Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Startup FoundersAmerica can't be the world's tech leader without immigration reform.
Posted Monday, Sept. 14, 2009, at 3:47 PM ET
Andy Grove, Intel's former chairman and CEO, was born in Hungary in 1936 and immigrated to the United States in his 20s. Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo, was born in Taipei, Taiwan, and moved to San Jose, Calif., with his family as a child. Sergey Brin, who co-founded Google, came to the United States from his native Russia when he was 6. They aren't special cases: About one-quarter of American tech companies are founded in part or entirely by foreigners. The proportion in Silicon Valley is even higher—a recent survey (PDF) by Vivek Wadhwa, an engineering professor at Duke University, showed that more than 52 percent of Valley startups were founded or co-founded by people born outside of the United States. According to Wadhwa's research, immigrant-founded firms produced $52 billion in sales and employed 450,000 workers in 2005.
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StumbleUponPaul Graham insists that those numbers could be much higher. Graham, a partner at Y Combinator, a venture-capital firm that provides early-stage funding to startups, calls the U.S. government's immigration restrictions "the biggest constraint on the number of new startups that get created in the U.S." In May, Graham, whose essays on business and science are popular in V.C. circles, floated a novel idea: He wants the government to create a new immigration class for founders of new firms. Every year, Graham's "Founder Visa" program would let in 10,000 immigrants who've shown a plan for starting a new company. These people would be barred from working at existing companies—in other words, they wouldn't be "taking American jobs." Instead, Graham argues, they'd be creating jobs: "If we assume four people per startup, which is probably an overestimate, that's 2,500 new companies. Each year," Graham writes. "They wouldn't all grow as big as Google, but out of 2,500 some would come close."
Graham's proposal has won approval from many of his fellow V.C.s, some of whom have started a campaign to push the Founder Visa idea through Congress. Here's hoping a forward-thinking lawmaker takes it up: There's much to decry about U.S. immigration policy, but in the absence of "comprehensive reform" (which President Obama says will be delayed until next year—good luck!), loosening restrictions on tech entrepreneurs is a sensible, easy fix. Graham's plan would create jobs, it wouldn't hurt American workers, and it would ensure that Silicon Valley remains the world's center of tech innovation. What's not to love?
The tech industry has long criticized the United States' byzantine immigration restrictions. Every year, the government allows just 85,000 skilled workers to enter the country legally—far fewer than the industry says is optimal. The program under which these people can work in the United States—known as H1-B—is beset with bureaucratic restrictions, creating long waiting times for workers that American companies say they need to remain competitive. For instance, the plan imposes a cap of 10,000 immigrants per country of origin; this means that it's extraordinarily difficult for firms to attract people from countries with many skilled workers, like India and China. As the New York Times reported recently, Google alone spends $4.5 million every year on "visa administration" to help shepherd its foreign-born workers through the arduous process of coming to America.
Why do American tech firms need so many immigrant employees? Because there aren't enough native workers to fill the jobs tech companies need. According to the National Science Foundation, about 60 percent of doctorate degrees in engineering at American universities are awarded to foreign students who are in the country on temporary visas (PDF). And foreign workers are responsible for some of the tech world's signature innovations. In April, the Times profiled Sanjay Mavinkurve, one of Google's most respected engineers, who, among other things, came up with a brilliant way of reducing the time that Google Maps takes to load on mobile phones. But Mavinkurve—who was born in India, educated at Harvard, and would love to live in America—is stuck working in Google's Toronto office, because the United States won't let him bring his family into the country. Reflecting on stories like Mavinkurve's, Intel Chairman Craig Barrett told the Times that the immigration process here has reached a crisis point. "We are watching the decline and fall of the United States as an economic power—not hypothetically, but as we speak," he said. "With a snap of the fingers, you can say, 'I'm going to make it such that those smart kids—and as many of them as want to—can stay in the United States.' They're here today, they're graduating today—and they're going home today."
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Craig Barrett loves to repeat the refrain that there just aren't enough US citizen engineers coming out of our schools. Well- let's say I am a bright young thing, an 18 year old deciding what to do with his life:
1. get an engineering PhD. 4 years of engineering undergrad (real studying- no Cancun vacations, no partying) + 6 years of grad school. You'll come out and make maybe $90-100k, with very lousy job security. Your job category will likely be either replaced by an H1b holder or just outsourced within 10 years.
2. Get a law degree. 4 years of liberal arts type undergrad (easy stuff. Most engineering students can BS through the liberal arts stuff blindfolded); 3 years of law school. You'll come out and make $120+. Reasonable job security.
3. go to Med school: 4 years of undergrad (biochem type premed- similar to engineering, but less tough)+ 4 years of med school. Come out making $150k. Great job security.
In short- engineering takes the most brains, the most time consuming schooling, and the pay is simply not all that great. The job security is horrible. Now why would any US citizen student want to go this route if he had a choice? The way I see it, the only people who go into engineering are either people who have a strong passion for the subject, or people who are too socially awkward to go into any other field except engineering/science.
-- icemilkcoffee
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