Parag Agrawal: Why Indian-born CEOs dominate Silicon Valley
Indian-born Silicon Valley CEOs are also part of a four million-strong minority group that is among the wealthiest and most educated in the US.
About a million of them are scientists and engineers. More than 70% of H-1B visas - work permits for foreigners - issued by the US go to Indian software engineers, and 40% of all foreign-born engineers in cities like Seattle are from India.
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This is the result of a drastic shift in US immigration policy in the 1960s," write the authors of The Other One Percent: Indians in America.
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Indian-born Satya Nadella was appointed Chairman of Microsoft this year, seven years after he became CEO
In the wake of the civil rights movement, national-origin quotas were replaced by those that gave preference to skills and family unification. Soon after, highly-educated Indians - scientists, engineers and doctors at first, and then, overwhelmingly, software programmers - began to arrive in the US.
This cohort of Indian immigrants did not "resemble any other immigrant group from any other nation", the authors say. They were "triply selected" - not only were they among the upper-caste privileged Indians who could afford to go to a reputed college, but they also belonged to a smaller sliver that could finance a masters in the US, which many of Silicon Valley's CEOs possess. And finally, the visa system further narrowed it down to those with specific skills - often in science, technology, engineering and maths or STEM as the preferred category is known - that meet the US's "high-end labour market needs".