Well, I initially had a snarky remark about Federal involvement in Silicon Valley but it seems that both Shockley and his Traitorous Eight were quite European in national origin.

This is overhyped by a lot. A lot of SV grift is attributable to exploited immigrants, too, it's not like it's a city of moral champions.

H1B and other employment based immigration programs are some of the worst influences on the market, because people get screwed, wages suppressed for non immigrant workers, and the donor class for the uniparty are the ones paying for the status quo, and a big reason nothing ever gets fixed.

I'm not a big fan of defacto indentured servitude or a lot of the crap people end up saddled with under the schemes immigration middlemen and agencies come up with to skim off wages, take government funding, and other grifts.

I'm a big fan of success stories too, but those are almost always in spite of the immigration policies.

I've always been curious if it matters as much as people claim, or if the funding will just go to someone else with a similar result. We'll get to see if this becomes the new normal.

That's like saying "a lot of Silicon Valley's success is attributable to people." It's not a useful statement without specificity.

Key Silicon Valley companies like Fairchild and Hewlett-Packard were founded during the highly restrictive immigration policy that prevailed between the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act and the 1965 Hart-Cellar Act. Intel was founded just a few years after. A lot of golden age Silicon Valley companies were founded around or shortly after 1970, when the U.S. foreign-born population hit the lowest point in American history, under 5%.

Of course, even during that period, we allowed in German scientists, leading professors, etc. It's a handful of people. The highly selective immigration policy that prevailed from 1924-1965 is likely a key reason why so many Silicon Valley companies were founded by immigrants. That has very little to do with this story, which is about reversing mass immigration.

Is Silicon Valley a success? I would argue it has been an abject failure on culture and society at large. It has generated money for people by stealing every bit of data it can, but that really isnt success but for the few who can put theor fingers on that money stream. It has provided little past doomscrolling and narcissism fodder.

You’re understating it by only mentioning Silicon Valley. I’ve worked with lots of great people from all over the world who brought their talents and education here to be productive in our economy, and I’ve never stepped one foot in Silicon Valley. We’ve become an embarrassment.

The text says "in at least half a century"; probably they just couldn't find data for further back.