Silicon Valley talent dream tied to immigrant hopes

San Francisco, Feb 17 (AFP) Silicon Valley's long crusade to break open doors to America for foreigners with key technology skills hinges on a political battle in Washington over broader immigration reform. For more than a decade, the tech sector has been struggling to get more visas and green cards for immigrants with engineering, math or science skills. While Silicon Valley has been largely backing reform-minded Democratic candidates including President Barack Obama, Republicans have begun paying attention to broader immigration reform, an issue dear to US Latinos. "The election happened and the Republicans took a shellacking from Hispanics," said Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation think-tank in Washington. "It was a wake-up call," he continued. "A comprehensive approach to immigration reform became viable." The new political landscape hobbled efforts to push through stand-alone legislation focused just on high-skilled workers. "High-skill immigration is definitely being held hostage to broader reform," Atkinson said. Stanford University fellow and Singularity University vice president Vivek Wadhwa champions STEM immigration. "Who is behind the US tech boom right now? Immigrants," Wadhwa said. "Just as the US is reinventing itself with a whole range of technologies we are cutting off the circulation in Silicon Valley." A Republican-backed House bill to expand visas for foreigners graduating from US universities with advanced degrees in science and technology was killed in the Senate by Democrats in the name of broader immigration reform. "We need visas and a new-and-improved immigration arrangement for Silicon Valley and the high-tech sector, but the only way we will win reform is to fight for top-to-bottom overhaul of our immigration system," Democratic congressman Luis Gutierrez said in an editorial on technology news website TechCrunch. Gutierrez is chairman of the Immigration Task Force of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and was responding to comments by Wadhwa, who testified in Washington this month. Wadhwa claims the two issues are separate. "Providing citizenship to people who jumped over the border is contentious; it's toxic. In the meantime you are holding hostage the legal, skilled immigrants -- scientists, engineers, doctors -- who the whole world wants." Reforming the immigration process for the tech industries would mean ramping up the number of H-1B visas, for immigrants with special skills. (AFP) NKP NKP 02171221 NNNN