Apr 11, 2009

AnnaLee Saxenian Discusses How Immigration Fuels the Tech Industry

From the New York Times

Tech Recruiting Clashes With Immigration Rules

By Matt Richtel

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Where’s Sanjay?...

Google is based here in Silicon Valley. But Sanjay G. Mavinkurve, one of the key engineers on this project, is not.

Mr. Mavinkurve, a 28-year-old Indian immigrant who helped lay the foundation for Facebook while a student at Harvard, instead works out of a Google sales office in Toronto, a lone engineer among marketers.

He has a visa to work in the United States, but his wife, Samvita Padukone, also born in India, does not. So he moved to Canada.

“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....

Indeed, recent immigrants like those at Google have been successful.

“The thing distinctive about this generation, and I think unprecedented, is that they are coming with the highest level of skills in the leading industries,” said AnnaLee Saxenian of the school of information at the University of California, Berkeley.

She added that this was acute in Silicon Valley because of its entrepreneurial culture.

“You don’t see immigrant success at any other place in the U.S. at anywhere near the same scale,” she said.

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Last updated:

October 4, 2016