Microsoft's Brad Smith. Courtesy photo.

Brad Smith, the president and chief legal officer of Microsoft, has long been known as one of tech's most vocal legal leaders. And on Wednesday, Smith spoke out again, authoring a blog post that addressed Microsoft employees' fears around U.S. immigration policy.

Smith said Microsoft employees were particularly concerned by rumors that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) planned to end H-1B extensions beyond six years. The extensions allow immigrants waiting in long green card lines to remain in the United States past the six-year mark, crucial for immigrants in cases where, he writes, “the annual limits for their birth country are out of sync with demand.”

The rumor of extensions ending was false, but Smith writes there's still a need for a serious discussion to address the lengthy, stress-inducing backlog and other immigration policies.

“They [the employees] are talented professionals already certified by the U.S. Department of Labor as meriting a green card,” Smith wrote. “They fear that their spouses will lose the ability to work through the cessation of H-4 authorizations. They worry that their children will turn 21 before they make it through the backlog, rendering them ineligible for green cards as dependents.”

He offered up a policy solution that could cut down lines while boosting resources for American-born workers. New fees on green cards, he writes, could be used to fund STEM education programs in the United States. It's a policy idea Smith said Microsoft first proposed in 2012 with the company's release of “A National Talent Strategy.”

Smith's post comes amid immigration drama related to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California temporarily blocked the Trump administration's decision to end protection for certain undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children.

Smith wrote that there are 45 DACA recipients or “Dreamers” working at Microsoft. The company, in conjunction with Princeton University, filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in November of last year over Trump's plans to end the DACA program.

And it's not the only time Smith has taken action on immigration reform. After the Trump administration's ban on immigrants from certain Muslim-majority countries, Smith offered legal assistance to impacted employees.

“But we also should not lose sight of other key immigration issues such as the green card backlog,” he wrote. “We recognize the challenges for high skilled immigration reform are significant, but in the end, we believe reforms are critical to improving fairness in the immigration process for those who contribute so significantly to our country's economy, and to ensuring the U.S. remains a magnet for the world's top talent.”