Why Skilled Immigrants Are Leaving the U.S.

[Blue_Tires]

As the debate over H-1B workers and skilled immigrants intensifies, we are losing sight of one important fact: The U.S. is no longer the only land of opportunity. If we don't want the immigrants who have fueled our innovation and economic growth, they now have options elsewhere. Immigrants are returning home in greater numbers. And new research shows they are returning to enjoy a better quality of life, better career prospects, and the comfort of being close to family and friends.

Earlier research by my team suggested that a crisis was brewing because of a burgeoning immigration backlog. At the end of 2006, more than 1 million skilled professionals (engineers, scientists, doctors, researchers) and their families were in line for a yearly allotment of only 120,000 permanent resident visas. The wait time for some people ran longer than a decade. In the meantime, these workers were trapped in "immigration limbo." If they changed jobs or even took a promotion, they risked being pushed to the back of the permanent residency queue. We predicted that skilled foreign workers would increasingly get fed up and return to countries like India and China where the economies were booming.

Why should we care? Because immigrants are critical to the country's long-term economic health. Despite the fact that they constitute only 12% of the U.S. population, immigrants have started 52% of Silicon Valley's technology companies and contributed to more than 25% of our global patents. They make up 24% of the U.S. science and engineering workforce holding bachelor's degrees and 47% of science and engineering workers who have PhDs. Immigrants have co-founded firms such as Google (NasdaqGS:GOOG - News), Intel (NasdaqGS:INTC - News), eBay (NasdaqGS:EBAY - News), and Yahoo! (NasdaqGS:YHOO - News).

Who Are They? Young and Well-Educated

We tried to find hard data on how many immigrants had returned to India and China. No government authority seems to track these numbers. But human resources directors in India and China told us that what was a trickle of returnees a decade ago had become a flood. Job applications from the U.S. had increased tenfold over the last few years, they said. To get an understanding of how the returnees had fared and why they left the U.S., my team at Duke, along with AnnaLee Saxenian of the University of California at Berkeley and Richard Freeman of Harvard University, conducted a survey. Through professional networking site LinkedIn, we tracked down 1,203 Indian and Chinese immigrants who had worked or received education in the U.S. and had returned to their home countries. This research was funded by the Kauffman Foundation.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/bw/20090303/bs_bw/feb2009tc20090228990934

[DJ13]

1. From BusinessWeek

They wouldnt be just a bit biased towards the corporate use of H1-B visa workers to keep costs down, would they?

[DBoon]

3. they are talking about permanent residents, not H1B here

permanent residents have a much longer term commitment to the host country, and do not serve as a pool of cheap, expendable labor in the same sense H1Bs do

[Hello_Kitty]

6. So lets keep on outsourcing and bringing in the cheap labor

Continue suppressing U.S. wages until this is officially a 3rd world country. I'm sure that will keep those permanent residents with their long term commitments here. :sarcasm:

[Hello_Kitty]

4. Oh my gosh no!

It's totally coincidental that talent in technical fields just so happens to be concentrated in the populations of low wage countries.

[Hello_Kitty]

2. I have an idea! Why don't we grow some engineers and innovators here?

The reason that immigrants are so over-represented in high tech innovation is that America isn't investing enough in the education of our own citizens.

[DBoon]

5. maybe if technical careers got more respect, too

better pay would help, as well as not being viewed as expendable every time the economy sneezes

In some countries, "engineer" is a badge of honor. I wish it were so in the USA.

[Blue_Tires]

7. also, in some other countries

"teacher" is also a title which commands instant respect...but sadly here it gets nothing but ridicule from children and adults alike...I think this is also an underlying root of problems with our education system...

[Hello_Kitty]

8. It hasn't helped that our culture has revered dumbness and mediocrity for years.

In other countries being smart is a good thing. Here, smart people are derided as nerds. The greatest thing IMO about Obama's election is that he is making being intelligent look cool. I love how he told everyone to go back to college at his SOTU address.

[deoxyribonuclease]

10. My cousins in Taiwan have noticed this about today's American society

They're wondering why so many people in the US seem to be uneducated, given the country's immense wealth.

One of the most glaring things I've noticed is that most graduate students in science and engineering are from foreign countries and/or the children of immigrants. Education here just doesn't seem to be as important as the accumulation of wealth and status. Until the American people (and by extension, the government) recognize the importance of an educated populace in an increasingly complex world, I think our society will continue to stagnate and become overtaken by the EU and East Asia.

I heartily welcome Obama's stance on education, and I loved that he said that everyone should experience at least 1 year of higher ed.

[aquart]

9. That's awfully old research, sweetie.

Job opportunities are drying up everywhere, hence the overseas riots.

[terisan]

11. Yes I know some people who have headed back home. nt

[OHdem10]

12. When I hear of the American IT Workers who were handed pink

slips so the Company could replace them with workers who agreed to
work for getting close to half the salary--sorry, we need to
use Americans first

Harvard like all College and Univesity Personnel make up our Elite.
The Elite(Investors) make more money on their investments the cheaper
the Labor.