Silicon Valley's Immigration Problem
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India's brightest used to line up for U.S. jobs. No longer.
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Silicon Valley luminaries worry about government's stance on stock options, outsourcing, research and education.
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WASHINGTON -- Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates said the United States should end limits on visas for skilled foreign workers as part of plan to boost US economic competitiveness.
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Tech group urges Congress to boost the number of worker visas after immigration bill fails.
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Employees wonder whether their Silicon Valley 'work hard, play hard' approach would be quashed by an acquisition.
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(InfoWorld) - Alumni of a major Indian university want the U.S. Congress to take separate action to passÂ H-1B visaÂ legislation that went down with the immigration reform bill thatÂ failed in CongressÂ last week. Members of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) alumni association, meeting for a three-day conference in Santa Clara, California, said Friday that they are hoping to get a separate vote on an immigration bill provision that would increase the number of visas granted to highly skilled engineers coming from abroad to work at U.S. technology companies. "Almost as soon as the bill died, there was talk of piecemeal moves to get parts of that bill passed," said Umang Gupta, chairman and CEO of Keynote Systems, a company that measures the technical performance of Web sites. He's also chairman of the board of PAN IIT, the alumni group hosting the conference, which has drawn close to 4,000 people. The legislation would increase the limit of H-1B visas to be granted every year to 115,000 from 65,000 today. Backers say the extra visas are needed because there aren't enough qualified U.S. engineers to do the work U.S. companies need done. Opponents say the visas just make it possible for U.S. companies to hire foreigners at lower wages than they would have to pay U.S. hires. The legislation would also continue to allow 20,000 visas per year to applicants who have advanced degrees from U.S. colleges and universities. Today, about half of the graduates of U.S. engineering schools are non-Americans, many of whom have to return to their home countries to find work when they should be allowed to work here and contribute to U.S. economic growth, said Pradeep Khosla, dean of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania. "The day this country limits the free flow of skilled immigrants coming into this country, that's the day we start going downhill," said Khosla. Another IIT alum, Yogen Dalal, managing director at Mayfield Fund, a venture capital firm, noted that in the early 1990s, some in Silicon Valley thought they would be overcome by the Japanese. But the success of valley companies like Google and Apple, which introduced its iPhone a week ago, shows it remains a center for innovation. "Wealth is being created by innovation right here in [Silicon Valley]. Economic value is being created here. The work force is just being redistributed," Dalal said. The H1-B discussion is happening against the backdrop of the loss of thousands of jobs in recent years, particularly in Silicon Valley, as companies outsourced work to lower-wage markets in countries like India. But as more work is done in India,Â wage inflationÂ has begun to narrow the pay gap between India and the U.S. And in some cases, Indian companies have begun moving jobs to the U.S., said Arjun Malhotra, chairman and CEO of Headstrong, an outsourcing consulting firm. "If you look at the issue today, it's not outsourcing, it's global sourcing. You go to wherever the best resources are available to do that job," said Malhotra. The Indian Institute of Technology was created in 1950, three years after India gained its independence from Great Britain. It has about 100,000 alumni, 25,000 of whom live and work in the U.S.
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InfoWorld - An ambitious plan to equip Silicon Valley with wireless public broadband services is proceeding with great hopes but many challenges.
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BANGALORE, India  - Multinationals have trimmed  the fat for years by shifting low-value work to India. Now,  slim Silicon Valley start-ups are leading a new outsourcing  wave, moving cutting-edge product development to Bangalore and  beyond.
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Bill Gates and Steven A. Ballmer of Microsoft, along with other high-tech executives, are lobbying for more visas for temporary foreign workers and permanent immigrants.
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Silicon Valley's VC community picks its favorite candidates.
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Silicon Valley is a collection of remarkably local clusters based on industry niches, skills, school ties, traffic patterns, ethnic groups and even weekend sports teams.
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A number of signs point to increasing demand for tech workers, but not all the clouds have been driven away.
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Economic geographer AnnaLee Saxenian says the migration of Silicon Valley's "New Argonauts" speaks volumes about wider changes in techdom.
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How investment in technology firms can help the UK recreate Silicon Valley.
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The selection of Boeing Co. to erect a "virtual fence" along 6,000 miles of U.S. border marks a potential turning point in the government's long quest to stop illegal immigration, but its success hinges on overcoming obstacles that doomed past efforts, funding shortages and other problems with the...
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Bill Gates asks Congress to reform the immigration system and let more highly skilled scientists and engineers into the country. In 27B Stroke 6.
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Some broad facts about the role of illegal immigrants in the economy seem to be emerging, and they may upset some preconceived notions.