Obama addresses Silicon Valley concerns Before President Obama's State of the Union speech, Carl Guardino, CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, posted a wish list of items he hoped Obama would address. The question is, will what they want - many more visas and green cards for high-tech entrepreneurs and skilled workers - be part of a comprehensive package that includes border security and paths to citizenship? [...] the Startup Act 3.0, a bipartisan Senate measure introduced on Wednesday, would hand out 75,000 "entrepreneur visas" each year for foreign founders of startup companies, plus another 50,000 STEM visas for advanced graduates in science, technology, engineering and math. Guardino wants to see an across-the-board 25 percent rate, which is the GOP position, plus a move to a "territorial" tax system, under which an American company's foreign earnings are only subject to corporate taxes payable in the specific countries. According to Michael Cunningham, vice president of public policy at the Bay Area Council, which has volunteered its services in the effort, said there are several proposals. On March 12, UC Berkeley's College of Engineering and Materials Science is hosting the first of three workshops "to identify an advanced manufacturing technology focus for a potential federal grant proposal ... to lower the cost of production and increase scalability of technologies in the growing areas of energy, health care and national security sectors of the U.S. economy." [...] Gov. Jerry Brown's Office of Business and Economic Development (G0-Biz) is convening in March "key stakeholders from the advanced manufacturing industry to put forward a single California application for the president's bold initiative," Louis Stewart, the agency's deputy director for innovation and entrepreneurship, said Wednesday.