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SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 24, 1998--Cypress Semiconductor Corporation today announced that its president and CEO, T.J. Rodgers, would appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify on the relationship between worker shortages in the high-technology industry and U.S. immigration policy.
Rodgers will testify Wednesday, February 25, at 10 a.m., Eastern Standard Time. He will argue that importing engineering talent from outside the U.S. is critical to the domestic high-tech industry's effort to maintain its current advantage over foreign competition.
By law, U.S. companies can bring in up to 65,000 skilled foreign workers each year on so-called H1-B visas. High-tech executives, including Rodgers, maintain that number is insufficient. In 1997, for the first time, the government issued the maximum number of H1-B visas. It expects to reach its 1998 cap in May or June, several months before the end of the current fiscal year, and many experts project that the situation will grow worse in years to come, creating chronic shortages of the employees needed to drive high-tech businesses.
Opponents of increasing the H1-B cap, including the Clinton administration, argue that foreign high-tech workers displace Americans and lower the wages of engineers and other skilled technology workers.
"The message Silicon Valley has heard from the Clinton-Gore administration on the H1-B issue is simple: 'Drop Dead,'" Rodgers said. "The administration has portrayed itself as our friend, yet on issue after issue, from securities litigation, encryption, the Internet tax, and now H1-B visas, it has turned its back on us."
"The U.S. semiconductor industry cannot maintain its global advantage without an adequate supply of top-quality engineers, including immigrants," Rodgers said. "The argument by critics that immigration is a zero-sum game is absolutely false. Immigrants build wealth and create jobs for native-born Americans."
"Cypress has 470 engineers and 2,700 employees worldwide," Rodgers added. "That means each engineer creates jobs for six additional people who make or administrate or sell the products engineers develop. About 37% of our engineers are immigrants. Had we been prevented from hiring 172 immigrant engineers, we would have failed to create about 1,000 other jobs, 70% of which are held by native-born Americans."
The Information Technology Association of America estimates that there are some 346,000 highly skilled technology positions going unfilled in U.S. companies. More than 70% of the companies surveyed by ITAA identified this gap as the leading barrier to their growth and competitiveness.
If the government refuses to raise the cap on H1-B visas, Rodgers says, the only alternative for American companies will be to move more of their operations offshore. Rodgers took particular issue with a recent comment by Commerce Secretary William M. Daley, who indicated that the Clinton administration "does not support an increase in the caps on (H1-B) visas."
"If the Administration holds to this position, it should forget about portraying itself as anything but an enemy of Silicon Valley companies," Rodgers said. "Appealing to populist nativism by claiming highly skilled immigrants will take away American jobs may have some short-term political appeal, but the negative impact on both the high-technology industry and the U.S. economy are obvious."
In support of his point that legal immigrants are a positive economic force, Rodgers underscored a recent survey by the National Academy of Sciences, which found that the U.S. gained $80,000 for each legal immigrant it admits. He also pointed to a recent article in the trade newspaper Electronic Engineering Times, which placed the unemployment rate for electrical engineers in the 1997 fourth quarter at 0.4%.
"This rock-bottom figure practically assures that all engineers are receiving full wages and top dollar," Rodgers said. "It is absurd to suggest, as do some anti-immigration zealots, that a two-tiered salary structure exists, with foreign-born engineers earning less than native-born Americans of comparable age and education levels. If you tried to pay foreign nationals less, your turnover rate would be horrendous.
"I have spoken in other Congressional forums about the American Dream -- that every generation will enjoy a higher standard of living. But there's another part of that dream: that America's strength derives from a melting pot of diversity, and that diversity builds wealth rather than destroys it. Legal immigration is well-controlled and provides economic benefit to all Americans. We should enjoy our diversity and work on our real problems."
Copies of Dr. Rodgers' testimony will be made available by Cypress after Wednesday's session in Washington. Copies will be available in printed form and on the company's worldwide web site at www.cypress.com.
Rodgers has testified before Congress seven times, most recently to speak against so-called corporate welfare before a subpanel of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs.
Cypress Semiconductor Corporation is an international supplier of high-performance integrated circuits with worldwide headquarters in San Jose, California. The company provides a broad range of products for leading computer, networking, and telecommunications companies worldwide. Cypress's product lines includes static RAM and specialty memories; programmable logic devices (PLDs); data communications products; personal computer timing devices, and USB microcontrollers. Cypress shares are listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol CY.
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