Mobile Human Capital

Mobile Human Capital explores the crucial role played by immigrant engineers and scientists in the successful development of the information technology industry of Silicon Valley in the 1990s. These skilled immigrants came to California s Silicon Valley in much larger concentrations than to any other high technology region of the United States. Nearly one third of the engineers and scientists employed in the technology industry of Silicon Valley were immigrants, and they had much higher levels of education than their native counterparts. For example, most of these skilled immigrants possessed post-graduate degrees and were twice as likely to have obtained a doctorate degree. Immigrant engineers and scientists accessed the labor market in high technology in Silicon Valley following four different routes. Some of them were members of the 1.5 generation who arrived in the United States as children of immigrant parents, others worked for U.S. subsidiaries in their native countries or were foreign students at U.S. universities. Finally the high tech braceros held the H-1B visa that granted them temporary contracts with high tech companies in Silicon Valley.