9News Colorado calls for more H-1Bs
9News Colorado calls for more H-1Bs
Date: Tuesday, December 05, 2006 3:34 PM
<<<<< JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER No. 1599 -- 12/05/2006 >>>>>
9News in Denver, Colorado did a TV news report that rivals the worst of the
Mercury News. Without doubt the 9News show is a direct result of the shill
article written by Constance Loizos and published by the Mercury News.
For more on Loizos read the newsletter titled:
"One Dozen Turkeys" 1594 -- 11/23/2006
A Norm Matloff newsletter is included below about the same subject.
Here is a summary of the report by Al Lewis:
* Without immigrants Colorado would have much fewer high-tech companies.
* 25% of the venture companies were founded by immigrants. He got that
propaganda straight from the Mercury News.
* Immigrants that come to Colorado start companies and create jobs.
* There is too much focus on illegal immigrants. Lewis said that we need to
focus on getting more H-1B visas. This is the theory of "illegal aliens are
bad, H-1Bs are good".
* Lewis complains that only 65,000 H-1B visas are allowed, and then said
several hundred thousands of visas isn't really too much to ask for.
* It's just stupid to allow foreign students to go to school in the U.S.
and then not give them a visa to stay here.
* He said that we want smart and talented people to come to the U.S. He
never mentioned the fact that Americans are smart and/or talented.
To view the video use either of the links. The short link is easier:
http://masl.to/?G56826F4E
OR
http://www.9news.com/includes/buildasx.aspx?fn=http://wm.kusa.gannett.edgestreams.net/news/1165166013110-12-03-06-al-lewis-7a.wmv&sp=
Go to the 9News website if you want to tell them what a fine job they are
doing at slandering and insulting Americans:
http://www.9news.com/company/contact/
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http://www.9news.com/acm_news.aspx?OSGNAME=KUSA&IKOBJECTID=4982c337-0abe-421a-00b7-ba79316bae37&TEMPLATEID=0c76dce6-ac1f-02d8-0047-c589c01ca7bf
Study shows many new businesses started by immigrants
posted by Dan Boniface Web Producer
Created: 12/3/2006 11:10 AM MST - Updated: 12/3/2006 11:10 AM MST
DENVER - Denver Post Business Columnist Al Lewis discusses a study about
immigrants who started big businesses.
Click the link provided above to watch this video story.
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Norm Matloff [mailto:matloff@cs.ucdavis.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, November 15, 2006 11:54 PM
> To: Norm Matloff
> Subject: articles on Stuart Anderson study
Stuart Anderson, author of numerous industry-sponsored reports
supporting the H-1B since 1996, has come out with his glitziest yet,
available at http://www.mercextra.com/multimedia/business/final.pdf
Needless to say, it was sent to all the major newspapers.
And equally needless to say, it is once again a highly biased an
misleading work. Anderson's theme is that a significant portion of
Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are foreign-born, and "therefore" we "need"
H-1Bs. He makes the same errors as have previous industry lobbyists on
this issue, though in one interesting case he does concede a point, as I
will explain later.
There was a previous study on immigrant entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley
by Prof. AnnaLee Saxenian of UC Berkeley. This one was also widely used
by the industry lobbyists, and again suffered from flaws that I will now
detail.
The first key point about Saxenian's study is that she simply documents
how many immigrant entrepreneurs there are in Silicon Valley. She does
NOT claim that the per-capita rate of entrepreneurship is higher among
the immigrants than the natives, even though it probably was taken that
way by many readers. On the contrary, her data show that the immigrants
in Silicon Valley have been LESS entrepreneurial per capita than the
natives. For the details, see my university law journal article,
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/MichJLawReform.pdf Section VI.E.
Now, what about Anderson? Like Saxenian, he simply enumerates how many
immigrant entrepreneurs there are, and has no data on the per capita
rate of entrepreneurship. In other words, his data do not show that
immigrants are more entrepreneurial. But he makes such a claim anyway,
in various convoluted, confused statements, such as this one:
# The data show immigrants possess great entrepreneurial capacity,
# particularly in technical fields. The proportion of immigrant
# entrepreneurs among publicly traded venture-backed companies is
# particularly impressive when compared to the relatively small share
# of legal immigrants in the U.S. population.
This is typical Stuart Anderson, comparing the wrong rates. There are
lots of immigrant engineers (thanks to efforts by him and other
lobbyists), so of course many of them will start businesses. But
to compare the two proportions above makes no sense. What would make
sense is to compare the proportion of native engineers who start
businesses to the corresponding number for immigrant engineers. Again,
if one does that, one finds that the natives have been more
entrepreneurial.
Another big problem is that Anderson is very loose in separating the
terms "immigrant" and "H-1B." I've taken the lobbyists to task in the
past on this point. For example, they have pointed to Andy Grove (early
employee, though not cofounder, of Intel), Jerry Yang (cofounder of
Yahoo!) and Sergey Brin (cofounder of Google), as H-1B success stories.
The fact is that none of these three men came to the U.S. as H-1Bs or as
foreign students. Yang and Brin came to the U.S. as children with their
families, and Grove came as a young refugee, also with his family. So
it has nothing to do with H-1B. At least Anderson does point out that
they did not come here as H-1Bs, but he knows full well that most people
won't read that far.
Much more importantly, neither the Saxenian or Anderson study recognizes
the fact that no firm has been pivotal technologically in this field.
When IBM chose Intel for the CPU chips in the first PC, it could have
chosen many other firms instead (and its engineers advised it to do so).
As to Yahoo! and Google, there are plenty of other firms with search
engines (and Yahoo!'s is bought, not internally developed); we'd still
be surfing the Web today even if these two firms didn't exist.
In other words, the basic message, that the industry would not be where
it is today without immigrants, is incorrect. And one of the most
misleading aspects of it is, in my view, the fact that it doesn't
mention the huge internal brain drain caused by the H-1B program:
Conservatively, tens of thousands engineers and programmers have been
forced to leave the field as either a direct or indirect result of the
H-1B program.
Of course, all of this is a smokescreen in the first place, masking the
fact that employers large and small want the H-1Bs as cheap labor. We
don't need H-1Bs to remedy a tech labor shortage, as there is no such
shortage. As I've mentioned, BusinessWeek showed that starting
salaries, adjusted for inflation, for new Bachelor's graduates in tech
have been flat or falling since 2001, and my followup study on the
Master's level shows them to be flat since 1999.
Now, a word on the enclosed articles, and their fairness. The only two
with real balance were the one in the San Francisco Chronicle and the
segment on NPR's Marketplace. In fact, in the latter, even the the
industry guy seems to be rather open, not so pushy as most.
One interesting passage in the Chronicle article is
# [the critics of the H-1B program] also contend that the study's
# author, Stuart Anderson, executive director of the National
# Foundation for American Policy, is a veteran of conservative think
# tanks who runs an organization that claims to be a nonpartisan public
# policy research outfit but is instead an industry front group.
This is certainly true. As I said above, Anderson has basically made a
career out of writing pro-H-1B reports and articles on behalf of the
industry. And often they have been unsigned, so that the industry
represents two or three of his reports, written under the byline of
different organizations, as "independent" reports, when in fact Anderson
was the author of all of them, and when the organizations themselves
(often one-man operations consisting of only Anderson) were funded by
the industry. I'm curious as to where the reporter got this information
(it didn't come up during her interview of me), but I'm pleased to see
her write it.
The Mercury News article has only a little on the opposing point of
view, and even though from an immigration reform organization rather
than an engineering professional organization such as the Programmers
Guild, IEEE-USA etc.
The Merc, of course, has been highly pro-industry on the H-1B issue all
along. This has been openly admitted by the author of the New York
Times article, Miguel Helft, who was with the Mercury for a number of
years. I don't know whether he has moved to the NYT, or if the NYT
just has a sharing agreement with the Mercury.
Miguel's article itself also devotes only a small portion of its space
to the opposition, though it is with IEEE-USA and makes good points.
The San Diego Union Tribune article is completely lacking in voices from
the other side.
Congress, as I've shown before, is anxious to get campaign funding from
the industry, and has never questioned the industry's claims. Two
congressionally-commissioned studies have shown that the H-1Bs are
underpaid, but you could knock on doors on Capitol Hill for a week and
not find a staffer, much less a politician, who is aware of Congress' own
studies. I'm sure they'll be happy that Anderson has come out with this
new study, to give them cover when they vote an expansion of the H-1B
program. They'll have no desire to question, that's for sure.
Norm
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/16012713.htm
Study touts role of immigrants in tech
PART OF A PUSH TO LOOSEN IMMIGRATION LAWS
By Constance Loizos
Mercury News
Illegal immigration has been a hot topic in Washington this year, but in
the
wake of last week's elections, the venture capital industry is hoping to
steer the conversation instead to legal immigration.
The reason: they argue that lawmakers who have pushed for tighter
immigration controls risk hampering both the high-tech industry and the
overall economy. ``Roughly 50 percent of our portfolio companies were
started by foreign-born entrepreneurs,'' said venture capitalist Roger
Lee of Battery Ventures on Sand Hill Road, a self-described ``staunch
supporter of more open borders. ``Out of the last five companies that
(we've sold or that have gone public), three have been founded or led
by immigrants. That tells you something,'' he said.
One tool that may help in Silicon Valley's fight for more open borders
is a study published today by the National Venture Capital Association.
Among its findings are that 47 percent of today's venture-backed
startups have immigrant founders, and that over the past 15 years,
immigrants have founded 25 percent of all U.S. public companies that
received venture capital.
Those companies, including Google, eBay, Yahoo, Intel and Sun
Microsystems, represent a market capitalization of more than $500
billion and have created thousands of jobs, according to the report,
which took six months to compile. To gather those numbers, the
report's authors examined Thomson Financial's database of all publicly
traded, venture-backed companies founded since 1970. It eliminated
those that had merged, been purchased or were otherwise no longer
trading on the public markets, and then determined the provenance of the
remaining companies' founders.
Its findings might even underestimate the role of immigrants, said NVCA
president Mark Heesen. ``Our board of 27 directors has told us that in
the Valley in particular, probably closer to 80 percent of privately
held, venture-backed companies were started by people who immigrated to
the U.S.'' One of those founders is Martin Roscheisen, the founder and
CEO of solar cell startup Nanosolar in Palo Alto, who was born and
raised in Munich, Germany, and has gone on to raise $103 million from
more than half a dozen venture capital firms.
``I didn't have any trouble when I (immigrated) to the U.S. 14 years
ago,'' he said. ``Today, it's quite an issue. We're facing a real
shortage of talented people as a result.''
While difficult to predict the study's impact, its timing may prove
auspicious. ``We're very much hoping that Congress will take a (renewed)
look at the legal side of immigration, and the woefully inadequate
policies that are currently in place,'' said Heesen.
Still, opposition remains to the NVCA's efforts. ``Many companies have
abused the program by hiring foreigners to replace American engineers,''
said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for Immigration
Reform, a nonprofit that supports immigration enforcement and overall
reductions in immigration levels. More, he said, ``You've seen higher
corporate profits in which workers aren't sharing. The law of supply
and demand tells you that if there was a dearth of skilled people,
you'd see wage inflation at a time when companies have more money.''
As part of its efforts, the NVCA is lobbying to promote the passage of
the SKIL Act of 2006, now before the House Judiciary Committee. The
bill, introduced in late June, would exempt from current visa caps any
foreigner who has earned a master's or higher degree from an accredited
U.S. university or been awarded certification based on his or her
post-doctoral training. The SKIL Act -- which stands for the Securing
Knowledge, Innovation, and Leadership Act -- would also increase the
number of H-1B visas awarded every year, from 65,000 to 125,000, with a
20 percent increase in visas the following year if the previous year's
quota is reached. H-1B visas, reserved for highly skilled guest
workers, were first awarded in 1990, but the number of the visas was
capped in 2004 at 65,000 by lawmakers alarmed by how big the program had
grown. (From 2001 through 2003, roughly 195,000 H-1B visas were awarded
annually.)
Contact Constance Loizos at cloizos@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5920.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/15/business/15visa.html?_r=2&ref=business&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
A New Push to Raise Cap on H-1B Visa
By MIGUEL HELFT
Published: November 15, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 14 A coalition of business and education groups is
making a renewed push to persuade Congress to raise the number of skilled
foreign workers allowed into the United States this year.
The coalition, which calls itself Compete America and whose members are
drawn heavily from the technology industry, sent a letter to every member
of
Congress on Monday calling for an increase in both the number of so-called
H-1B visas, which are used by skilled immigrants and the number of
employment-based green cards given to foreign workers.
The first part is to ensure that U.S. companies have the ability to hire
the
best and the brightest, said Jack Krumholtz, managing director for federal
government affairs at Microsoft. The second part is about making sure that
we are able to retain them.
Microsofts chairman, Bill Gates, is one of many technology executives who
have advocated increased flexibility to hire educated foreign workers like
engineers and scientists. He is expected to return to that theme at an
industry conference on Wednesday at Stanford University.
Increasing the number of H-1B visas has long been a top legislative
priority
of technology companies, which say they cannot find enough skilled workers
in the United States. After a temporary increase to 195,000 during the
years
of the Internet boom, the annual number of visas issued has been capped at
65,000. An additional 20,000 visas have been granted to foreign workers who
have an advanced degree from an American university.
But in recent years, all the visas allotted for a given year were claimed
on
or before the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1.
We cant hire people, said Jenifer Verdery, director of work force policy at
Intel.
The notion of allowing more skilled foreign workers in the United States
generally enjoys bipartisan support in Congress. Earlier this year, the
Senate passed a bill that would increase the cap on H-1B visas to 115,000
and would automatically raise the cap by a further 20 percent if all visas
for a given year were claimed. The bill also would raise the number of
employment-based green cards issued to 290,000, from 140,000.
But the bill stalled as the House and Senate deadlocked on broader
immigration reform legislation. And not everyone agrees that raising the
cap
on visas is a good idea.
We think that before raising the H-1B cap there should be reform of the
H-1B
system, said Ronil Hira, vice president for career activities at IEEE-USA,
a
professional organization representing engineers and computer programmers.
The organization, which includes many immigrants among its ranks, is not
opposed to legal immigration. But Mr. Hira said that the H-1B visa program,
which requires companies to pay foreign workers wages comparable to those
they pay American workers, was riddled with loopholes that allow employers
to pay subpar wages to immigrants. That, in turn, depresses the wages of
American workers, Mr. Hira said.
Lynn Shotwell, chairwoman of Compete America, said there was virtually no
chance that Congress would pass the Senate bill this year. But Ms. Shotwell
said the coalition, which includes universities and the Chamber of
Commerce,
was asking Congress to raise the cap on H-1B visas and green cards for the
remainder of the fiscal year.
Members of the coalition are hopeful that legislation modeled after the
Senate bill could be enacted next year, when Democrats will control
Congress. House Democrats have promoted what they are calling an innovation
agenda that includes wide availability of visas for skilled immigrants.
The National Venture Capital Association, which is among those advocating
an
expansion in visas and green cards for skilled workers, is backing that
case
with a study, to be released Wednesday, that highlights the role of
immigrant entrepreneurs in the American economy.
The study found that one in four publicly traded American companies that
were initially financed by venture capitalists in the last 15 years
included
at least one immigrant among their founders. During the 1980s, immigrants
were involved in founding one in five such companies, and prior to 1980
only
7 percent.
The notion of being able to come here and shape your own destiny is
tremendously appealing and, you have to believe, valuable for the economy,
job creation and wealth creation, said Axel Bichara, a partner at Atlas
Venture in Boston. Mr. Bichara came to the United States from Germany in
1986 to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A year later,
he
became co-founder of a software company.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/11/15/BUGPGMCI3G1.DTL
Tech leaders, immigrants want change
Drive to let companies hire more foreign-born workers
Jessica Guynn, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
The high-tech industry is touting a new study that showcases the economic
contributions of talented immigrants as part of an orchestrated campaign to
alter the nation's immigration laws to expand the number of highly skilled,
foreign-born professionals allowed to work here.
Making the case that high-tech immigration creates greater economic
opportunity for Americans, the National Venture Capital Association plans
to
release a study today that concludes that immigrants had a hand in starting
1 in 5 venture-backed public companies in the United States during the past
15 years. These companies have created thousands of jobs and have a
combined
market capitalization of $500 billion, the study found.
In high tech, the numbers are even more impressive: Forty percent of
venture-backed public companies, including Intel Corp., Google Inc., Yahoo
Inc., Sun Microsystems Inc. and eBay Inc., claim at least one foreign-born
founder. Foreign-born entrepreneurs are behind nearly half of
venture-backed
startups, the study also found. Not surprisingly, California, with its top
engineering schools and high-powered cluster of investors and
entrepreneurs,
outranks all other states in percentage of companies founded by at least
one
immigrant.
The study also coincides with the technology lobbying group TechNet's
Annual
Innovation Summit taking place today at Stanford University. Expanding the
number of immigrants able to work for or start high-tech companies in the
United States will top the agenda.
Critics say the study is just another political maneuver in the industry's
long-running campaign to swing open the nation's gates to more young
foreign-born talent willing to work longer hours for less pay, an influx
that would harm American workers, particularly older ones, and depress
wages. They dispute the study's methods and its conclusion that immigrant
workers drive the high-tech economy, saying the rate of entrepreneurship
among immigrants is no higher -- and, in fact, may be lower -- than among
engineers born in the United States. They also contend that the study's
author, Stuart Anderson, executive director of the National Foundation for
American Policy, is a veteran of conservative think tanks who runs an
organization that claims to be a nonpartisan public policy research outfit
but is instead an industry front group.
"They are pulling out all the stops, and that study is one of the stops,"
said UC Davis computer science Professor Norman Matloff, a longtime H-1B
visa critic. "The conclusion of that study was foregone. They knew what
they
were going to come up with before they started."
For decades, Silicon Valley has attracted engineers, computer programmers
and other highly skilled professionals from around the globe, but in recent
years the high-tech industry has complained that it is suffering from a
national brain drain, leading to a divisive debate from Silicon Valley to
Washington. The country's largest technology companies and most-prestigious
research institutions intensified their lobbying efforts this year for
permission to hire more overseas talent. Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill
Gates
even made a rare appearance on Capitol Hill.
Companies say they cannot find enough U.S.-born engineers, computer
scientists and other skilled professionals to fill openings -- a contention
that critics strongly dispute. Each year, the United States issues 65,000
H-1B visas that allow foreign professionals to work here for three to six
years. In 2001 and 2002, that number rose to nearly 200,000. A Senate bill
would have nearly doubled the H-1B quota to 115,000 a year and would have
helped clear a huge backlog of applications for permanent residency, but it
was derailed by a partisan stalemate over border security and illegal
immigration.
Mark Heeson, president of the National Venture Capital Association, says
his
organization is pushing the lame-duck Congress to green-light the so-called
Skill Bill as a separate measure. His organization is seeking to raise the
number of visas and exempt from the cap the nearly 600,000 foreign-born
students in the United States. Cutting down the wait of five years or more
for green-card holders is also a priority, he said.
Even if those last-minute lobbying efforts fail, pundits say the political
winds have shifted dramatically in high-tech's favor. The 110th Congress
may
be the friendlier to the interests of the technology industry with Nancy
Pelosi, the presumptive new speaker of the House, unveiling an "innovation"
agenda after meeting with venture capitalists and entrepreneurs one year
ago.
"We are cautiously optimistic that the likelihood has increased that these
issues will be resolved moving forward," said Aman Kapoor, founder and
president of Immigration Voice, a grassroots organization of thousands of
foreign-born professionals lobbying for changes in the immigration system
on
Capitol Hill.
Researchers may not be able to place a dollar figure on the economic losses
from stemming the tide of skilled professionals, but the cost to American
innovation is high as would-be entrepreneurs in such vital areas as
high-tech and stem-cell research, frustrated by red tape and long waits,
start their companies elsewhere, Kapoor contends.
Matloff disagrees. "Innovation has been the code word. The idea is that we
are falling behind other countries," he said. "They say, 'Look at what's
happening. They are going to surpass us. The only way to survive is through
innovation. We can't do it but the H-1B visas will innovate for us.' All of
that is total baloney."
E-mail Jessica Guynn at jguynn@sfchronicle.com.
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2006/11/15/PM200611153.html
Marketplace PM edition Go to Marketplace Money
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Silicon Valley is home to a number of successful companies founded by
immigrants. (David McNew, Getty Images)
Listen to story
http://www.publicradio.org/tools/media/player/marketplace/2006/11/15_mpp?start=00:00:05:24.0&end=00:00:07:19.0
VCs push for more skilled immigrants
Startup companies founded by immigrants have helped entrepreneurship
flourish in America, a new study finds. But the venture capitalists who
funded it have their own agenda, Steve Tripoli reports.
Photo: Silicon Valley is home to a number of successful companies founded
by
immigrants. (David McNew, Getty Images)
TEXT OF STORY
KAI RYSSDAL: Part of the debate over immigration has been about how illegal
immigrants supposedly steal jobs. But a new study out today says we need
certain immigrants if the economy's going to generate good jobs. Venture
capitalists funded the study. They figure immigration policy ought to
follow
the money. From the Marketplace Entrepreneurship Desk, Steve Tripoli has
more.
_____________________
STEVE TRIPOLI: It's easy to find high-profile U.S. companies whose founders
include immigrants. Google, eBay, Yahoo and Intel among them. Mark Heesen
of
the National Venture Capital Association says those companies make a case
for letting more of one type of immigrant in.
MARK HEESEN: "As venture capitalists we follow the entrepreneur. If
you want to keep good companies and good ideas in the United States
you have to have those entrepreneurs located in the United States."
It's the VCs' chosen method for attracting them that stokes a firefight.
The
study is aimed at increasing the number of H-1B visas the government
grants.
There's a bill before Congress to do just that. Those visas let skilled
workers in for up to six years.
But longtime critic Norman Matloff at the University of California says
business has another agenda here.
NORMAN MATLOFF: "The bottom line is H-1B is about cheap labor, and
that's what's driving all this."
Matloff cites congressional studies showing that employers pay H-1B workers
less than similarly skilled Americans. He says there's no shortage of
American tech entrepreneurs. And if tech workers were lacking their
starting
salaries would reflect that.
MATLOFF: "And they have been flat since 1999. So, obviously we don't
have a shortage, if salaries are not rising."
Mark Heesen of the VC group says market conditions determine salaries. And
he says they're no argument for shutting talent out in any event.
HEESEN: "The more educated individuals you allow to come into the
United States and create companies, the more jobs at the end of the
day this country is going to produce."
Expect just this kind of back and forth on this issue when the new Congress
takes its seats.
I'm Steve Tripoli for Marketplace.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20061115-9999-1b15venture.html
Ease work-visa rules, venture capitalists say, pointing to . . .
By Bruce V. Bigelow
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
November 15, 2006
Injecting itself into a national debate on immigration, the venture capital
industry reports that foreign-born entrepreneurs were crucial to the
success
of Intel, Google and scores of other U.S. technology companies.
Greek native Kleanthis Xanthopoulos combined Anatoli with Dysi, Greek words
for the East and West, in naming Anadys Pharmaceuticals, which he heads.
In a study to be released today, the National Venture Capital Association
found that over the past 15 years, immigrants founded one of every four
venture-backed startups that became publicly traded companies.
By releasing the study now, NVCA officials said they hoped to seize a
post-election opportunity to ease restrictions on employment visas that
enable foreign engineers and scientists to work and study in the United
States.
Given the increased rancor of the immigration debate, "we decided we needed
really hard data to make our case, and so we commissioned the study," said
Mark Heesen, president of the Virginia-based trade group.
The group called the 39-page report the first attempt to quantify the
success stories of people such as Andy Grove, the Hungarian-born engineer
who founded Intel, and Russian-born Sergey Brin, who helped start Google.
Immigrant-founded public companies today employ about 220,000 people in the
United States alone, and represent a total market value of more than $500
billion, according to the study.
"Yahoo would not be an American company today if the United States had not
welcomed my family and me almost 30 years ago," said Jerry Yang, who was
born in Taiwan and co-founded Yahoo. "We must do all that we can to ensure
that the door is open for the next generation of top entrepreneurs,
engineers and scientists from around the world to come to the U.S. and
thrive."
About 62 percent of immigrant-founded public companies were based in
California, most likely because of the regional clusters formed by venture
capital firms and technology companies.
Massachusetts ranked second, with 14 percent, followed by New Jersey, with
6
percent. Washington state and Texas each had 3 percent, with the remaining
12 percent located in other states.
In San Diego, the list of immigrant-founded startups includes Anadys
Pharmaceuticals, Novatel Wireless, Arena Pharmaceuticals and Wireless
Facilities.
The NVCA also said two-thirds of the U.S. companies that rely on H-1B visas
to hire foreign workers agreed that "current U.S. immigration laws
affecting
skilled professionals harm American competitiveness."
H-1B refers to a section in the Immigration and Nationality Act that
enables
U.S. companies and universities to employ educated foreign workers with
specialized skills in engineering, mathematics, business and other fields.
By the nature of their journey, people who immigrate to the United States
are more driven and more willing to take risks, said Anadys founder
Kleanthis Xanthopoulos, who was born in Greece.
"It's an extremely short-sighted view to limit H-1B visas," Xanthopoulos
said.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the number of H-1B visas
granted to U.S. employers has dropped to 65,000 a year, from 195,000
annually in 2000 and 2001.
Under a so-called skill bill, introduced by Texas Republican Sen. John
Cornyn, the cap on H-1B visas would be raised to 115,000 a year -- and
would
exempt nearly 260,000 foreign students enrolled in U.S. graduate programs.
The NVCA backs the measure, along with technology groups such as the
Semiconductor Industry Association and Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
Proponents distinguished their efforts, however, from the broader U.S.
debate over immigration.
"Skilled immigrants are huge multipliers for the U.S. economy, as the study
has shown," said Vinit Nijhawan, an Indian-born entrepreneur who is a
partner at Key Venture Partners, a venture capital firm in Waltham, Mass.
The broader debate, Nijhawan said, has mainly been about unskilled labor
and
the burdens imposed on U.S. health care and social services by illegal
immigrants. But, he added, "the skilled labor debate really has to rise up
in priority because it is extremely important for the future of the U.S."
Although finding solutions to illegal immigration and the H-1B visas are
not
mutually exclusive, proponents suggested the H-1B issue might be a simpler
problem for Congress to address.
"It's very worthy of serious debate in these final days of the 109th
Congress," said the NVCA's Heesen. "So we're looking very closely at this
lame-duck session, and hopefully something can be done in this period. If
not, we'll certainly be back in the 110th Congress."
The study was co-written by Stuart Anderson, the executive director of the
National Foundation for American Policy, and Michaela Platzer, the
president
of Content First, a research group.
From 1990 to 2005, they found that 88 of 268 venture-funded public
companies
were founded by immigrants, or 25 percent. From 1970 to 2005, the
percentage
was almost 20 percent, with 144 of 725 venture-funded public companies
started by immigrants.
In a glimpse of the future, the NVCA also reported that a survey found that
immigrants founded almost 47 percent of existing venture-backed companies
that remain privately held.
In other results, the study found the highest number of immigrant
entrepreneurs were from India. Of the 144 ventures, 32 were founded or
co-founded by immigrants from India; 17 were from Israel; and 16 from
Taiwan. None was from Mexico, and only three were from Latin America or
South America, Anderson said.
Slightly more than 90 percent of the 144 companies fell into four general
categories: 60 were high-tech manufacturers, 34 were information technology
companies, 30 were focused on life sciences, and 6 provided professional,
scientific or technical services.
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