In lieu of recent history, parents may one day tell their kids, "President? But why? When you grow up, you could work at Google." With over a million resumes per year, Google can afford to be choosey, and doesn't like having its talent pool options narrowed.
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.
Immigration of skilled workers to the USA is required because the necessary skills are not available from the current citizens. Why? Because the education system in the US is in a dire state and needs to be fixed to make graduates employable.
Don't blame Google for wanting to recruit the best in the world. If they are prevented from doing so by xenophobic lawmakers and protectionists such as yourselves, they will simply move elsewhere.
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No! No more recruits from
No! No more recruits from outside the country, Enough is enough! Millions of Americans are jobless. There is enough talent in the country and all companies should look for employees within the United States. In fact, even the sanctioned quota of 65000 H1B visas should be limited to only those foreign students studying in American educational institutions and not to outsiders. You want employees, then create a government organized job employment bureau and let all skilled jobless Americans register for free. I am sure the American companies will find enough employees from this job bureau. There are thousands of talented students both Americans as well as foreign students graduating from American colleges and universities each year.
It has become quite evident to the Americans now that the lawmakers are working in their own self interest instead of the common good of the people of America.
As for granting permanent residency to foreign students with post graduate degrees from American institutions, it sounds good, but yes, only if these students have studied prior four years of bachelor degrees in American colleges and universities. If they have been to high school here, even better. This factor is important because there are people who complete their four year degrees for cheap outside the U.S. (by the way, how one can check the authentics of these degrees? Some come with false degrees too!) and then register for higher education in the U.S., take advantage of all benefits available to them and get an easy pathway for permanent residency . This is not fair to students who have been paying huge amounts for a bachelor's degree in the U.S. and get treated differently. Their hard work and academic perserverance should also matter.