BRAIN
DRAIN
“I could not even comprehend
this would become a problem,”
he said. “I’m creating a company.
I’m creating jobs. There’s nothing
bad in what I’m doing and there’s
nothing I’m taking away from
someone else. The only thing I’m
doing is creating more!”
“SERIOUS ALARM”
Since 2005, the number of immigrant-founded startups in Silicon
Valley has declined from 52 percent to 44 percent, according to
Wadhwa, who argues this drop is
cause for “serious alarm” because
America needs to attract immigrant entrepreneurs for its economy to recover.
“The United States risks losing a key growth engine right at
the moment when it’s economy
is stuck in a deep ditch, growing
slowly and struggling to create
jobs,” Wadhwa wrote in his new
book, The Immigrant Exodus.
Their recent decline could be
linked to entrepreneurs finding better business prospects
abroad, especially in countries
with growing economies like India
and China. But advocates say a
major reason why immigrants are
launching fewer startups in the
United States is because they are
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struggling to secure visas to remain in the country.
The number of H-1B visas, or
temporary worker visas for skilled
immigrants, is capped at 65,000
a year, with an additional 20,000
available for immigrants with advanced degrees. Demand for those
visas far outstrips supply. (This
year, United States Citizenship
and Immigration Services, or USCIS, received about 277,000 petitions for H-1B visas.) And each
country is restricted to 7 percent
of the 140,000 employment-based
green cards that are issued annually, meaning immigrants from
China and India often must wait
more than a decade for permanent
residency. These limits were not a
problem before, but have now fallen far short of demand as millions
of immigrants with high-tech skills
have flocked to the United States.
Foreign-born entrepreneurs can
face additional obstacles. To qualify for an H-1B visa, applicants
must prove that someone else
controls their employment. For
immigrant founders, that means
creating a separate board of directors and relinquishing some ownership of their company. Darash
and his lawyer say that his visa
was denied because, according to
immigration officials, he did not
adequately prove that someone
could fire him. Visa applicants