Four immigration fixes that could turbo-charge tech

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

In recent years, everyone from Bill Gates to Facebook's (FB, Tech30) Mark Zuckerberg to Reddit's Alexis Ohanian have spoken out about the importance of immigration reform.

Foreign students disproportionately study tech fields, but there are limited options for them to stay in the U.S. after graduation. This hurts the U.S.' competitiveness and stifles innovation, especially since foreign-born entrepreneurs account for 44% of Silicon Valley founders, according to Vivek Wadhwa, a fellow at Stanford Law School.

"In today's environment, where we have a war for talent and for STEM jobs here in the U.S., it's impossible to find talent and it's really detrimental for the growth of the tech community," said Romish Badani, founder of immigration software platform Bridge US.

Here's what techies and experts are concerned about:

The H1-B visa policy is too restrictive.

The H-1B is the most popular visa for high-skilled foreigners. But it's capped at 85,000 a year and the quota is filled through a lottery. According to U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services, more than twice that number of people applied in one week this year.

Related: Broadcast networks opt out of Obama immigration speech -- except Univision

However, it's not within Obama's executive power to increase the annual number of H-1Bs, according to Tahmina Watson of Watson Immigration Law.

But he could tap unused visas from a previous decade.

The rest is here:
Four immigration fixes that could turbo-charge tech

Related Posts

Comments are closed.