Tech Recruiting Clashes with Immigration Rules

In the article Mr. Mavinkurve, a 28-year-old Indian immigrant who helped lay the foundation for Facebook while a student atHarvard, 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. 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.
The foreign-born elite dating back even further includes Andrew S. Grove, the Hungarian-born co-founder ofIntel; JerryYang, the Chinese-born co-founder of Yahoo; Vinod Khosla of India and Andreas von Bechtolsheim of Germany, the co-founders of SunMicrosystems; and Google’s Russian-born co-founder, SergryBrin.
“There are probably two billion people in the world who would like to live in California and work, but not everyone in the world can live here,” said Kim Berry, an engineer who operates a nonprofit advocacy group for American-born technologists. Advocates for American-born workers are criticizing companies that lay off employees even as they retain engineers living here on visas. But the technology industry counters that innovations from highly skilled workers are central to American long-term growth.
Mr. Mavinkurve wrote the computer code. Reflecting the growing importance of technology — and responding to industry lobbying — in 1990 Congress set aside 65,000 temporary work visas, known as H-1B visas, for skilled workers. The visas, which are sponsored by companies on behalf of employees, permit three years of work, with an automatic three-year extension.
When Google went public that August, Mr. Mavinkurve was on his way to becoming a multimillionaire.
The role Mr. Mavinkurve played in Google’s success was on stark display in early 2007, when the company’s map-making team faced a problem that even the best and brightest could not solve.
Of Google’s 20,000 workers, 2,000 were born abroad and work on temporary visas, while numerous others (the company would not disclose how many) have become American citizens or been granted permanent residency, the so-called green card status.The work force is international, and so is the company’s market. “Google Maps for mobile reflects Sanjay.”
Many innovators in Silicon Valley come from overseas; 42 percent of engineers with master’s degrees and 60 percent of those with engineering Ph.D.’s in the United States are foreign-born. For instance, on the advice of Chinese-born workers, Google dotted its mobile maps for China with fast-food restaurants, which locals use as navigational landmarks.
When Google cannot get visas for people it wants to hire, it seeks to accommodate them in overseas offices, like the bureaus in Britain and Brazil from which map-team members attend meetings via video conference.
The larger risk is employees growing unhappy working at a distance, or foreign companies recruiting them.
For his part, Mr. Mavinkurve, in Toronto, typically talks with colleagues via video conference, e-mail or instant message. For Google and Mr. Mavinkurve, working here would be better. In 2006, while working for Google in Mountain View, Mr. Mavinkurve saw his future wife’s photo on the cover of a newsletter published by his Indian ethnic community, the Konkani. Like first-generation immigrants throughout American history, Mr. Mavinkurve has deep ethnic ties but is quickly assimilating. Mr. Mavinkurve and his wife get little sympathy from Mr. Berry of the Programmers Guild, a nonprofit group with a volunteer staff that lobbies Congress on behalf of American-born high-tech workers.
Further, he says immigrants depress wages. Google says it will cut 350 workers this year.On the political front, the tech industry lobbies Congress through an organization called Compete America, which includes titans like Intel, Microsoft, Google and Oracle.
“The next generation of Google engineers are being turned down,” says Pablo Chavez, Google’s senior policy counsel. “If a foreign-born engineer doesn’t come to Google, there is a very good chance that individual will return to India to compete against us.”It hinders efficiency, slows work. “Quitting Google means saying goodbye to my green card,” he said. Mr. Mavinkurve, who once hung American flags in his dorm room and then in Google’s hallway, still loves America.
I can’t say that I truly understand why if he is such an asset to the company why it would matter where he is from. Sometimes I have a really hard time understanding how America works. We allow foreign people to come into America to attend school and then instead of opening doors of opportunity we close them. If were not going to let them stay why do we let them come to America in the first place.

Getting a Health Policy When You’re Already Sick

In the article, Insurance executives held out hope to the afflicted late last month by announcing their willingness to end a notorious industry practice: charging higher premiums to people with health problems or denying them coverage altogether. So for now, consumers with pre-existing medical conditions must continue the struggle to obtain and keep medical coverage. “Under the current system, the people who need insurance most can’t afford or can’t get coverage.”
You should try to keep employer’s coverage. Under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, known as Hipaa, employers cannot exclude you from a health plan because of a pre-existing condition. The same rule applies to spouses and children if the employer offers family coverage. In that case, employers can exclude coverage of your health problem for up to 18 months, but then must give you full coverage.
To find out what’s available where you live, check with your state’s insurance department. Cost is a big problem with all of these last-gasp policies, said Sandy Praeger, the insurance commissioner for Kansas and chairwoman of the national association’s health insurance committee. If you do find yourself turned down by an insurer for a pre-existing condition, you can appeal that decision.
If you seek treatment for a health problem under an individual insurance plan, the insurer may look into your medical history for proof that you had the problem before applying for coverage, said Kevin Flynn, president of HealthCare Advocates. That, the insurance company said, was proof of a prior condition. As a person who has had diabeties thirty years it has been a constant strugle and worry that i could loose my health coverage. I can't really understand why the people who need it the most have such a hard time keeping it.