# Immigrants Built Silicon Valley **URL:** **By** Alex Nowrasteh, Paul Matzko **Published:** January 9, 2020 --- Without immigrants, Silicon Valley would be a shell of what it is today. Yet bad restrictionist policies threaten to undermine American dominance in tech and stymie innovation. However, the recent turn towards immigration restrictionism is worsening the already problematic bottleneck on attracting global expertise to the US. Caleb Watney joins us to talk about how the flawed H-1B visa system is responsible both for worsening that shortage and for widening a competitive moat around the Big Tech companies that have the resources to navigate the visa morass. What is the H-1B visa? Does our immigration system favor entrepreneurship? How many American college students are immigrants? What does our student visa system look like? ## Further Reading: [Why Silicon Valley Wouldn’t Work Without Immigrants](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/08/technology/personaltech/why-silicon-valley-wouldnt-work-without-immigrants.html), written by Farhad Manjoo [Tech as We Know It Would Not Exist Without Immigrants](https://www.wired.com/story/tech-as-we-know-it-would-not-exist-without-immigrants/), written by Tom Humberstone [Why We Need State‐​Based Immigration Visas](https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/why-we-need-state-based-immigration-visas), written by Alex Nowrasteh ## Related Content: [You Are Now Free to Move About the Planet](https://www.libertarianism.org/podcasts/free-thoughts/you-are-now-free-to-move-about-the-planet), Free Thoughts Podcast [Trump’s Immigration Crackdown](https://www.libertarianism.org/podcasts/free-thoughts/trumps-immigration-crackdown-with-alex-nowrasteh), Free Thoughts Podcast [The Libertarian Argument for Open Borders](https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/libertarian-argument-open-borders), written by Grant Babcock