US immigration needs to attract more IT innovators

June 25 2009 by Liam Clifford

US immigration: Zoe Lofgren

Experts are claiming that the current US immigration policy is resulting in a shortage of high-achieving, foreign-born students studying in the US and going on to work in IT within Silicon Valley.

Representative Zoe Lofgren, the chair of the Judiciary Immigration Subcommittee, says the trend for protectionism will leave the state lacking in the minds it needs to pull the country out of recession. She explains, "I believe we are going to innovate our way out of the economic woes we have, and in order to do that you need innovators."

A struggling local economy and better job prospects in other countries are increasingly attracting talented students to study in Australia and the UK instead of moving to the US to study and eventually work.

Lofgren says US immigration policy should be trying to attract these people to live in the US. Looking back it is easy to see the input foreign-born entrepreneurs and innovators have had on US industry, with half the start-ups emerging from Silicon Valley between 1995 and 2005 being founded by foreign-born talent.

Ken Wilcox, the president of the Slicom Valley Bank says, "we're simply not producing, in relative terms, significant numbers of engineers or scientists from people who have already been here for a number of generations …you've got to bring them in from the outside."

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