Myth Busting

For more than three decades, employers have routinely, but falsely, complained that the worker shortage makes importing overseas labor mandatory for their economic survival. The H-2A and the H-2B visas are mostly granted to blue-collar workers. On the other hand, the H-1B visa issued to IT workers denies college-educated tech specialists a chance to land a white-collar job, earn a middle-class wage, and use their entry level position as a launching pad for greater success.

Advocates for more H-1B visas, a powerful group that includes the Chamber of Commerce, most of Congress and the media, defend their push for higher visa caps by insisting that immigrants have founded dozens of successful tech companies that employ tens of thousands of U.S. citizens. The more incoming H-1Bs, the advocates continue, the more Americans will land high-paying jobs.

Much of this rhetoric was on display at last week’s Senate Hearing on Immigration and Economic Growth. With little detail offered, open border advocates touted the need for more skilled immigrants to spur on innovation and productivity.

U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), introducing her 2011 bill that would create more science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) opportunities for foreign-born graduates of U.S. universities, said: “Companies like Intel, Google, News Corp, Yahoo, and eBay were founded by innovative immigrants and now employ tens of thousands of people. More than 52 percent of Silicon Valley startups were founded or cofounded by immigrants, and immigrant-founded companies produced $52 billion in sales and employed 450,000 workers in 2005. Immigration has historically made our economy stronger.”

Using the deceptive narrative that H-1B visa holders are essential for the U.S. tech industry to grow, Stuart Anderson, a Forbes senior contributor, and the National Foundation for American Policy’s founder, leads the private sector’s charge for more – and more, more, more – H-1B visas. In his 2016 NFAP policy brief, Anderson wrote:

“Immigrants play a key role in creating new, fast-growing companies, as evidenced by the prevalence of foreign-born founders and key personnel in the nation’s leading privately-held companies. Immigrants have started more than half (44 of 87) of America’s startup companies valued at $1 billion dollars or more and are key members of management or product development teams in over 70 percent (62 of 87) of these companies. The research finds that among the billion-dollar startup companies, immigrant founders have created an average of approximately 760 jobs per company in the United States. The collective value of the 44 immigrant-founded companies is $168 billion, which is close to half the value of the stock markets of Russia or Mexico.”

To determine immigrants’ actual contribution to new Silicon Valley startups, the Institute for Sound Public Policy dove into the data, and found that Lofgren, Anderson, et al, purposely play loose with the facts. IfSPP drew its information base from the Fortune 200 list of most influential Silicon Valley software and hardware companies, as ranked by revenue. Of 66 Silicon Valley startup founders, eight were immigrants, or 12 percent. Determining the immigrant contribution to the founding of Silicon Valley tech firms means allotting them a proportional share in the firm’s founding. For example, one immigrant among three founders carries a 33 percent weight in the calculation. The immigrant share in founding the most important tech companies is 10.7 percent. The following companies have one immigrant cofounder: Alphabet, Meta, Tesla, Qualcomm, Uber, Nvidia, AMD and Texas Instruments.

But, the key takeaway that destroys the convoluted ramblings of Lofgren and Anderson is that the cofounders weren’t Indian, Pakistani or Chinese, the nationalities the pair vigorously promote for H-1B visas, but rather Russian, Brazilian, South African, Italian, Canadian, Taiwanese and English.

The stakes in the H-1B’s outcome are high. Each visa issued to a foreign national represents one less job for a U.S. citizen. Lofgren, elected by U.S. citizens, should protect her Bay Area working constituents. Anderson, a professional journalist, should offset his commitment to more H-1Bs by exposing the rampant fraud in the visas and suggesting ways to end it. Or, at a minimum, stick to writing the “… truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. On Twitter @JoeGuzzardi19.