UTS Voice
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And the ripple effects are already emerging in the Tampa Bay area. “It’s a huge problem,” said Ray Weadock, CEO and president of Persystent Technologies. “The guys in Washington don’t think much and their initial reaction is this will impact Cisco and Microsoft.”
But smaller companies take a bigger hit because they don’t often have the capital to send jobs to where the labour is, Weadock said. Weadock’s company, which employs Shanmugam, is toying with the idea of setting up a subsidiary in India.
Companies aren’t the only ones chasing the labour market. Schools and universities are also jumping into the wagon. The population of international students in MBA programmes across the country continues to dwindle, said Bob Forsythe, dean of the College of Business at University of South Florida. “And the demand for American business schools to go deliver programmes in other countries have increased,” he said.
Harvard University and Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management are among a growing number of schools that have a presence in India. At USF, Forsythe’s team is negotiating a venture in Romania. The visa problems here have encouraged governments worldwide to ease visa restrictions in their countries and nab the high-skilled workforce. “There’s a lot of mention of Canada,” said Chandra Mitchell, an immigration attorney with Tampa-based Neil F. Lewis.
Amar Nayegandhi, a USF graduate and a contract employee with the US Geological Survey, has been waiting for his green card since 2002. He may soon give up, he said. The long wait has cost him job opportunities, forced upon him a commuter marriage and restricted his economic mobility. His Hl-B visa runs out in February, and even though he can extend it and continue awaiting the green card, he’s contemplating leaving.
“I am asking myself if this is really worth it,” he said.
Shanmugam of Persystent Technologies says he, too, will only wait for about a year before considering giving up his spot in the line and heading back to India. “This is not the only place to be anymore,” he said. “You can find better opportunities everywhere.”
Foreign nationals are contributing to one out of four of all the global patents filed in the US. One quarter of all tech companies nationwide and 52% of tech companies in the Silicon Valley were founded by immigrants. More than one million skilled workers and their families are waiting for green cards. Hundreds of thousands of them may get frustrated with the waiting process that could be six to 10 years and leave the US, hurting the country’s competitiveness in a global economy.
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