From the NY Times:
“Every American I’ve talked to says: ‘Dude, it’s ridiculous that we’re not doing everything we can to keep you in the country. We need people like you!’ ” he said.
“The people of America get it,” he added. “And in a matter of time, I think current lawmakers are going to realize how dumb they’re 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.
I have nothing against immigrants since my parents were immigrants themselves. I also admire Mr. Mavinkurve for the drive that has gotten him to where he is now. It is quite amazing that he was there at the inception of Facebook and played a major role in some of Google’s product releases. But the question I have to ask is why are we not focusing on educating the American workforce? We make a college education here so unaffordable. We end up saddling college students with thousands of dollars of debt in the form of student loans. If you ever have a chance to read Strapped by Tamara Draut you’ll see what it’s like for twenty-and-thirty somethings in the age we are in. I’m part of the strapped generation make no mistake about it, but my own personal circumstance is best left for another blog post.
There’s no reason why the programmers, designers and engineers the country so desperately needs, not only for web & IT related fields, but for the new Green Economy can’t come from within our borders. We have hundreds of thousands of young people who can’t get into college or complete or further their education because of debt. Got Tuition? Many of us need it.
All in all, immigration is a good thing for America. The problem is that corporations are looking to bring people in from out of the country first not last. The have some reasons for doing this, obviously our education system has major problems as I’ve already mentioned.
Lastly, I wanted to mention that there is also another issue concerning corporations and the visas they seek. Not all of them are like Google wanting to bring people into the country. There have been occurrences of corporations abusing H1-b visas and even worse the workers who come in under H2-b visas. Regarding the H1-b visas their abuse usually has to do with corporations using the visas to outsource American jobs.