If you walk into any office in Silicon Valley and randomly shoot a look, you’ll hear so many different accents, see faces from all corners of the globe and realise that immigrants run this place.
I’m an engineer at a VC-backed AI company with about 80 people working together. When I think about our team, frontend developers, data scientists, product managers and infra folks, more than half of us were born outside the US. Some of us came here for grad school, some straight out of undergrad, and others H-1B lotteries or O-1 visas. One of our best engineers works on an E-2 investor visa because he co-founded a startup before this.
The valley is powered by talent from everywhere, and that’s no secret. If we only hired “local” developers, we’d be dead in the water. The skill, grit, and sheer hunger that immigrant engineers bring—that’s irreplaceable. And yes, I say this with bias. I’m an immigrant myself, came here five years ago on an F-1 visa, and jumped through the hoops to land a job and sponsorship.
The path is never easy, as we all know the struggle, visa stress, paperwork delays, and living in shared apartments to save money. But at the end of it, it’s worth it because where else can you build something that millions use, a culture that rewards execution over pedigree??
Stories like these are found everywhere around here. The Iranian backend dev whose family fled to Canada. The Chinese machine learning engineer sends money home every month. The Indian product manager balances standups with late-night calls to family back home. The Ukrainian designer was working on temporary status after the war started.
Founders too, our CEO is from Brazil. One co-founder is from Taiwan. It’s part of the Valley’s DNA: people come here to chase opportunity because, in many places, they’d never get the same shot.
Still, there is fragility. Visa policies shift, and H-1b lotteries remain brutal. There is always the uncertainty of “Will I get renewed next year? Will this acquisition mess up my status?”. I’ve seen great engineers leave because the visa treadmill got too exhausting.
When I see politicians talk about protecting “AMERICAN JOBS”, they rarely seem to get the reality here. Without immigrant talent, almost half of these startups wouldn’t even exist today. Not the code, not the companies, not the innovation.
I would say that if Silicon Valley is the machine, we immigrants are the fuel. We come, we hustle, we build. And in doing so, we keep the engine running.
