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Your 24% number is grossly misleading. Quoting your source:

[...] Estimate of ethnic entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley was obtained by identifying all businesses with CEOs having Chinese and Indian surnames in a Dun & Bradstreet database of technology firms started since 1980. According to this count, close to one-quarter (24 percent) of Silicon Valley’s technology firms in 1998 had Chinese or Indian executives.

Technology company executives are salaried employees - even at C-level, they do not create tech jobs any more than the HR department. Moreover, it's a well-known fact that C-level executives rarely come from founders (example: http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2011/03/29/why-startup-fou...). Not to mention that an ethnically Indian/Chinese person is not the same as an immigrant from India/China.

If there are qualified Americans who can fill these jobs already, why exactly do we have a talent shortage in tech?

Because "we" don't pay enough? Because "we" won't look at anyone over 35? Because "we" demand a statistically improbable combination of skills plus open-source experience plus hobby projects? Because "we" equate talent with blogging? The list goes on and on.

(FWIW, I am an immigrant).



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