Minorities Contribution to Technology in Silicon Valley

[Riaz Haq]

The U.S. Census Bureau  has recently reported that the United States has reached a historic tipping point -- with Latino,
Asian, mixed race and African American births constituting a majority of
births for the first time. Minorities made up about 2 million, or 50.4%, of the births in the
12-month period ending July 2011. The
latest figure was up from 49.5% reported in the 2010 census.

80386 CPU Design Team Standing L to R: Riaz Haq, Jan Prak, Gene Hill, Pat Gelsinger, John Crawford Sitting in Front: Dave Vannier

I  have personally witnessed Silicon Valley's racial mix change dramatically over the last several decades. When I arrived here to join Intel in 1981, there were few non-whites in the Valley. In fact, I was the only nonwhite person in a picture of the six-member award winning Intel 80386 CPU design team which was published by the PC Magazine in 1988.


My experience of the demographic changes in this high-tech valley is not just anecdotal. It's supported by data compiled by the local San Jose Mercury newspaper in 2010. The data shows that 49% of Intel employees are now Asian, a full 7% more than whites. In Silicon Valley, the difference is even more pronounced with Asians accounting for 53.9% of the employees versus 37.6% white workers.

 With Asians accounting for just 15.5% of the high-tech work force nationally, Silicon Valley's high-tech racial mix is also very different from the rest of the country. Silicon valley's employee pool also differs in terms of under-representation of Blacks, Hispanics and women relative the national averages.

 Among Asian-Americans, Pakistani-Americans are the 7th largest community in America, according to a report titled "A Community of Contrasts Asian Americans in the United States: 2011" published by Asian-American Center For Advancing Justice.  Pakistani-American population has doubled from 204,309 in 2000 to 409,163 in 2010, the second largest percentage increase after Bangladeshis' 157% increase in the same period.

Source:  TheAtlantic Cities

The total fertility rate in the United States is now at 2.06, just enough to maintain the current level of US population. It's possible mainly due to the history of relatively liberal US immigration policy. If US immigration policy is tightened in response to pressures from various labor organizations and the traditional anti-immigration groups, the US fertility rate is likely to dip and hurt the US economy which needs more workers to pay for the retiree benefits of the growing population of senior citizens. Already, many US multinational corporations have added 1.5 million workers to their
payrolls in Asia and the Pacific region from 1999 to 2009, and 477,500
workers in Latin America, according to US Commerce Dept data as
reported by the Wall Street Journal. If the businesses can not find workers in the United States, they are more likely to continue to accelerate moving jobs elsewhere, depriving the US government the revenue it needs to balance its budget.

Related Links:

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Pakistani-American's Game-Changing Vision

US Firms Adding Jobs Overseas 

Pakistan's Demographic Dividend

Pakistanis Study Abroad

Pakistan's Youth Bulge

Pakistani Diaspora World's 7th Largest

Pakistani-American NFL Team Owner

Pakistani-American Entrepreneurs Catch the Wave

Pakistani Graduation Rate Higher Than India's

[Riaz Haq]

According to the 2010 U.S. Census, California has the highest number of South Asians in U.S. These include people from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. The largest among the SOUTH ASIAN ETHNICITIES is INDIAN and it is also the most affluent and educated.

California Population Demographics

Indian.................528,176
Bangladeshi............9,268
Bhutanese..............694
Nepalese...............5,618
Pakistani.............46,780
Sri Lankan............10,240


http://www.siliconeer.com/about_siliconeer.html

[Riaz Haq]

From Forbes 4/14/14 issue:

"Put flags in a world map and you will see Sequoia (Silicon Valley's Top Venture Capital Firm that funded Oracle, Cisco, Yahoo, Google and LinkedIn) connecting with entrepreneurs born in Ukraine, Ireland, Finland, Greece, India, Pakistan, Venezuela and a dozen other countries. (By contrast, Kauffman Foundation data (compiled by Vivek Wadhawa)show that barely a quarter of all U.S. startups have at least one immigrant cofounder.)"

http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2014/03/26/inside-sequoia-...

Foreign-born founders, incl. #Pakistani-Americans, built 59% of startups in @Sequoia_Capital's Midas List portfolio http://onforb.es/1ePbi2j

I know at least 2 Sequoia funded #SiliconValley startups founded by #Pakistanis: Ashar Aziz's #Fireeye, Naveed Sherwani's #OpenSilicon