J. W. “Bill” Marriott is the well-known president, CEO, and family heir of the Marriott International Corporation, which includes Marriott hotels, Marriott timeshare, and numerous related hospitality and management companies. Always a highly visible leader in the business world, Bill Marriott is recently making his voice heard in politics as the 2008 presidential election continues to heat up.

In a speech delivered on January 17, Marriott called for presidential candidates to, “move to a sober discussion of immigration reform.”

“We need to cool the rhetoric and work together to come up with a federal solution,” Marriott said, emphasizing the current problem employers have attempting to comply with a diversity of immigration laws that vary from state to state.

According to Marriott, “With expected growth, the hospitality industry alone will need an additional 300,000 workers in the next several years…We need immigrant workers in our economy and we need to create a workable verification system so that employers like us know that they’re hiring people who are authorized to work.”

In his speech, Bill Marriott called for the removal of barriers to global travel saying that visa and entry systems needed to be more efficient and customer-friendly or the US loses the opportunity to attract more visitors, stating that, “Bottom line, travel is trade.”

In this YouTube video, Bill Marriott talks about the need for immigration reform and other points related to the economy and the hotel and timeshare resorts industry.