Match H-1B reform with domestic tech training: Shinal

SAN FRANCISCO — President Obama's plan to ease visa restrictions on skilled tech workers and start-up CEOs may give Silicon Valley companies two things they've long wanted.

Obama's executive order includes several revisions that make it easier for foreign workers trained in high-tech fields to move among jobs while in the U.S. The new plan also changes the way foreign entrepreneurs can enter the country, allowing them to use American investors as their basis for entrance.

Cisco Systems, Intel, Microsoft and other tech giants have lobbied for looser H-1B rules for close to two decades, an effort joined more recently by Google and Facebook. H-1B visas are the typical visa used by a foreign-trained technology worker.

But to ease the shortage of technology workers during boom times and boost hiring, it should be paired with more technical training for U.S. citizens.

By expanding tech training to those Americans eager and able to acquire new skills, the industry can expand more quickly and contribute its full share to U.S. economic growth.

Whether those programs are targeted at inner-city kids or older tech workers in need of re-training, doing either one or both is overdue.

Unfilled jobs cost the tech industry more than $500 million dollars during the 12 months ended in April, according to a study released this week by the tech jobs site Indeed.com.

The obvious cause is a mis-match between the skills required for available positions and the training of the U.S. workforce.

No industry innovates faster than tech, which now contributes more than a fifth of the profits of the S&P 500 Index.

As a result, older tech workers can easily find themselves without the skills – in programming the latest computer languages, for example – that tech companies are looking for.

Yes, making it easier for foreign workers brought here by sponsoring tech companies to switch employers should lead to a more flexible tech workforce.

And allowing in entrepreneurs who can raise money from U.S. investors -- rather than having to put up $1 million of their own money, as the old rules required -- should broaden the pool of those who want to come to this country to create the next Google, Facebook or Yahoo.

Forty percent of the companies in the Fortune 500 were founded either by foreign-born individuals or their children, so the federal government should make it easier for these highly-educated and motivated people to settle here.

Yet as companies founded by immigrants and citizens alike grow, they'll need more skilled workers than can be found among foreign-born students at U.S. colleges and universities.

To increase the number of workers with the skills the tech industry needs, let's boost the ranks of U.S. citizens who have access to the necessary technical training.

John Shinal has covered tech and financial markets for more than 15 years at Bloomberg, BusinessWeek,The San Francisco Chronicle, Dow Jones MarketWatch, Wall Street Journal Digital Network and others. Follow him on Twitter: @johnshinal.