Do We Need Foreign Technology Workers?
Readers are invited to join a conversation with experts about the impact of immigration policy on skilled workers and the industries that rely on them.
The question comes from one of dozens of engineers around a crowded conference table at Google. They have gathered to discuss how to build easy-to-use maps that could turn hundreds of millions of mobile phones into digital Sherpas guiding travelers to businesses, restaurants and landmarks.
His plane gets in at 9:30, the groups manager responds.
Google is based here in Silicon Valley. But Sanjay G. Mavinkurve, one of the key engineers on this project, is not.
Mr. Mavinkurve, a 28-year-old Indian immigrant who helped lay the foundation for Facebook while a student at Harvard, instead works out of a Google sales office in Toronto, a lone engineer among marketers. He has a visa to work in the United States, but his wife, Samvita Padukone, also born in India, does not. So he moved to Canada.
Every American Ive talked to says: Dude, its ridiculous that were not doing everything we can to keep you in the country. We need people like you! The people of America get it, he added. And in a matter of time, I think current lawmakers are going to realize how dumb theyre being.
Immigrants like Mr. Mavinkurve are the lifeblood of Google and Silicon Valley, where half the engineers were born overseas, up from 10 percent in 1970. Google and other big companies say the Chinese, Indian, Russian and other immigrant technologists have transformed the industry, creating wealth and jobs.
Just over half the companies founded in Silicon Valley from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s had founders born abroad, according to Vivek Wadhwa, an immigration scholar working at Duke and Harvard.
The foreign-born elite dating back even further includes Andrew S. Grove, the Hungarian-born co-founder of Intel; Jerry Yang, the Chinese-born co-founder of Yahoo; Vinod Khosla of India and Andreas von Bechtolsheim of Germany, the co-founders of Sun Microsystems; and Googles Russian-born co-founder, Sergey Brin.
But technology executives say that byzantine and increasingly restrictive visa and immigration rules have imperiled their ability to hire more of the worlds best engineers.
While it could be said that Mr. Mavinkurves case is one of a self-entitled immigrant refusing to live in the United States because his wife would not be able to work, he exemplifies how immigration policies can chase away a potential entrepreneur who aspires to create wealth and jobs here.
His case highlights the technology industrys argument that the United States will struggle to compete if it cannot more easily hire foreign-born engineers.
We are watching the decline and fall of the United States as an economic power not hypothetically, but as we speak, said Craig R. Barrett, the chairman of Intel.
Mr. Barrett blames a slouching education system that cannot be easily fixed, but he says a stopgap measure would be to let companies hire more foreign engineers.
With a snap of the fingers, you can say, Im going to make it such that those smart kids and as many of them as want to can stay in the United States. Theyre here today, theyre graduating today and theyre going home today.
He is opposed by staunch foes of liberalized immigration and by advocates for American-born engineers.
There are probably two billion people in the world who would like to live in California and work, but not everyone in the world can live here, said Kim Berry, an engineer who operates a nonprofit advocacy group for American-born technologists. There are plenty of Americans to do these jobs.
The debate has only sharpened as the countrys economic downturn has deepened. Advocates for American-born workers are criticizing companies that lay off employees even as they retain engineers living here on visas. But the technology industry counters that innovations from highly skilled workers are central to American long-term growth.
It is a debate well known to Google, and it is a deeply personal one to Mr. Mavinkurve.
An Eye on America
Sanjay Mavinkurve (pronounced MAY-vin-kur-VAY) was born in Bombay to working-class parents who soon moved to Saudi Arabia.
He thought everything important in life was American from Baskin Robbins and Nike Airs to the Hardeess and Dominos in the food court at the shopping mall. When in the car, he and his older brother played a game, naming all the things they could see that came from the United States.
I know this sounds romantic, but its true: I always wanted to come to America, said Mr. Mavinkurve, lanky, with bushy hair and an easy smile. I admired everything in the way America portrayed itself the opportunity, U.S. Constitution, its history, enterprising middle class.
