America has always been a nation of immigrants. Ever since the first colonists came over from Europe, wave after wave of people from foreign lands have moved here in search of a better life. But today, we are turning away the best and the brightest among them, and that is hurting the competitiveness of the United States.
Wadhwa, an Indian who lived in the United States as a child and returned as a young man to become a citizen, has already had a successful career as an entrepreneur, having founded two software companies. Today, he works as an academic, writer, and gadfly. He has posts at several universities, including Duke, Singularity, Stanford, and Emory. In the book, he argues that a combination of misguided US immigration policies and growing opportunities in other parts of the world has created a brain drain of innovative immigrants.
He has compiled some convincing evidence of the contribution immigrants make to the high-tech industry in the United States. Among the statistics:
First-generation immigrants or their children had founder roles in more than 40 percent of the Fortune 500, according to a 2011 study by the Partnership for a New American Economy.
A 2012 report by the same organization found that immigrants were responsible for more than one quarter of all new US businesses founded in 2011, even though they make up only 13 percent of the population.
In 2011, immigrants started nearly half of America's top 50 venture-funded companies and are key members of management or product development teams at more than 75 percent of those companies, according to a study by the National Foundation for American Policy. The same study also found that 25 percent of the publicly traded companies created between 1990 and 2005 that received VC funding had immigrant founders.
At the same time, Wadhwa is worried that the talent has begun to flow the other direction. He tells the stories of talented immigrants being forced to go back to their home countries because they can't get green cards or visas. Anand Chhatpar, for example, came to the States from India to get a degree in computer engineering and, in the process, launched two companies. He and his wife applied for citizenship but were denied, even though Chhatpar had been featured in BusinessWeek as one of the "Best Entrepreneurs Under 25."
He is now trying to run both companies, which are located in the US, from Bangalore and starting to hire programmers there instead of in the United States.
While some people in this country complain about US companies moving jobs offshore, here is a talented entrepreneur who would rather have his companies in America, providing jobs here. But this country won't let him.
At the same time, globalization has changed the balance of opportunity in the world. More countries are competing for talent. Developing nations like China are making tempting offers to keep, or lure back, their most talented people. And it's working. Wadhwa describes a trend of Chinese expats who come to the States for education, spend a few years working in high tech, and then return to China to found their own companies. The Chinese call them "sea turtles." They see plenty of economic opportunity, and often a better quality of life, back home. These are talented people who are going East, not West, in search of opportunities.
America is starting to feel the effects. Wadhwa's latest research shows that the proportion of immigrant-founded companies in the United States is declining. In Silicon Valley, it has dropped from 52.4 percent in 2007 to 43.9 percent today.
Wadhwa offers a prescription for fixing the problem, including increasing the number of green cards for skilled immigrants, changing the H1B program, and instituting a visa program for immigrants who want to start companies in the United States. But I doubt that Congress or the administration, whoever ends up winning the election, will have the political will to do much about the problem. Our leaders pay lip service to some of these ideas, but nothing ever gets done.
The so-called "startup visa," which would allow foreign entrepreneurs to found companies in the United States if they could attract a certain amount of venture capital and create a certain number of US jobs, has languished in Congress for two years. Most recently, a bill that would have increased the number of green cards available to foreign students who graduate from a US university with advanced degrees in science and engineering fell victim to partisan bickering, despite bipartisan support. (See: Partisan Quibbling Kills Green Card Bill.)
And with the fiscal cliff looming immediately after the election, there's no reason to think that Congress will be focusing on these issues anytime soon. Even if they do, it may already be too late.
Do you think America is in danger of falling behind in innovation because of the loss of skilled immigrants? What should we do about it?
Someone needs to send all these comments to the President Obama.
Nation of immigrants, YES. Not fighting the Govenment of CHINA who is trying to take over the worlds manufacturing. My guest is that CHINA's exports are down. Other counties are fighting the manufacturing War and trying to get there fair share of manufacturing back to there country. If CHINA exports are down then the battles are a sucess.
I had no idea there was a "battle for tech talent".
I guess Vivek is doing the patriotic thing and stepping forward to try to help American companies that cannot find technical people to hire.
NOT REALLY.
Sarcasm aside, the reality is that there are many American engineers willing and able to do the work that American companies need. The problem is that American companies prefer to hire cheap labor from India.
Presenting the issue as one of scarcity of technical talent is naive at best and dishonest at worst.
I wish that being a victim of name calling would be the extent of suffering caused by the false stories being spread by the likes of Vivek Wadhwa and the media that spreads his fraud and his propaganda.
Unfortunately, the suffering extends way beyond being the victim of name calling. The suffering extends to where hundreds of thousands of US STEM workers have been forced out of their careers by cheap entry level workers immigrating from third world countries. US STEM workers who have had to abandon their careers are losing their homes and their families.
As I reported earlier, the government and the politicians know that these recipients of the H-1B visa are NOT highly skilled. They know that 94% of the recipients of H-1B visas are not even fully competent. They know that US STEM workers are forced to train their replacements as a condition of receiving a severance package.
Clearly corporate America is training the recipients of the H-1B visa, instead of training the 50% of recent college grads who still have not found full time employment. Clearly corporate America is training recipients of H-1B visas instead of updating the skills of experienced workers with twenty years of experience.
Why is this happening? It is happening because the media of today is totally consumed with passing along the corporate propaganda instead of doing real journalism. Thank your lucky stars that your reporters are merely the victim of name calling instead of being the victim of the propaganda that your reporters are spewing.
It is not a matter of nice or not nice--it is a matter of experience, credentials and facts. Regardless of whether we agree or disagree with the premise of the book, the article, or the author, we are professionals here. It is clear that you question Wadwha's intent and credibility. Those are valid points and add some perspective to the discussion and the information Wadwha presents. Readers can draw their own conclusions from the information. We just ask that readers treat contributors and commentors with respect, and that works both ways. I don't think name calling advances the discussion.
Tam may be a very nice person. But the corporate media, including Tam, has become shills to the fraud similar to that being spread by Vivek Wadhwa.
Vivek Wadhwa is a shill, conducting studies with predetermined conclusions to the benefit of his sponsors, who are the executives of the largest Indian H-1B body shops in the world, companies that are stealing our jobs and taking those jobs back to India.
And the corporate media, including Tam, report the story like it is real news instead of the corporate propaganda that it really is. There is no objectivity coming out of this story. Objectivity requires work. This story is not journalism. This is stenograpy.
The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), was founded in 1992 in Silicon Valley by a group of successful entrepreneurs, corporate executives, and senior professionals with roots in the Indus region.
Wadhwa is a chapter founder of a TiE group in his locality, he has a background in offshoring to India, and he clearly is interested in growth and entrepreneurship between India and the US. The leaders of TiE are "who's who" of India's executive class.
I'm not criticizing his participation in this business group. I am however criticizing his ability to produce quality research free from outside influence.
Regarding the companies he founded, an infamous Vivek Wadhwa quote will give the reader a glimpse into Wadhwa's motivations. In a CIO article by Stephanie Overby entitled, "The Next Wave of Globalization: Offshoring R&D to India and China" dated Wednesday, October 31st, 2007, Wadhwa is quoted as saying, "I was one of the first [CEOs] to outsource software development to Russia in the early '90s. I was one of the first [CEOs] to use H-1B visas to bring workers to the U.S.A.," Wadhwa says. "Why did I do that? Because it was cheaper." Wadhwa knows what occurs, he complains about flawed immigration policy, yet he is a champion of a visa program that is a key part of the problem and that REQUIRES most of them go go home. Whadwa represents corporate interests, and more precisely the interests of Indian corporations and the offshoring model.
The fact that he is (said to be) the Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University is an affront to anyone who really cares about the sanctity of research. A director of research in academia should be a true researcher, not someone with a corporate agenda.
@twinsfan: I can't speak for Wadwha's credentials, but I can speak for the author's. Tam Harbert is one of the most experienced journalists I know in the high-tech business and has been acknowledged as such from organizations such as the Jesse H. Neal Awards. See http://tamharbert.com/.
As for your points about Whadwa, I will personally do some more digging so I can intelligently respond.
EBN has done its diligence on H1B: please see http://www.ebnonline.com/author.asp?section_id=1071&doc_id=241508. We acknowledge its flaws. But can we really blame the people that apply for these jobs when US corporations take advantage of H1-B and tax loopholes that keep revenue offshore?
If you would like to have a more enlightened coversation, the first step would be for the authors of your articles to be more familiar with the facts.
Vivek Wadhwa is a shill, a shill for the Indian H1B body shops that are offshoring jobs to India. His credentials are so superficial that any competent journalist could expose his fraud with just the slightest amount of research.
Wadhwa claims to be an entrepreneur. My first question is "Where was Vivek Wadhwa an entrpreneur?" For what company was Vivek Wadhwa an entrepreneur? Those two questions are fair questions. The author of this story and the other corporate propaganda should have already asked those questions and provided the readers with the answers.
Now lets address the editorial claim that India is not the only source of workers using H-1B visas. India is the source of somewhere between one half and two thirds of the total number of H-1B visas. India is the only sourse of Indian H1B body shops, like Tata, like Infosys, like Cognizant, like Satyam, like HCL, like IBM India, etc. The list goes on and on.
Again recipients of H1B visas are not "highly skilled" workers. They are REPLACEMENT workers. In fact 94% of the H1B visa recipients are not even "Fully Competent" according to the GAO. In 2011, the GAO concluded that a mere 6% of the recipients of the H-1B visas are "Fully Competent." The GAO also found that a staggering 54% of the recipients of the H-1B visas are "Entry Level" workers. And disenfranchised US STEM workers were required to train their replacements in order to receive their severence package.
This corporate propaganda completely ignored these facts, because the author is totally unqualified to author a report on this issue. She is merely reciting corporate propaganda.
Readers: We appreciate your continued readership and commentary on EBN. We hope to enlighten our readers through informed opinion and respectful discussion. We'd also like to avoid personal attacks on our contributors, editors and sources. The information presented regarding Wadwah's book is part research and part opinion, and his credentials are a matter of record. Let's have a discussion on the companies he founded and the objections that readers raise. It's an important part of putting the book in context, and let's examine the facts.
For example, India is not the the only source of H1B visa applicants; can we talk about other regions, corporations and some of the issues? How can some of the loopholes be avoided, and are there active bills in Congress that address these issues?
Qualcomm has launched a big push to spread its cellular technology, and thus increase its royalty income, not to mention chip sales, beyond mobile phones.
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Microsoft Surface: Potential Winners & Losers What are the implications for the electronics industry supply chain of Microsoft Corp.'s decision to launch its own tablet PC? Join industry veteran and EE Times' systems and OEM expert Rick Merritt on Tuesday, July 3, at 12:00 pm EDT for a Live Chat on this subject.
Join EBN contributor Jennifer Baljko on Thursday August 23, 2012, at 11:00 a.m. EST for a live chat on how electronic manufacturers in Thailand have shored up their supply chain to reduce the impact of future natural disasters.
Peter Drucker famously said "Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window." Yet in the razor's-edge world of electronics—with a lean supply chain and just-in-time demands—the need to know the future is vital.
While no one really can accurately predict the future, we can take guidance from another Drucker saying which is the best way to predict the future is to create it.
You've heard the saying "the No. 1 supply chain risk is your people." That hasn't always been the case. But today's complex global supply chain requires a new type of multitalented employee. It's one who understands, finance, marketing, economics, is savvy with technology, graceful with relationships and can think analytically.
Where are these people? Are universities properly preparing the next generation supply chain professionals? How do train your existing workforce for these new, demanding positions?
Brian Fuller, editor-in-chief of EBN, will lead a 60-minute Avnet Velocity panel discussion that will ask and answer these and other questions swirling around today's supply-chain talent challenges.
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