Immigration: Google Makes Its Case

Business leaders tell Congress that to attract and retain the best minds, the U.S. must keep the doors open to immigrants

by Peter Elstrom

As the U.S. engages in a heated debate over how to overhaul its immigration policies, a top Google (GOOG) executive made the case before Congress to open the doors to more high-skilled foreign workers and make it easier for them to become citizens. "The fact is that we are in a fierce worldwide competition for top talent unlike ever before," said Laszlo Bock, vice-president for people operations at Google. "As companies in India, China, and other countries step up efforts to attract highly skilled employees, the United States must continue to focus on attracting and retaining these great minds."

Bock's comments came June 6 during a day when business leaders testified on immigration reform. The four men who appeared before the House subcommittee on immigration represented very different sectors of the economy, from restaurants to farming to the Internet. But they all agreed that the U.S. needs to welcome more workers from abroad.

Courting Controversy

"We have a serious demographic problem in the United States," said John Gay, senior vice-president for government affairs and public policy at the National Restaurant Assn. "Without an overhaul to our dysfunctional immigration system, we are in danger of not having the workers we need to grow our economy."

Whether the country's immigration laws will be rewritten this year remains very much in question. On May 17, a bipartisan group of senators unveiled one proposal for comprehensive immigration reform, affecting low- and high-skill workers. But the initiative has taken heavy criticism from all sides.

Conservatives argue that giving the 12 million illegal immigrants in the country a path to citizenship amounts to amnesty, while liberals say that deemphasizing family ties in favor of work skills is unfair (see BusinessWeek.com, 5/18/07, "A 'Troubled' Immigration Proposal"). The House, led by immigration subcommittee chair Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), is holding hearings on the issue, while the Senate debates the controversial proposal.

H-1B Reliant

In his testimony before Lofgren and other subcommittee members, Bock pointed out that immigrants have been deeply intertwined with the history of Google and the tech industry overall. The founders of Intel (INTC), eBay (EBAY), Yahoo! (YHOO), and Sun Microsystems (SUNW) all included immigrants who came to America. At Google, co-founder Sergey Brin was able to help start the search engine because his parents had been welcomed into the country. "Sergey's parents fled the Soviet Union in 1979 when he was six," said Bock. "A first-generation American, he is now one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world."

Bock made it clear that the contributions to Google from people born outside the U.S. go well beyond Brin. "Immigrants from countries like Canada, Iran, and Switzerland now lead our business operations, global marketing, global business development, and data infrastructure operations," he said.

Bock said Google makes particularly active use of the temporary work visa, known as an H-1B, that allows people from abroad to work in the U.S. for several years. He said 8% of the company's employees in the U.S. are on H-1B visas.