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Meager H-1B visa applications foreshadowing Silicon Valley decline

Written on
Apr 14, 2009 
Author
Edward Barrera  |
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Meager H-1B visa applications foreshadowing Silicon Valley decline

hiring2.jpgADOTAS — Two kids from India founded Scrabulous, a popular Facebook app, without ever being in the US, and half the Silicon Valley engineers were born oversees, up from 10 percent over the last few decades, according to the NY Times.

So where does that leave laid-off US workers as Congress argues over H-1B visas, and importing foreign workers, in a highly technological world where talent no longer needs to be in the same place. (Except apparently for Google).

“We are watching the decline and fall of the United States as an economic power — not hypothetically, but as we speak,” Craig R. Barrett, the chairman of Intel, told the Times. He blames a slouching education system and says a stopgap measure would be to let companies hire more foreign engineers.

But applications for the visas are slow so far this year, some blaming the byzantine rules, slow economy and others saying its the federal government’s protectionist attitude to help citizens first. But could there be a shift, pushed by all these factors, out of bringing workers into this country and connecting with them abroad? Apparently, Bay area residential rents are falling and top tier office rent is down 25 percent in a year.

One of the reasons why Silicon Valley became the tech center of the world was because it was relatively cheap to live and work there. But no longer. And in the end, does it matter?

* from paidcontent: Seventy-four percent of Silicon Valley CEOs “surveyed by the Silicon Valley Leadership Group expect the “employment picture” in their industry to worsen this year, up from 18 percent who felt the same way a year ago. Only 40 percent think their own companies will either grow their workforce or keep it the same size, down from 83 percent who said so in 2008.”

 – Express your opinion, comment below.





Reader Comments.

Craig Barrett reminds me of the old story about the guy who complains to the doctor that his leg hurts when he hits it with a hammer.

NSF knew in the 1980s that explosively expanding F (student) visas and creating the H-1B visa program would shift financial incentives so as to discourage US citizens from doing graduate work in the affected fields.

As Milton Friedman put it, these visa programs (along with E-3, J, and L) are artificial subsidies to executives like Barrett, and the presidents of US universities, for that matter. Multiple studies indicate that each one shifts $12K or more out of the pockets of US STEM workers and into the pockets of the executives.

The way to get more US students to enter these fields are easy to see: 1. Stop teaching these subjects in ways so as to actively discourage interest. 2. End the market distortions including the subsidies for displacing US STEM workers from careers in these fields.

Posted by jgo | 3:46 pm on April 14, 2009.

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