Posted by Pablo Chavez, Policy
Counsel
You may have read that a U.S. Senate committee in Washington is href="http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2007/09/our-senate-testimony-on-online.html"
holding a hearing today looking at online advertising and our
acquisition of DoubleClick. Check out our
id="gny5" >Public Policy blog
Google's testimony.
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Posted by Pablo Chavez, Policy
Counsel
Our experience with American immigration policy dates back to one
of our founders: when he was six, Sergey Brin's parents fled
the Soviet Union in 1979 and settled in the United States. Today,
there are literally hundreds of examples of immigrants and
non-immigrant foreign workers playing a vital role in our
company.
In particular, employees who are holders of H-1B visas — which
allow foreign-born workers with specialized skills to work in the
U.S. on a temporary basis — have helped lead the development of
Google News and orkut. Immigrants from countries like Canada, Iran,
and Switzerland now lead our business operations, global marketing,
global business development, and data infrastructure operations.
Without these talented employees and many others, Google would not
be where it is today.
As Congress grapples with various immigration reform proposals,
Laszlo Bock, our Vice President of People Operations, testified
today before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration about
the practical impact that the U.S. immigration system has on
Google. (Laszlo's mother Susan, who fled Communist Romania when
Laszlo was a child, was there too. She was welcomed by Rep. Zoe
Lofgren, the chair of the committee, and she received an ovation
from everyone present at the hearing.)
In his testimony, Laszlo said that, due to limits on the number of
H-1B visas, Google is regularly unable to pursue highly qualified
candidates. This year, an estimated 133,000 visa applications were
filed by H-1B candidates in the first two days of the filing period
for only 65,000 available spots. Over the last year alone, the
artificially low cap on H-1B visas has prevented more than 70
Google candidates from receiving H-1B visas. Therefore, Laszlo
said, "We would encourage Congress to significantly increase
the annual cap of 65,000 H-1B visas, to a figure more reflective of
the growth rate of our technology-driven economy." He also
urged Congress to address the backlog of employment-based green
cards for highly skilled workers.
Check out the
full text of Laszlo's testimony or watch the video of his
opening remarks to the committee below.
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