President Obama promised action yesterday on increasing the number of skilled immigrants, raising hope among tech stakeholders that one of their long-held priorities will finally come to pass. In his second inaugural address, the president tied expanding opportunities for skilled workers to stay in the U.S. to his broader goal of comprehensive immigration reform — but his language should give tech companies hope that something will happen to expand the number of visas available for foreign engineers and science graduates. Both political parties support allowing more skilled workers to stay in the U.S. after attending American graduate programs, but Democrats have held out for a compromise that would also allow some undocumented immigrants without such qualifications to stay in the country.

Quotable: "No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores ... Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity — until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country." — Obama

Of course, building new networks and training new STEM teachers would likely require Congress to adopt a budget, something that has proven increasingly difficult in recent years. The atmosphere was mostly cordial and bipartisan on Monday, as befits Inauguration Day, but Republicans will have plenty to say about any expansion of federal spending that doesn't come with significant reductions to entitlements. Still, the president's tech policy objectives are not expected to draw the same sort of GOP opposition as efforts to combat climate change and reduce the availability of assault weapons. Expect action on skilled-immigrant policy at some point in the next four years. The White House is likely to stick to its emphasis on expanding the deployment of broadband and wireless networks. Delivering on the promise to improve STEM education, however, will be more difficult, but school policy has shaped up as one area where the Obama administration shares a good deal of common ground with Republicans, and could therefore also be ripe for some sort of legislative action.

Sen. Cornyn Questions DOJ Over Swartz Case: Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, added his voice last week to those questioning the Department of Justice's handling of its case against Reddit co-founder and Internet activist Aaron Swartz. Swartz, who was reportedly facing up to 35 years in prison on charges he illegally downloaded millions of academic journals from a subscription service at M.I.T., killed himself earlier this month. His death has sparked outrage online, mostly directed at the government's handling of what supporters view as his relatively minor copyright and terms of service violations. Swartz consistently advocated for the opening of information to the public online, free of charge. In his letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, Sen. Cornyn questions whether the DOJ's aggressive prosecution of Swartz was at all related to his earlier publication of 20 percent of the files in the federal court database system. The case has prompted Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., to offer a bill that would reduce terms of service violations to civil infractions, rather than violations under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. TSA Pulls Backscatter Scanners From Airports: The Transportation Security Administration announced last week that it would pull the remaining 174 backscatter X-ray body scanners from U.S. airports after manufacturer Rapiscan failed to introduce viable privacy filters. The scanners drew controversy for the revealing images they capture of airport passengers, and failed to match the privacy safeguard offered by rival scanner maker L-3. Rapiscan said it has reached an agreement with TSA that would allow other agencies to re-deploy the units, but Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said he doesn't want to see the machines used again until the privacy filters are upgraded.