Google spends $20 million each year dealing with immigration issues. That’s a lot of clicks through a search engine. Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise anyone that a company spends that amount to iron-out issues related to visas and helping to recruit high-tech employees abroad and get them to Silicon Valley.

Matt Richtell wrote in Sunday’s New York Times about the issue. And today he writes that he left someone out of Sunday’s story: Christine Doyle, the fixer at Google.

To attract and retain foreigners, the tech industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually on lobbying, administrative and legal fees, and overseas offices for those who can’t get visas. It is working not just for a class of skilled workers, but on behalf of individuals, making companies veritable valet services for skilled engineers.”

His piece is posted on the NYT’s “Bits” Blog and makes for good reading.