Steve Jobs's Advice for Obama Apple's founder on Obama: "The president is ve
ry smart, but he kept explaining to us reasons why things can't get done. It
infuriates me."
By L. GORDON CROVITZ
'You're headed for a one-term presidency," Steve Jobs told President Obama a
t the beginning of a one-on-one session the president requested early last y
ear. As described in the authorized biography by Walter Isaacson, Apple's fo
under said regulations had created too many burdens on the economy.
Jobs was an Obama supporter, but his just-disclosed comments are typical of
a new frustration with Washington among Silicon Valley executives. Their hig
h-tech companies are supposed to be the country's engine for growth, but the
federal government is gumming up the works.
Mr. Isaacson reports that Jobs offered to Mr. Obama to "put together a group
of six or seven CEOs who could really explain the innovation challenges fac
ing America." But after White House aides got involved with planning the din
ner, it became unwieldy and Jobs pulled out.
When a smaller dinner was arranged last February, the result was more estran
gement of Silicon Valley from Washington. Mr. Obama was seated between Jobs
and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The dinner also included top executive
s from companies such as Google, Cisco and Oracle.
According to Mr. Isaacson, Jobs "stressed the need for more trained engineer
s and suggested that any foreign students who earned an engineering degree i
n the U.S. should be given a visa to stay in the country." The president rep
ortedly replied that this would have to await broader immigration reform, wh
ich he said he was unable to accomplish.
"Jobs found this an annoying example of how politics can lead to paralysis,"
Mr. Isaacson writes. "The president is very smart, but he kept explaining t
o us reasons why things can't get done," Jobs said. "It infuriates me."
Jobs told Mr. Obama that Apple employs 700,000 factory workers in China beca
use it can't find the 30,000 engineers in the U.S. that it needs on site at
its plants. "If you could educate these engineers," he said at the dinner, "
we could move more manufacturing jobs here."
One of the benefits of free trade, including in the movement of labor, is th
at skills would go where they are most valued. Jobs made the point that Sili
con Valley is mystified by a policy that instead educates foreigner engineer
s at top U.S. universities, then sends them home immediately.
Among the attendees at the dinner was venture capitalist John Doerr, who dur
ing an Internet conference in 2008 described the absurdity memorably: "I wou
ld staple a green card to the diploma of anyone that graduates with a degree
in the physical sciences or engineering in the U.S."
Foreign nationals in the U.S. now account for 70% of doctorates in electrica
l engineering and half the master's degrees. They would be more productive i
f permitted to remain in the U.S. Academic studies estimate that a quarter o
f technology businesses started in the U.S. since 1995 have had at least one
foreign-born founder. Half of Silicon Valley startups are founded by foreig
ners.
The U.S. issues 140,000 green cards a year, which is not enough to meet dema
nd even in this soft economy. Worse yet, the work-permit laws say that the r
esidents of no country can get more than 7% of the permits. This is fine for
Andorra and Liechtenstein but not for India and China, which have 18% and 1
9% of the world's population, respectively. The National Foundation for Amer
ican Policy calculates the 7% limit means a backlog of 70 years of applicati
ons from prospective Indian workers and 20 years from Chinese ones.
Vivek Wadwha is a native of India who started two tech companies in the U.S.
before becoming an academic specializing in immigration. He recently testif
ied to Congress that the U.S. is "giving an unintentional gift to China and
India by causing highly educated and skilled workers, frustrated by long wai
ts for visas, to return home."
There's little prospect of reform, even though Mr. Doerr's staple-a-green-ca
rd idea has been endorsed by everyone from Mitt Romney to Chuck Schumer, the
Democratic senator from New York. Rep. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican, p
roposes the Staple Act (an acronym for Stopping Trained in America Ph.D.s fr
om Leaving the Economy). As Pia Orrenius, author of "Beside the Golden Door,
" says, letting more skilled workers stay in the U.S. is "as close to a free
lunch" as the economy can get.
Jobs himself was the biological son of an immigrant professor father from Sy
ria, who was lucky enough to be a graduate student in the U.S. in the 1950s
when it was easier for foreigners to stay. (Jobs was adopted as a newborn.)
The culture of Silicon Valley is defined by engineers who approach problems
logically, searching for the most elegant solution. Washington is different.
Members of both parties prefer scoring political points on immigration even
though this delays smarter approaches. It's no wonder that people like Jobs
who value innovation find Washington so infuriating.
