green cards

Silicon Valley execs press D.C. on immigration law fixes

Silicon Valley firms are presenting a rare united front in an effort to end a political logjam that has blocked high-tech immigration reform.

In an unusual show of support that underscores how important the topic has become, executives from Facebook, Google, eBay and other major tech companies sent a letter today to President Obama and congressional leaders asking them to fix immigration law by the end of 2013. The current system is broken, they say, blaming visa shortages, long waits for green cards, and difficulties bringing spouses and children to the United States.

"Because our current immigration system is … Read more

U.S. firms fear Europe will snatch up foreign tech workers

The European Union's new proposal aimed at fast-tracking the immigration process for workers in "highly skilled" is making some U.S. technology heavyweights nervous.

It's no secret that American tech firms prize vast quantities of H-1B temporary visas and permanent residency permits, otherwise known as green cards. The companies argue that these tools are necessary to bring in foreigners for positions they claim suffer from shortages of qualified Americans, particularly the foreign nationals who represent the majority of masters and Ph.D. graduates from U.S. universities in relevant technical fields.

Now they're concerned that … Read more

Allow more green cards for foreign techies, Congress told

Editor's note: This story was updated at 10:53 a.m. PDT to clarify a description of IEEE-USA.

High-tech companies and groups representing American engineers are famous for clashing over whether it's a good idea to allow U.S. companies to hire more foreign workers on temporary H-1B visas.

But what's sometimes forgotten in the debate is a key point of agreement among at least some representatives of the warring sides. A new joint letter (click for PDF) to Congress from the Semiconductor Industry Association and IEEE-USA, the U.S. branch of the world's largest professional … Read more

Why America needs foreign students

Here's one more reason to give green cards to foreign graduate students.

They are the only ones in school.

U.S. citizens outnumber foreign nationals in undergraduate electrical engineering programs in U.S. universities by a wide margin, according to a report form the Engineering Workforce Commission of the American Association of Engineering Societies.

U.S. kids accounted for 89 percent of the undergrads in these programs in 2006.

But 51 percent of the students in masters programs in EE in U.S. universities were foreign nationals last year. Only 49 percent come from the states.

In PhD programs, … Read more