Two-thirds of tech workers in Silicon Valley are foreign born, according to the 2025 Silicon Valley Index produced by Joint Venture Silicon Valley. Half come from Asia with India (23 percent) and China (18 percent) the most common countries of origin. Only 17 percent were born in California, and 14 percent from other U.S. states. (Quite a few of the American born are the children of immigrants from Asia.)
Forty-one percent of Silicon Valley residents are immigrants, Joint Venture reports.
Berkeley and Stanford "draw foreign college students to study science, technology, engineering and math, many with an eye to getting jobs in the valley after graduation," reports Ethan Baron for the Bay Area News Group.
However, Bay Area universities can't keep up with the demand for science and engineering graduates, says Sean Randolph, senior director of the Economic Institute at the Bay Area Council, which represents high-tech companies.
“If you look at the quality of educational programs in California or the United States, the skills level of people coming out of high school just in math, it’s not there,” Randolph said.
About one-third of California students test as "advanced" or "proficient" in math and science, giving them a shot at success in STEM majors.
Because California is not a place where Americans go for opportunity because the quality of life in most of California is not worth moving there. California decided to replace Americans with immigrants decades ago and the Democratic Party decided that the California model was the pathway to a permanent Democratic Party majority.
I suspect that China does for Math and ICS education what they do for gymnastics and platform diving: identify talent early and nurture it. I tutored a Korean immigrant kid from third through 6th grade. His parents homeschooled him after 7th grade. This meant that thy went to work and he went up to the UH and sat in on Math courses. He took the GRE at 16 and the university admitted him into the graduate Math program. He got his MS (Math) before he turned 19 and the University of Pennsylvania gave him full support for five years to work on a PhD. He told me that all the other students in his Math PhD cohort were East Asian…
At least (California's Common Core standards set the mathematical proficiency bar lower than that of China and India) two-thirds of Californians are not proficient in mathematics, and need to pursue vocational education & training that may become professional if their career paths warrant such continuing education, but we lose most of those in the outdated institutions Americans call high schools, whose educational standards haven't been very high for a long time now.