Trump Signs Order That Could Lead to Curbs on Foreign Workers

nytimes.com

1 point·davidf18··2 comments

"Companies like Microsoft, Intel and Amazon are also big recipients. At least 15 percent of the American workforces of Facebook and the chip maker Qualcomm hold H-1Bs, according to the most recent documents the companies have filed with the Labor Department."

Interesting, 15%: jobs that should be held by American. It begs credulity that Facebook and Qualcomm could not find American staff. Rather, it is more credible that they wanted lower cost staff that could not change jobs if they wanted to.

Also from the article: "Representative Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat whose district includes Silicon Valley, said the issue of foreign workers was real, but dismissed the president’s order as poorly targeted and unlikely to achieve its desired result."

“Half of the start-ups in Silicon Valley were created by highly skilled people from other countries,” she said. “I don’t think the president and his staff fully appreciates that fact.”

Well, first off, Trump has Peter Thiel as a consultant and so I'd guess he understands very well the dynamics of SV. Name someone has high visibility that was a consultant to Obama in the manner Thiel is to Trump.

Second, the statement is misleading if not false. Some of the SV startups had as one founder someone not from the US. That is not to say that a founder could have been from the US instead.

Microsoft: 0 Apple: 0 Oracle: 0 Amazon: 0 Facebook: 1 (Savarin) Intel: 1 (Andy Grove -- big)

Google: 1 Sergey Brin but he came to US as 6 yo. Hardly a H1-B visa person. Also, Andy Grove did not come as H1-B visa but rather as Hungarian refugee. He came in 1956 when Hungary was under control of Soviets and in fact right after or during the Hungarian revolution.

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