demographics – Silicon Valley One World

Pew: Foreign Students Migrate to Bay Area

27Jul

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Demographics

Pew: Foreign Students Migrate to Bay Area

By Sharon Simonson Not wildfires, mudslides, or monster commutes; not overcrowded and expensive housing, or gender-challenged workplaces. Nothing—so far—can keep them away: foreign students seeking U.S. college degrees and work experience have flocked to the Bay Area in recent years—more than to any other place in the country except New York City. According to new research from the Pew Research Center based on more than a decade of student-visa data, the Silicon Valley and San Francisco metros rank among the top ten destinations for foreign students earning American university degrees and staying to work. Including the more than 77,000 foreign students who migrated to the region for employment after earning degrees in other U.S. cities, the Bay Area attracted more than 120,000 foreig...

San José Pulitzer Winner Viet Thanh Nguyen: We Are What We Write

22Mar

By Editor1 Comment

Culture, Demographics

San José Pulitzer Winner Viet Thanh Nguyen: We Are What We Write

By Sharon Simonson When seven-year-old Viet Thanh Nguyen arrived in San José with his parents and older brother in 1978 as a Vietnam War refugee, little did he know that his life’s next decade would form the basis of a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel nearly forty years later. It was in the tiny downtown San José house at 759 S. 10th Street in the shadow of a freeway overpass that a robber would hold him and his parents at gunpoint when he was sixteen-years-old. It was in his parents’ New Saigon Mini Market on downtown San José’s East Santa Clara Street where his parents were shot one Christmas Eve. Thankfully, neither was injured seriously. “That ten-year period was marked by witnessing the intense sacrifice that my parents gave working as hard as they did in that store and experiencing...

San Jose Author: Being Vietnamese in America Not So ‘Eazy’

1Jul

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Demographics, Events

San Jose Author: Being Vietnamese in America Not So ‘Eazy’

By Sharon Simonson SAN JOSÉ—For Vietnamese American author Trami Nguyen Cron, the irony weighs heavy. Vietnamese people, whether refugees or immigrants, typically have fled their homeland for the United States in pursuit of freedom for themselves and their families. But once resettled, they seek to control their children’s lives to an extraordinary degree, essentially robbing the children of the very freedom the parents often sacrificed much to gain. “Vietnamese people need to stop defining success as how much money you make or your professional title,” she says. “One of my challenges to my culture is to rethink its definition of success.” That is the primary message—but in no way the only one—she hopes to send with her first novel, “VietnamEazy,” released today by publisher Wellstone Boo...

California Has the Most Foreign-Born Residents

20Apr

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Demographics, The Web

California Has the Most Foreign-Born Residents

By Sharon Simonson A record 42.2 million foreign-born people live in the United States making up 13.2 percent of the population, according to new findings from The Pew Research Center based on U.S. Census data. With 27 percent of California's total population foreign-born — or not quite 10.5 million people — the state has more immigrants numerically than any other state and the greatest proportion of its total residents who are immigrants. One in five people (or nearly that many) living in New York, New Jersey, Florida and Nevada also are foreign-born. West Virginia has the lowest portion of foreign-born people at 1.4 percent of the state's total 1.8 million residents, Pew reports. The number of foreign-born people living in the U.S. has grown fourfold since 1960 when not quite 10 millio...

Social Conditioning and the Corporate Campus

16Jul

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Uncategorized

Social Conditioning and the Corporate Campus

By Sharon Simonson For the urbanist, the Apple Inc. campus being built in Silicon Valley is a tragedy: a 176-acre tear in the community fabric delineated with security fencing and destined to last. For the architectural historian, it is that plus a reminder: The stark separations in land use that characterize most of modern America have had — and have — purposes of people separation too. “(Apple, Google and Facebook) have created these closed enclaves where you have only badged access. It’s not exclusive in race or age or economics, or by intent to have a homogenous population, but it does create these prestigious enclaves where they control the access." Bryant Rice, business and workplace-design consultant Despite its futuristic design and association with one of the world’s most r...