Ninety percent of Google US employees are American citizens or permanent residents, Keith Wolfe and Pablo Chavez assure readers of the Google Public Policy Blog, in response to criticism of the company’s support of expanding the controversial H-1B visa program. The other ten percent are pulled temporarily (and cheaply, argue critics) from abroad.

Wolfe and Chavez bemoan the fact that tens of thousands of foreign workers will be denied entry into the US; less than half of those who submitted applications this year will be approved. Google itself submitted 300 H-1B applications. As a result, Google is urging the US government to raise the "artificially low cap."

They write: "[I]f we’re to remain an innovative company — one that is creating jobs in the U.S. every day — we also need to hire exceptional candidates who happen to have been born elsewhere. After all, if we were to hire only U.S.-born talent, we would effectively close ourselves off from most of the world’s population…."

It may be important to note that no Google Public Policy Blog post comes without a certain amount of strategic timing. H-1B visas were a hot topic in Washington this week, including an announced Department of Labor audit of "Corporate Immigration Law Firm of the Year" Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy, a law firm with intimate ties to Intel, HP, IBM, Sun* and Oracle.

The H-1B visa subject is a touchy one, especially in light of American corporations actively exploiting loopholes to avoid hiring more expensive American employees. Google, at least, has that ninety percent American-made label to point to.

_{Before Google, CEO Eric Schmidt headed up Sun Microsystems.}  
 

Bock serves as Vice President of People Operations at the search engine corporation, and, as reported by the AP’s Dibya Sarkar, his appearance marks the first time any of Google’s executives have testified about immigration in front of Congress.

Sarkar conveyed Bock’s main message: “American technology companies will lose highly skilled foreign workers to Indian and Chinese rivals if the country’s work-visa program is not fixed.”

Bock also, according to CNET’s Anne Broache, emphasized the importance that those workers have played in Google’s own past.  “Within Google, there are countless examples of immigrants and nonimmigrant foreign workers playing a vital role in our company,” he stated.

As for the future, Bock continued, “It is no stretch to say that without these employees, we might not be able to develop future revolutionary products like the next Gmail or the next Google Earth.”

It could be difficult to poke holes in Bock’s arguments – Google has been immensely successful, stayed unexpectedly “good,” and, as far as anyone knows, not created any terrorists.  But, lawmakers being what they are, I’m sure someone will find a way.  And this debate affects many more people and companies than just those based out of Mountain View.

Still, Google got to go to Washington, and that’s pretty interesting.

In regards to the legislation that would make modifications to the H1-B visa and green card caps for highly skilled employees, the Microsoft chairman applauded the Senate “for recognizing that U.S. competitiveness depends on our ability to recruit and retain the world’s best minds, no matter where they are from.” He also gave special kudos to Arlen Specter “for his critical leadership on this issue.”

I’m not saying I support or oppose Gates’s views on the subject, but I find it somewhat presumptuous for him to stick his nose into the midst of it. Gates should not believe that his brilliant success as a programmer and businessman in any way qualifies him to give counsel on national affairs. This particular issue is connected to Gates’s area of expertise to at least some degree, however – he makes mention of the “scientists and engineers who would like to use their skills to help U.S. companies.”

The statement as a whole was especially disquieting because of the massive fortune that Gates has behind him. The Microsoft chairman has more than enough money to affect certain events, should he take an interest in doing so. That’s not an allegation that Gates has, is, or is planning to lobby for any changes, but such riches have an undeniable influence.

Gates has every right to express his political views, of course. But given his wealth, and his lack of expertise in this realm, I kind of wish he’d keep his thoughts to himself.

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… ‘Visiting NevOn’ Geoloc map showing 26 simultaneous visitors to this blog. I quickly grabbed a screenshot, shown here.

The little green circles (or ‘throbbing green doughnuts’ as one visitor has commented) show the countries where current visitors are. The red dots show the countries of previous visitors.

A quick dip into my Statcounter visitor stats showed that over 90% of these visitors were all looking at one post – the short one I wrote yesterday about Jeremy Wright’s experiences with US Immigration, with links to his posts. And the vast majority of visits were from the US. And, the high visitor traffic has been going on for much of this afternoon.

Why would this post gain so much attention? As the subject of the post, Jeremy’s writings on his blog are far more substantive and, well, by Jeremy himself. Jeremy, maybe you’ve had a big spike in visitors today as well.

26 visitors at once isn’t anything to shout about for a lot of blogs (Jeremy probably gets that many every hour), but for this blog it’s a lot when the most I’ve usually seen at any one time is about 14.

Looking more at the stats, it intrigued me to note that the majority of the individual visits were coming in from ‘no referring link.’ That usually means the visitor clicked on a link in an email or a favorite. In other words, not coming from a link on another web page. The details in the stats for ‘host name’ showed some interesting things – lots of ‘gov,’ ‘state,’ ‘mil’ and ‘edu’ in those names identified as being in the US. And the locations – Washington DC, Maryland, Virginia. All close to (if not at) where the federal government is.

Ah, the time. 3.15pm here in Amsterdam is 9.15am on the US east coast. People getting into their offices, on the net, etc.

So suddenly my little blog’s under a federal spotlight. Hmm, not sure I like the sound of that! I wonder if those friendly immigration folk will ask me about it on my next trip over (he says jokingly).

Then I spotted a referring URL link: http://www.politechbot.com/2005/03/18/dont-say-blogger/. That belongs to Politech which, the site says: “Politech is the oldest Internet resource devoted to politics and technology. Launched in 1994 by Declan McCullagh, the mailing list has chronicled the growing intersection of law, culture, technology, and politics. Since 2000, so has the Politech web site.”

And indeed, the post there is the text of my post as an email. That explains the ‘no referring link.’

Declan, thanks (I think) for the exposure. Politech clearly has a lot of subscribers.

Now I need to persuade TypePad that it’s really not my fault that I’ve exceeded my monthly bandwidth allowance in just one day…

Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.

Neville is currentlly the VP of New Marketing at Crayon. Visit Neville Hobson’s blog: NevilleHobson.com.

Today’s Daily Telegraph carries a report on proposals that were announced in parliament on Thursday, where Rita Verdonk, the Minister for Integration and Immigration, said a video film designed to capture the essence of Dutch life would be sent to applicants in their home countries. The proposals were first announced by Minister Verdonk in December.

The Telegraph report said that it’s expected that some 14,000 candidates, mostly from Turkey, Morocco and Suriname, will take the test each year under the proposed newcomers’ integration act, which must first be approved by parliament. The report said that the exam would not be required for citizens of other European Union countries, or for people from Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Canada, the USA, Australia, New Zealand or Japan. Female victims of people trafficking would also be exempt.

This is the latest sign of the growing government hard line on immigration following the murder of film maker Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam last November.

Murders and death threats from Muslim extremists have been matched by rising assaults on immigrants and arson attacks on mosques, the Telegraph reported. There are now nearly a million Muslims in The Netherlands, or six per cent of the population, the Telegraph said.

It also comes at a time when more people are leaving The Netherlands than are arriving as migrants or asylum seekers.

Daily Telegraph | Dutch plan test aimed at curbing Muslim migrants (registration required)

A related development is that, for the first time, it’s now a legal requirement to carry identification at all times when out in public. This law came into effect on 1 January 2005.

Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.

Neville is currentlly the VP of New Marketing at Crayon. Visit Neville Hobson’s blog: NevilleHobson.com.

“I think a very important part of the productivity gains in the past decade were associated with our open immigration policy,” Bernanke said. “If we don’t allow, if we don’t make provision for bright people, whether they be graduate students or professional people to come…that’s a loss to our society and a loss to our potential productivity.”

“For our growth (this year) to be what we hope it will be, that is, above trend, maybe 3-1/2 percent or even better, we need for the trade balance to be no worse of a drag than it has been recently,” said Bernanke.

A Reuters article points out that stronger growth around the world would help because U.S. trade partners could be less reliant on exporting to the U.S. if their own consumers spent more money.

“I think there’s a reasonable expectation of a decent performance in Europe and in Japan and continued strength in China,” claimed Bernanke.

“Our hope is that the trade balance will not worsen and become even more of a drag in 2005 than it was in 2004 and if that’s the case, the prospects for reasonable (U.S.) growth are pretty good,” he said.

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