Economic Impact

Regarding "Anxious America" [February 11]: "San Jose, Calif., . . . tech workers are nervous" succinctly examined the tribulations that some American tech workers face in Silicon Valley. However, that is not an excuse to deny foreign skilled workers entry to America.

Many tech workers believe that "enough talented American workers [are] ready to fill those [jobs]."Many American politicians also believe that and want to limit the number of foreign skilled workers. But according to a Kauffman Foundation report, 26 percent of international patents filed from the United States in 2006 named foreign workers as inventors or coinventors. Those foreigners have surely created huge numbers of tech jobs for Americans. Metin Ozen, president of Ozen Engineering, is a skilled immigrant interviewed in the article. How many jobs would not exist if Ozen had not been allowed to immigrate to America? Failure to point out the jobs created by foreigners in the United States leads many Americans to the false conclusion that foreigners take our jobs. Evidence and logic conclude that foreigners create jobs, not destroy them.

Alex Nowrasteh
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Washington, D.C.

"Anxious America" succeeded in telling me what any disabled vet already knows: The rich get richer, and the poor get forgotten. My va pension gives me $931 a month (I just got a $21-a-month raise). That's $11,172 a year, which is, when dividing my weekly average by 40 hours, below minimum wage. The anti-Robin Hoods strike again!

Jeff Trask
Dennis Port, Mass.