• The Washington Post, Monday, January 8, 2007 11 AM

Immigrants have become such a driving force behind Internet startups that at least one in four technology and engineering companies launched in the last 10 years had at least one foreign-born founder, according to a study released last week.

The report, from researchers at the University of California-Berkeley and Duke University, found that these founders came mostly from India and China, and have helped start hundreds of companies with a combined estimated sales of $50 billion.

Technology-industry lobbyists are now taking that information to Washington in the hope that the U.S. government will increase the annual allotment of H-1 B visas, which allow U.S. companies to sponsor specialty workers (like computer programmers) for a given period of time. Some companies contend that they can't find enough Americans to fill these jobs; others say globalization requires they hire the best workers from across the globe to compete.

The Center for Immigration Studies, which supports low levels of immigration, dismissed these claims, saying that most specialty visas are given out to immigrants to do low-level professional jobs for relatively low pay.

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