The beginning of talent war
According to a report from the “Partnership for a New American Economy” more than 40 percent of the top 500 companies in the U.S were founded by immigrants. Beside top technology companies such as Intel, Google and eBay that were created by immigrants, 214 of the 500 largest companies in the U.S also had immigrant founders.
The report cited the fact that most immigrants were studying technology and science when most U.S students preferred to study business and finance. The report noted: “Thirty years ago, wealth was created mostly by business and finance but since then most wealth were created by technology. Since more immigrants and foreigners are studying science and technology, they had the advantage. Today revenue generated by companies founded by immigrants is greater than the GDP (gross domestic product) of every country in the world outside the U.S., except China and Japan.” Companies owned by immigrants had combined revenues of $1.8 trillion. Among the billionaires and millionaires in the U.S, more than two third were immigrants.
All well known companies such as Apple, Google, AT&T, Budweiser, Colgate, eBay, General Electric, IBM, and McDonalds were founded by immigrant or the child of an immigrant. Steve Jobs was a child of an immigrant from Syria. Walt Disney was the child of an immigrant from Canada, as well as the founders of Oracle (Russia) IBM (Germany), Clorox (Ireland), Boeing (Germany), 3M (Canada) and Home Depot (Russia). Among successful technology companies in Silicon Valley, over 65% owned by Indian and Chinese immigrants. Most of them were foreign students studied in the U.S. and decided to stay and established companies here.
Today, two-thirds of the graduates in science and engineering fields are foreigners. Foreign students with master's degrees and Ph.D are a majority in every U.S Schools. The issue is current law limits them to stay here permanently causing some to leave, taking their skills and education with them. That is why President Obama and the U.S Congress are working to change the F-1 and H-1B visas to attract foreign skilled workers by allowing them to stay permanently in the U.S.
Moving faster than the U.S. Canada is opening its doors to IT skilled workers. This year (2012), Canada plans to admit between 240,000 and 265,000 new permanent residents, especially for people with degree in science and technology. Between 2005 and 2010, Canada has increased its permanent visas to foreigners by 7% mostly to IT skilled workers, entrepreneurs, self-employed, investors. Indians were among the highest numbers of immigrants who moved to Canada with 32,000 Indians who gained permanent residence status in Canada in 2010.
A Canadian government officer said: “For skilled professionals, our new immigration policy is very good. Many immigrants have done well in this country as entrepreneurs, executives, and academicians. There are many success stories that these people contributed to our economy. Despite the global slowdown, many sectors of the Canadian economy have been showing strong growth and many were from immigrants businesses”.
The new immigration policies from western countries have created issues with China and India as they also need to have skilled workers to build their economies. A Government officer complained: The “Brain-drain” supported by western governments is stealing our talents, hurt our economy and should be stopped”. Despite the complain, the number of application for visas to the U.S and Canada has been increasing steadily since the announcement was made. It seems that the talent war has begun.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
