Immigration reform was once again the "Topic of the Day" with President Obama and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg finding themselves talking at length about the subject.
Touching on a familiar theme for him Monday, President Obama discussed the recent push to fix the nation's immigration laws during a naturalization swearing-in ceremony at the White House, where he called on legislators in Washington to pass immigration reform "as soon as possible."
"We are making progress but we've got to finish the job,"Obama said during the ceremony at which 28 people were naturalized as new U.S. citizens. "We've all proposed solutions, we've got a lot of white papers and studies," he said. "We've just got - at this point - to work up the political courage to do what's required to be done."
The push for immigration reform has been getting closer than ever with the bipartisan senate panel reportedly nearing a deal that would put millions of undocumented immigrants on a path to citizenship while securing the nation's borders.
Wanting to have a bill finalized as soon as possible, President Obama said he expects a bill to be submitted and up for debate by April, though he did not specify an exact date for when a bill should be submitted.
"Immigration makes us stronger," he said. "It keeps us vibrant, it keeps us hungry, it keeps us prosperous. It is part of what makes this such a dynamic country."
"Let's get this done," he said. "And let's do it in a way that keeps faith in our history and our values."
Meanwhile, from the legislative side to the business side, Zuckerberg joined other high-tech executives around the nation who are promoting the need for immigration reform as part of a way to grow the economy.
Sources told CBS News that Zuckerberg is forming a issues advocacy group that will promote immigration reform, education and other policies aimed at stimulating economic growth.
Other members of the panel will include Joe Lockhart, former Clinton White House press secretary now at the Glover Park Group, and Rob Jesmer, formerly executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
The 28-year-old CEO of social media giant Facebook is among the latest of high-tech executives who in recent months have come forward pushing for Washington too reform immigration laws in order to make it easier for tech companies to bring in high-skilled workers from other countries that have degrees in science and technology.
Entrepreneur and Duke University researcher Vivek Wadhwa told Fox News that immigrants have been a crucial part of the tech sector for years, with foreign-born business people creating engineering and tech companies that created 560,000 jobs and generated an estimated $63 billion in sales from 2006 to 2012.
However, due to visa policies, bureaucracy and immigration laws, the growth rate of immigrant-founded companies has been stunted and is in danger of affecting the U.S. tech sector's immigrant contributions.
"We're choking off the pipeline here," Wadhwa said. "We are boosting the economies of our competitors, in other words, the people that we'd want here starting companies and building innovation here are doing it in ... India, China, Brazil and Mexico," where researchers are seeing the most innovation because of U.S.-educated returnees.
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