Why Our Company Needs Immigrants; M. Maibach

Let me give you an idea of the astonishing complexity such technology involves. Our first transistor, the Intel 4004,which became available in 1971,had 2,300transistors. That was mind-bogglingwhen you consider that simple transistor radios were a recent de velopment. Today, our Pentium Pro chip Mr. Maibach is a vice president of Intel Corpo ration. has five million transistors-the equivalent offive millionvacuum tubes. Creating it was like designing New York City from scratch so that millionsof people.get to work within minutes, and no one bumps into anyone else. And such a product in terms of com puting power-millions of instructions per second (MIPs)-must be delivered for less money. Back in 1979, the cost of a MIP of computing power was $1,080, but now it's just $5. Our company is on the leading edge of computer technology thanks in no small measure to immigrant talent. Our most fa mous immigrant is Andrew S. Grove who arrived at the Brooklyn Naval Yard in 1957 after escaping from Communist Hungary.

He didn't seem very promising, withjust the clothes on his back and about $20. Relatives took him in. He enrolled as a second-year engineering student at City College of New York. Six years later, he earned a Ph.D. in chemical engineering at the University of California and got ajob with Fairchild Semi conductor. Eleven years after arriving as a poor immigrant, Dr. Grove joined Dr. Rob ert Noyce of Iowa and Dr. Gordon Moore of California to start Intel. Today Dr. Grove is Intel's President and Chief Executive Officer. Immigrants worked hand-in-hand with American-born people to achieve one tech nological breakthrough after another at Intel. Jean Hourni, from Switzerland, de431 432 THE FREEMAN • JUNE 1996 Immigrants made key contributions to the development of this thumbnail-size Pentium Pro microprocessor, which con tains an incredible five million transistors. It gives personal computers the power ofa high-priced office work station-for perhaps two-thirds less money.

veloped the planar process. This put tran sistors on a flat surface, the first step toward miniaturization. Dov Frohman, from Israel, invented the electronic programmable read only memory. Frederico Faggin, from Italy, was co-inventor of silicon gate technology and the first microprocessor. Mayotoshi Shima, from Japan, designed the 8086 mi croprocessor which launched our super-fast Pentium technology. Recently, Ryan Mane pally of India co-developed our new Pro Share product which handles inexpensive teleconferencing over your personal com puter. Intel needs immigrants despite spending a lot of money on education and training, most of which goes to native-born people. The Intel Foundation contributes $23 mil lion annually for scholarships, grants, teacher training, curriculum development, and programs from kindergarten through university which focus on math, science, and engineering. Moreover, Intel spends $4.5 million annually on tuition reimburse ment and $120 million annually on internal training for employees.

Today, over half of Intel's sales occur outside the United States. We're a major manufacturer with 75 percent of our plants in the United States-only Boeing exports a higher percentage of worldwide produc tion from our shores. Intel's microprocessor architecture is used by 80 percent of the world's computers. Intel performs 90 percent of its research and development in America. But if immi gration were curtailed, we would either have to transfer more of our operations overseas or see talented people and business go to overseas competitors. In this competitive industry, a six-month delay introducing a new product can easily cost us $1 billion.

WHY OUR COMPANY NEEDS IMMIGRANTS 433 A Vital Part of the Technological Labor Force Immigrants are vital for many other com panies besides Intel. Immigrants started or currently lead Apple, AST, Atmel, Borland, Compaq, Computer Associates, LSI Logic, Sun Microsystems, 3Com, Wyse Technol ogy, and Xicor, among others. The designer of the "hot" Internet software called Java is Canadian James Gosling. About one-third of Silicon Valley engineers are foreign-born. About one-third of the engineers at IBM's Yorktown Heights Lab and at AT&T's Bell Labs are foreign-born. Microsoft depends on foreign-born individuals to translate its software into 30 languages for sale in over 100 countries. Immigrants play a key role at high tech nology centers throughout America-in cluding the "Silicon Desert" in Arizona, the "Rio Grande High-Tech Corridor" in New Mexico, the ' 'Silicon Prairie" in Texas, the "Silicon Forest" in Oregon, and Route 128 in Massachusetts.

Today's immigrants might not come here with much money, they might look different and speak strange languages, but their en trepreneurial spirit and desire to achieve is 100percent American. Foreign-born college undergraduates are twice as likely to go on to earn a Ph.D. as native-born undergradu ates. Over 40 percent of engineering and physics graduate students at American uni versities are foreign-born. About a third of America's Nobel Prize winners have been, too. None of this is new. American industry has long thrived on immigrant talent. Frenchman E.1. DuPont helped develop the American chemical industry. Scotsman An drew Carnegie introduced new technologies to dramatically cut the cost of making steel. The Italian A.P. Giannini started Bank of America. Jewish immigrants created great Hollywood studios like Metro-Goldwyn Mayer. German immigrants introduced all kinds of technology as they built companies like Bausch and Lomb, Weyerhaeuser, Chrysler, Steinway, Wurlitzer, Hershey, Heinz, and Anheuser-Busch. Unskilled Chi nese and Japanese immigrants performed the difficult, dangerous work of building American railroads. Hispanic immigrants have started tens of thousands of small business enterprises. Immigrants helped de velop American nuclear and missile tech nology. Immigrants helped land an Ameri can on the moon.

Far from being a sign of weakness, as some opponents of immigration claim, the presence of so many immigrants affirms America's enduring strength. For thousands of years, people have migrated to places where they could be free. A locale doesn't need to have natural resources, money, or a large population to prosper; as long as it offers freedom, it will attract everything. Witness the freedom which turned the ocean bottom into Holland, mudflats into Venice, and barren islands into booming Singapore and Hong Kong. Our company is better, our industry is more competitive, and our nation is more prosperous because of immigrants. America remains a special place where all kinds of people are free to prosper peacefully together. D Ideas and Consequences Lessons for Welfare Reformers by LawrenceW. Reed G overnment welfare programs are on the intellectual chopping block, as well they should be. Reams of evidence, reflect ing the destruction of the real lives of real people, point to a decisive verdict: the welfare state is a costly failure.