit of the Department of Homeland Security, on Tuesday will unveil several initiatives designed to attract and retain foreign entrepreneurs, particularly in the high-tech sector, who wish to launch start-up companies in the U.S.

Among the initiatives is a plan to make it easier for some foreigners to qualify for legal permanent residence, or green cards, if they can demonstrate their work will be in the U.S. national interest. The changes will also include a way for entrepreneurs to obtain work visas without a job offer from an established company.

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Speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Xerox Corp. Chief Executive Ursula Burns gave the K-12 school system a “D-minus” and said fixing it is a priority. “We can’t pretend to be better than we are,” she said. She added that when it comes to preparing students out of high school to be productive workers, the U.S. is failing.

The executives, however, said that the college system remains the best in the world. But they also agreed that valuable foreign talent who come over to the U.S. to attend colleges end up going back home because the country no longer welcomes them. Business have already gotten behind immigration, and the government needs to recognize this, said Cisco Systems Inc.’s CEO John Chambers.

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Talk about good timing–Robert Rodriguez’s upcoming “Mexploitation” movie, “Machete,” centers on Mexican immigrants and the border, a perfect flashpoint for the controversial and appalling new immigration-related search laws passed by Arizona recently.

Director Rodriguez used the opportunity yesterday of Cinco de Mayo to release an anti-Arizona promo for the film, which had its origins as a fake trailer in his previous work, “Grindhouse.”

Enjoy:

Is it just me or does the fact that President-Elect Barack Obama is broadcasting his weekly address on YouTube not seem like it should be the very biggest deal in the world?

Still, when an article in the Washington Post reported late last week that he would put his weekly Democratic address online in video–on YouTube and his own transition site, Change.gov–as well as the regular radio, the squeals from tech were louder than at a mall appearance by the Zac Efron of “High School Musical.”

While it is a first for the Commander-in-Chief, I am more depressed that it is a first–after all, skateboarding cats made it to YouTube eons ago–than utterly thrilled that he is doing it.

But, when it come to the glacial movement related to politicians and tech issues, disappointment seems to be a better stance than hope.

I could begin with the fact that the U.S. has poor broadband and wireless coverage compared with most comparable nations (Softbank’s Masa Son once told me in an interview that this country was the “third world of broadband”).

Ironically, the price of high-speed access ranks at the top, by really gross margins.

Or that the federal government remains unfocused on a number of important digital issues, from immigration to privacy to net neutrality.

Perhaps because of his more obvious use of Internet tools, from communicating to supporters to raising money to targeting voters, Obama has felt like the first true Internet candidate, well beyond the ultimately unsuccessful inroads made by Howard Dean in 2004.

And now with even more YouTube videos, the Twitters, a much more interactive Web site at Change.gov and, best of all, the possible appointment of a CTO for America, it has been a general lovefest that the Obama presidency has engendered from the Internet community, simply for the focus the sector is now getting.

And more interactive communications are promised, such as regular video interviews with senior members of the Obama administration.

“This is just one of many ways that he will communicate directly with the American people and make the White House and the political process more transparent,” spokeswoman Jen Psaki said to the Washington Post.

It’s not that BoomTown does not think this is a great thing, but to me, this kind of transparent communication should be as normal as it has become throughout the rest of society as a matter of course.

Also, it would be nice if the Obama videos were also distributed on many other video services besides YouTube, which is the largest, but owned by Google (GOOG), whose CEO Eric Schmidt is a prominent supporter of the new administration.

Still, the four-minute video that Obama released yesterday is a good first step, along with a previous one from transition Co-Chairman Valerie Jarrett, who recorded a two-minute video earlier in the week.

Both are below:

President-Elect Barack Obama

Transition Co-Chairman Valerie Jarrett

Our goal is clearly not to find a qualified and interested U.S. worker. And that, in a sense, sounds funny, but it’s what we are trying to do here.”

–Attorney Lawrence Lebowitz on hiring foreign workers under the U.S. government’s Program Electronic Review Management process

How do you say “tech’s best and brightest” in Hindi? Because increasingly, India seems to be a prime source for tech-industry talent. In 2006, at least 65,000 H-1B visas were issued. And the number of L visas–which allow multinationals to transfer foreign managers and specialists within a company to U.S. offices–rose to more than 53,000.

That’s a hell of a lot of jobs. Too many, say Sens. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) and Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), who claim U.S. visa programs are being exploited to the detriment of American tech workers. Yesterday, Durbin and Grassley released data revealing that foreign outsourcing firms are among the heaviest users of both the H-1B and L visa programs. Of the top 20 L visa users in fiscal year 2006, 14 are offshore outsourcing firms. Among them, India-based Tata Consultancy Services, which received 4,887 L visas and 3,046 H-1B visas last year. The number of L visas here is particularly concerning, as Durbin notes: “The L visa is designed to give multinational companies the freedom to transfer managers and specialists within the company to their U.S. offices. But some of these companies have hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of L visa workers. I find it hard to believe that any one company has that many individuals that are legitimately being transferred within a single year.”

That does seem dubious. But, as the high-tech companies lobbying Congress for more visas note, Tata is one company of many. And if the U.S. isn’t careful and tweaks its visa program in the wrong way, it could see a lot of top talent leaving the states. “Simply put: It makes no sense to tell well-trained, highly skilled individuals–many of whom are educated at our top colleges and universities–that the United States does not welcome or value them,” Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said earlier this year. “For too many foreign students and professionals, however, our immigration policies send precisely this message.”

Our goal is clearly not to find a qualified and interested U.S. worker. And that, in a sense, sounds funny, but it’s what we are trying to do here.”

–Attorney Lawrence Lebowitz on hiring foreign workers under the U.S. government’s Program Electronic Review Management process

How do you say “tech’s best and brightest” in Hindi? Because increasingly, India seems to be a prime source for tech-industry talent. In 2006, at least 65,000 H-1B visas were issued. And the number of L visas–which allow multinationals to transfer foreign managers and specialists within a company to U.S. offices–rose to more than 53,000.

That’s a hell of a lot of jobs. Too many, say Sens. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) and Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), who claim U.S. visa programs are being exploited to the detriment of American tech workers. Yesterday, Durbin and Grassley released data revealing that foreign outsourcing firms are among the heaviest users of both the H-1B and L visa programs. Of the top 20 L visa users in fiscal year 2006, 14 are offshore outsourcing firms. Among them, India-based Tata Consultancy Services, which received 4,887 L visas and 3,046 H-1B visas last year. The number of L visas here is particularly concerning, as Durbin notes: “The L visa is designed to give multinational companies the freedom to transfer managers and specialists within the company to their U.S. offices. But some of these companies have hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of L visa workers. I find it hard to believe that any one company has that many individuals that are legitimately being transferred within a single year.”

That does seem dubious. But, as the high-tech companies lobbying Congress for more visas note, Tata is one company of many. And if the U.S. isn’t careful and tweaks its visa program in the wrong way, it could see a lot of top talent leaving the states. “Simply put: It makes no sense to tell well-trained, highly skilled individuals–many of whom are educated at our top colleges and universities–that the United States does not welcome or value them,” Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said earlier this year. “For too many foreign students and professionals, however, our immigration policies send precisely this message.”