Eric Thomas or Frances Cox 202-822-9491 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 6, 2007

Compete America Applauds Google Testimony

Iconic American Company Cited as Prime Example of Importance of H-1B Visa and Employment Based Green Card Programs

Washington, D.C. – Compete America cited testimony offered today by Google to the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration as clear evidence of the importance of highly educated foreign workers to the U.S. economy, and urged Congress to adopt measures that would allow U.S. companies to recruit and retain the world’s top talent.

In his testimony, Laszlo Bock, Vice President, People Operations, at Google offered examples of how foreign professionals have been instrumental in building the company into a great American success story.

• Orkut Buyukkokten was born in Konya, Turkey, and later received his Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University.  He joined Google as a software engineer in 2002 through the H-1B visa program. Orkut developed and programmed a new social networking service, which Google later launched publicly and dubbed "orkut."  Today, orkut – the web service – has tens of millions of users worldwide.  After spending four years in the U.S. on an H-1B visa, Orkut recently received his green card for permanent residency.

• Krishna Bharat joined Google even earlier, in 1999, and also through the H-1B program. A native of India, he received his Ph.D. from Georgia Tech in human computer interaction.  His work on web search at DEC Systems Research Center and Google earned him several patents, and he is a noted authority on search engine technology. Krishna was one of the chief creators of Google News, our service that aggregates more than 4,500 English-language news websites around the world.  Today, Krishna serves as Google's Principal Scientist, and he too has received his green card for permanent residency.
  

“Without Orkut and Krishna – and many, many other employees – Google would not be able to offer innovative and useful new products to our users. Immigration laws that enable us to attract and retain highly skilled workers, regardless of their country of origin, make that possible,” Bock stated.

Bock, himself an immigrant – as is Google co-founder Sergey Brin – emphasized that today, approximately eight percent of Google's employees in the United States are here on H-1B visas.

“These Googlers currently span 80 different countries of origin – from Argentina to Zambia.  So, while nine out of ten of our employees are citizens or permanent residents, our need to find the specialized skills required to run our business successfully requires us to look at candidates from around the globe -- many of whom are already in the U.S. studying at one of our great universities,” he continued.

Bock also noted that Google has grown from almost 5,700 to over 12,200 employees since December 2004.  Google currently has almost 800 open positions in the San Francisco Bay Area alone.

“Simply put, if U.S. employers are unable to hire those who are graduating from our universities, foreign competitors will.  The U.S. scientific, engineering, and tech communities cannot hope to maintain their present position of international leadership if they are unable to hire and retain highly educated foreign talent.  We also cannot hope to grow our economy and create more jobs if we are ceding leadership in innovation to other nations,” Bock concluded.

To download Laszlo Bock’s testimony, click here, or go to www.competeamerica.org.

Compete America (www.competeamerica.org) is a coalition of corporations, educators, research institutions and trade associations concerned about legal, employment-based immigration and committed to ensuring that the United States has the highly educated workforce necessary to ensure continued innovation, job creation and leadership in a worldwide economy.

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