Technology executives say restrictive visa and immigration limits have imperiled their ability to hire more of the world’s best engineers.

Immigrants like Mr. Mavinkurve are the lifeblood of Google and Silicon Valley, where half the engineers were born overseas, up from 10 percent in 1970. Google and other big companies say the Chinese, Indian, Russian and other immigrant technologists have transformed the industry, creating wealth and jobs.

Just over half the companies founded in Silicon Valley from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s had founders born abroad, according to Vivek Wadhwa, an immigration scholar working at Duke and Harvard.

Giving Immigrants A Chance

The foreign-born elite dating back even further includes Andrew S. Grove, the Hungarian-born co-founder of Intel; Jerry Yang, the Chinese-born co-founder of Yahoo; Vinod Khosla of India and Andreas von Bechtolsheim of Germany, the co-founders of Sun Microsystems; and Google’s Russian-born co-founder, Sergey Brin.

Mr. Mavinkurve, a 28-year-old Indian immigrant who helped lay the foundation for Facebook while a student at Harvard, instead works out of a Google sales office in Toronto, a lone engineer among marketers.

He has a visa to work in the United States, but his wife, Samvita Padukone, also born in India, does not. So he moved to Canada. [ READ MORE ]

——————————————————————————————————————————————-

——————————————————————————————————————————————-

New York Times: While acknowledging that the recession makes the political battle more difficult, President Obama plans to begin addressing the country’s immigration system this year, including looking for a path for illegal immigrants to become legal, a senior administration official said on Wednesday.

“I know this is an emotional issue; I know it’s a controversial issue,” he told an audience at a town meeting on March 18 in Costa Mesa, Calif. “I know that the people get real riled up politically about this.” But, he said, immigrants who are long-time residents but lack legal status “have to have some mechanism over time to get out of the shadows.”

Administration officials said that Mr. Obama’s plan would not add new workers to the American work force, but that it would recognize millions of illegal immigrants who have already been working here. Despite the deep recession, there is no evidence of any wholesale exodus of illegal immigrant workers, independent studies of census data show. — [ READ MORE ]

————————————————————————————————————————————

President Obama’s announcement immediately UNPLUGGED the Phallus filling up the ass of the KING OF XENOPHOBIA, Lou Dobbs — Igniting a torrent of fear-mongering Diarrhea!

Even evil Racist Tom Tancredo crawled out of his hiding-hole, proclaiming the “end of America as we know it!”

Obama’s timing is provocative, and will again bring out the worst in Republicans. They are frothing in the mouth, literally, like Rabies infected dogs, snarling like pregnant spotted hyenas.

Before leaving office George Bush warned fellow Republicans: “It’s very important for our party not to narrow its focus, not to become so inward-looking that we drive people away from a philosophy that is compassionate and decent.” Translates To: Stop the Xenophobia or you will drown in your “Nativist Hate!”

This will be a brutal and bruising battle, for as Osama Bin O’Reilly puts it: “The Obama, the left wing loons and New York Times are out to dismantle the “White, Christian Male Power Structure.”

Jacob Monty puts the upcoming battle in true perspective: It will be a difficult and uphill road with lots of sharp curves, but for the GOP, there’s no alternative. The path they’re on [ XENOPHOBIA ] leads right over a cliff.

Let The Fear-Mongering and Loathing Begin!

Dobbs’ “amnesty” caption returns, appearing under Crowley’s report

Fear & Loathing in Prime Time: Immigration Myths and Cable News

————————————————————————————————————————————

————————————————————————————————————————————

Bush Tells His Party To Be ‘Open-Minded’ — President Pushes Immigration Reform

By Perry Bacon Jr.

President Bush called for a “compassionate” Republican Party and warned against the GOP becoming “anti-immigrant” in one of his last interviews as president, defending his vision of the party, which has become unpopular among some Republicans.

“It’s very important for our party not to narrow its focus, not to become so inward-looking that we drive people away from a philosophy that is compassionate and decent,” the president said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday” that was aired yesterday. “We shouldn’t have litmus tests as to whether or not you can be a Republican. And we should be open-minded about big issues like immigration reform, because if we’re viewed as anti-somebody — in other words, if the party is viewed as anti-immigrant — then another fellow may say, ‘Well, if they’re against the immigrant, they may be against me.’ ”

   Nativist Republican Goons

Bush, when asked about how the GOP could avoid the kind of losses it suffered in the 2008 election — it lost the presidency and several seats in the House and Senate — said, “I think that we shouldn’t change our philosophy.” But he added: “We may want to change our message. . . . We need a new group of leaders.” — [ READ MORE ]

————————————————————————

By MICHAEL B. FARRELL
Nov. 29, 2008

When President Bush says so long to Washington on Jan. 20, he’ll return to a much different Lone Star State from the one he left eight years ago.

Pickup trucks, Big Oil, and barbecue brisket still reign supreme, but this red state that helped deliver the presidency to Mr. Bush twice and his father once, and that catapulted GOP strategist Karl Rove to the national stage, is suddenly spotted with big pockets of blue.

Dallas is controlled by Democrats; Houston is in their hands, too. It’s all largely because of the state’s growing Hispanic population, which overwhelmingly sided with Democrats this year.

“The tide of demography in Texas is moving against the Republicans,” says Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “All the major cities are Democratic and are likely to become more so over time.”

The Pew Hispanic Center reports that Latino voters sided with President-elect Obama over Sen. John McCain by a margin of more than 2 to 1, helping Democrats win crucial states such as Florida, Virginia, Nevada, and Colorado. While the overall Hispanic turnout did not rise much, it accounted for 9 percent of the vote this year and 8 percent in 2004 — Latino support for the GOP dropped nine percentage points, according to Pew.

That has left Republicans panicking and Democrats drooling. Duncan Currie writes in last week’s conservative Weekly Standard that Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R) of Florida says the GOP has a “very, very serious problem” because of diminishing Hispanic support.

Political scientists, sociologists, and activists say that concern reflects a keen awareness of what a growing and increasingly political Latino community could mean in big, traditionally red states like Texas: Those voters could tip Democratic in future national contests.

“We are in the process of watching this remarkable shift,” says Stephen Klineberg, a sociologist at Rice University here, referring to the overall demographic transformation of America. “You can be absolutely certain that every election [to come] in Texas will have a larger percentage of Latino voters.”

In 2005, Texas joined California, New Mexico, and Hawaii as states where minority populations collectively outnumber whites, according to the US Census Bureau. In Texas and California, the second-largest group behind whites, and the fastest-growing population, is Hispanics. Nationwide, Hispanics number about 45.5 million, or 15 percent of the population. In Texas, Latinos make up about 36 percent of the population and about 20 percent of participating voters this year.

“It’s the biggest pool of Hispanic voters left in a state that didn’t vote Democratic in 2008,” not counting Arizona, because it’s Senator McCain’s home state, says Richard Murray, a political scientist at the University of Houston.

For the Democratic Party nationally, the overwhelming Hispanic support presents an inviting opportunity, especially to develop party loyalty among younger Latinos, who backed Mr. Obama 76 percent to 19 percent for McCain, according the Pew analysis.

In Harris Country, which includes Houston, 70 percent of people older than 60 are Anglo, while more than 75 percent of people younger than 30 are non-Anglo, notes Professor Klineberg.

While Bush didn’t carry the Hispanic vote here in 2004, he came close. He captured 49 percent of that bloc, with 50 percent going to Democratic rival Sen. John Kerry. Republicans also lost ground among Hispanics this year in Florida.

Since the advent of his political career, though, Bush found ways to appeal to the Latino community, which saw him favorably for his close relationships with Latin American leaders, his faith-based initiatives, and his ability to speak Spanish.

While Hispanics are not a monolithic bloc, many began turning away from the Republicans in Texas, and elsewhere in the US, amid the harsh rhetoric about immigration reform in 2007, says Professor Murray.

| Read: Fear & Loathing in Prime Time: Immigration Myths and Cable News |

“Even in Texas you can’t just be a party of white folks,” he says. “Nationally and locally, the party is going to have to do some retooling.”

Though the Lone Star State’s spots of blue darkened on Election Day, the state remains solidly Republican (55 percent McCain, 44 percent Obama). McCain scored huge victories in rural Texas, taking as much as 93 percent of the vote in some counties in the Panhandle, helping deliver the state’s 34 electoral votes to the Republicans. The statehouse in Austin also remains in Republican hands.

Associated Press exit polls showed that whites, seniors, Christians, and the affluent largely stayed with the GOP ticket and that McCain took two-thirds of the state’s white vote and about three-fifths of families making more than $50,000 annually.

While rural, suburban, and small-town Texans stick with traditional Republican values, Klineberg says, a new cosmopolitan and high-tech Texas is emerging in cities such as Houston, which is the country’s fourth-largest city, with a population of about 2 million.

Houstonian Judy Craft, a longtime Democratic activist and an environmentalist, is used to swimming against the red tide in Texas. “I was hoping we’d do better, but that’s because I’m really good at suspending my disbelief during the middle of a campaign,” says Ms. Craft, who signed off her e-mails during the campaign with the hopeful wish that Texas would turn blue. “Oh well, at least I got a bluer shade of purple.”

————————————-

Don Campbell Writes:

Why Ga. should be on GOP’s mind

ATLANTA — As Republican strategists ponder the road to resurrection after their party’s election debacle, I’d suggest they come to Atlanta to take a ride into the future, one that just might inject them with a dose of reality.

They should hire a tour bus and head northeast from Midtown Atlanta on Buford Highway, hard by Interstate 85, following it for several miles before turning south toward Stone Mountain on Jimmy Carter Boulevard. If they blocked out everything but the cantinas, taquerias, Asian flea markets, mercados, tofu houses, Thai video stores, dim sum diners, kimchi cafes and pawn shops, they might think they were in Queens, N.Y., or parts of Los Angeles. If they got lost and wandered into the parking lot of one of the largest Swaminarayan Hindu temples outside India, they might be even more confused. In fact, they would be in Gwinnett County, Ga.

GOP Not Feeling So Grand

Wedged between Atlanta’s close-in suburbs in DeKalb County, where the minority turned into the majority in the 1990s, and the leafy, sprawling enclaves of mini-mansions and estates to the north, Gwinnett County is one of the most diverse, polyglot jurisdictions in the country. More than 100 languages are spoken in county schools. A majority of students are minorities. But just 18 years ago, in the 1990 Census, Gwinnett was 90% white, rock-ribbed Republican and Exhibit A in the pantheon of suburban Sun Belt counties that supposedly would mold and sustain realignment to a permanent Republican majority.

Today, it is on the verge of becoming majority-minority, with Latinos, African Americans and Asians in near equal proportions, and the GOP vote is shriveling. Twenty years ago, George H.W. Bush got 75% of the presidential vote. Four years ago, George W. Bush got 66%. On Nov. 4, John McCain drew just 55%.

Taking the long view

“Enduring majorities” often turn out to be tenuous, but my bet is that Gwinnett County is not an anomaly. Twenty miles to the west, suburban Cobb County is undergoing the same transformation. McCain’s narrow win statewide in Georgia and his loss to Obama in Virginia and North Carolina are leading indicators for national population projections: In about three decades, whites will be a minority in the USA. In 15 years, a majority of children younger than 18 will be minorities.

So the Republicans, as I see it, have two options. The short-term — and shortsighted — response is to chalk 2008 up to a bad economy and an unpopular incumbent, repackage the same old political bromides and count on liberals to yank Barack Obama so far left that they’ll generate a voter backlash. Or they can take the long view and figure out how to survive and even thrive as the percentage of middle- and upper-class whites shrinks.

   White Christian BIGOTS [ Enlarge Pic ] —    Race Mixing is COMMUNISM! | In 2008: Obama is a SOCIALIST!
   – Ring a bell? 1950s & 60s McCarthyism is still alive in America!

Backlashes do occur. Bill Clinton and the Democrats experienced a sizeable one in 1994 after raising taxes and trying to force-feed nationalized health care. Four years later, House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Republicans faced a backlash of their own after Gingrich overplayed his hand in a budget showdown with Clinton by forcing a shutdown of the federal government.

I don’t dismiss philosophy or personality, but winning elections is a numbers game, and it’s foolish to think that even a revived party can thrive once its base becomes a minority.

Many years ago, I wrote stories about how Republicans were seriously committed to bringing blacks into their tent. The theory then was that blacks are conservative on issues such as gay rights and school choice. They are devout churchgoers. And as they moved into the middle class and out to the suburbs, African Americans would — chameleon-like — adopt the conservative economic philosophy of their new neighbors. It was a pipedream then, and it’s a pipedream now: Obama’s historic election has merely solidified the Democratic Party’s appeal to black voters.

An opportunity

Other large minority groups, especially Latinos and Asians, should be a more promising target for Republicans. Both groups are known for their close-knit family structures. Both have an incredible work ethic. Both thrive on entrepreneurship. If you doubt that, go to a Sam’s Club and observe who’s rolling out the flatbeds loaded with supplies to stock small shops and restaurants.

But the Republicans’ obsession with immigrants here illegally blinds them to the opportunity to craft a credible outreach strategy. McCain had a moderate approach to immigration reform but was nominated by a party of immigrant-bashers. He got just 31% of the Latino vote and only 35% of Asians.

It’s an absurd position for a party in decline. Most of the 10- or 11- or however-many-million illegal immigrants in this country aren’t going anywhere. Rather than whining that Democrats are protecting illegals because they see them as voters-in-waiting, the GOP should be fighting tooth and nail to get them legalized, to get every immigrant registered to vote, and to tirelessly recruit them to the Republican cause.

A political party on a collision course with demography has no choice but to embrace diversity. You can do the math, or you can eat, drink and shop your way up Buford Highway.

About The Author: Don Campbell — teaches journalism at Emory University in Atlanta and is a member of USA TODAY’s board of contributors. Don Campbell’s 30-plus years in journalism included nearly two decades as a Washington reporter, editor and columnist for Gannett Newspapers and USA Today. He also served as director of the Washington Journalism Center and of a fellowship program for journalists newly assigned to Washington. He taught journalism at Northwestern University, the University of Oregon and Arizona State University before he coming to Emory. Author of “Inside the Beltway: A Guide to Washington Reporting,” Don is also a freelance writer.

References: