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<\/a> They entered the country legally and have contributed disproportionately to our nation\u2019s competitiveness. They paid our high taxes and have been model citizens. All they want to do is to share the American dream and help us grow our economy.<\/p>\nThey could be starting companies, buying houses, building community centers, and splurging like Americans. But because we don\u2019t have enough permanent-resident visas (green cards) for them, they\u2019re stuck in the same old jobs they had maybe a decade ago when they entered this country. They are getting really frustrated and many are returning to their home countries to become\u00a0unwilling competitors Xenophobes will claim that immigrants take jobs away and blame them for everything that is wrong in their lives and in America. But as TechCrunch <\/a>wrote It\u2019s not only jobs that they\u2019ve created. In 2006, more than 25% of U.S. global patents had authors who were born abroad \u2014 and this doesn\u2019t even count people like me, who came here, became citizens, and then filed multiple patents. Of Qualcomm\u2019s global patents, 72% had foreign-born authors, as did 65% of Merck\u2019s, 64% of GE\u2019s, and 60% of Cisco\u2019s. I\u2019m not talking about silly patents filed with the U.S. Patent Office here, I\u2019m talking about WIPO PCT\u00a0 applications Why does Silicon Valley need a foreign-born workforce? Because these immigrants are able come to a foreign land where they face hardship and discrimination and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the world\u2019s best technical minds and most successful entrepreneurs.\u00a0 They are able motivate Silicon Valley\u2019s top guns to work even harder and think smarter. They add a global perspective and enrich America.<\/p>\n The largest immigrant founding groups are Indian, British, and Chinese. Indian-born immigrants, for example, founded 6.7% of America\u2019s tech companies and 15.5% of those in Silicon Valley \u2014 but, according to the U.S. census, constitute way less than 1% of the U.S. population. So do the Chinese, but they contribute to 16.8% of our global patents. It doesn\u2019t take a statistician to figure that these are pretty impressive numbers.<\/p>\n Yes, I know that H-1B\u2019s don\u2019t start companies. And that is the problem.\u00a0We don\u2019t let them.<\/em><\/p>\n Hundreds of thousands of mostly very smart and highly educated workers who could be starting companies are not. While they wait for their green cards, they can\u2019t even change jobs or accept a promotion, for fear of losing their turn in line. If they lose their job, they have zero days to find another one \u2014 or get booted out of the country. Their employers know that these workers aren\u2019t going anywhere, so they can go easy on the salary increases and bonuses. Some unscrupulous employers do take advantage of them. And their spouses usually can\u2019t work, and in some states can\u2019t even get drivers licenses, because they don\u2019t have social-security numbers. Does this sound like America?<\/p>\n Unlike the daunting economic problems facing the country, this problem is easy to fix. Just increase the number of green cards for skilled workers. Maybe let them cut the line if they buy a house or start a company that employs a bunch of Americans. My guess is that we\u2019ll get tens of thousands of startups and a couple of hundred thousand houses sold. That is a bigger economic boost than the clunkers program we\u2019ve just thrown $2 billion dollars at.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have a suggestion for our President on how to boost economic growth without spending a penny: Free the H-1B\u2019s….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":655,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-i-read-on-internet","wpcat-8-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakamsani.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakamsani.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakamsani.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakamsani.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakamsani.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakamsani.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":681,"href":"https:\/\/lakamsani.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions\/681"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakamsani.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakamsani.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakamsani.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakamsani.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>. And they are taking our economic recovery with them.<\/p>\n<\/a> last week, skilled immigrants create more jobs than they take away. That is a fact. My research team documented thatone quarter\u00a0<\/a>of all technology and engineering startups nationwide from 1995 to 2005 were started by immigrants. In Boston, it was 31%, in New York, 44%, and in Silicon Valley an astonishing 52%. In 2005, these immigrant founded companies employed 450,000 workers. Add it up. That\u2019s far more than all the tech workers we gave green cards to in that period.<\/p>\n<\/a> \u2014 the patents that help our companies compete globally.<\/p>\n