Smart Immigrants Going Home 770
olddotter writes "A 24-page paper on a reverse brain drain from the US back to home countries (PDF) is getting news coverage. Quoting: 'Our new paper, "America's Loss Is the World's Gain," finds that the vast majority of these returnees were relatively young. The average age was 30 for Indian returnees, and 33 for Chinese. They were highly educated, with degrees in management, technology, or science. Fifty-one percent of the Chinese held master's degrees and 41% had PhDs. Sixty-six percent of the Indians held a master's and 12.1% had PhDs. They were at very top of the educational distribution for these highly educated immigrant groups — precisely the kind of people who make the greatest contribution to the US economy and to business and job growth." Adding to the brain drain is a problem with slow US visa processing, since last November or so, that has been driving desirable students and scientists out of the country.
Re:visa's (Score:1, Informative)
And what scholarships would that be? When I was a foreign undergrad I got to pay full price for the privilege of attending a U.S. university. No American taxpayer-funded scholarships whatsoever for me.
Much ado about nothing... (Score:5, Informative)
The temporary H1-B visa was supposed to be good for seven years. The average age at which H1-Bs come to this country is fresh out of college, so 22-23 years old plus seven years is about thirty.
All this says is that the H1-B visa program is working as advertised.
Re:Can you blame them? (Score:2, Informative)
Extremely misleading article (Score:5, Informative)
The article is extremely misleading and makes you think that these companies may have been started by people that came to the US on H1-B visas
They never break out the number of immigrants who come to the US on H1-B visas that start technology companies (H1-B is of course a temporary non-immigration visa).
Google was started by Sergey Brin who was a Jewish immigrant from the Soviet Union whose family immigrated to the US when he 6 and Larry Page of Lansing Michigan.
Andy Grove of Intel fame was a Jewish refugee who fled post WWII Europe to the US (Gordon Moore was born in San Fran and Robert Noyce born in Iowa however, where the actual founders of Intel).
Pierre Omidyar of eBay of course is a Frenchman who moved to this country with his family when he was 6 years old.
Yahoo! founded by David Filo ( cheese head from Wisconsin) and Jerry Yang who came to this country with his family when he 10 from Taiwan.
None of these people came to the US on work visas.
This article is reprinted by Business Week & Wall Street Journal every year close to the May deadline for H1-B visas.
In May, there will be an article about how the 85,000 visas were snapped up in one day due to "shortages" amongst technology and science workers and how we need to have unlimited H1-B visas to fix this problem.
Re:If the playing field were level, ... (Score:5, Informative)
H1-B wages are not the problem. By law, an employer is required to pay H1-B at least as much or more than the US market average for the given position.
It's the job insecurity that H1-B entails that is a problem.
Re:visa's (Score:2, Informative)
No, at least while I was a grad student, an (F1) student visa was only able to get you a 1 year apprenticeship after graduation. No way to apply for residency.
If the company you apprentice with for a year decides to keep you on, they sponsor an H1B visa that allows you to apply for residency.
The process of actually getting residency is horribly convoluted and takes between 5 and 8 years to complete. Not to mention all the shyster lawyers out there (yechh).
Re:Can you blame them? (Score:5, Informative)
No joke. If not for my friends and family (primarily the former) I'd already be in Canada or Ireland. As it is, I'm hoping things get better, because if they don't then staying here will have been a huge mistake. Certainly staying here means not having kids, unless we get our collective head out of our ass and create a non-retarded health care system. Probably means a lower standard of living regardless--and I'm not just talking about income.
Re:If the playing field were level, ... (Score:5, Informative)
The H1-B program is evil, but even if anyone that qualified for an H1-B could ask for a green card instead, it'd still be painfully slow. Let's look at the Green Card process. How long does it take for people who have jumped through all the hoops to get one?.Take into account that, depending or where you come from, it could have taken close to a decade to get to this step:
https://egov.uscis.gov/cris/jsps/Processtimes.jsp?SeviceCenter=NSC [uscis.gov]
I-485 processing times, the last, step in the process: It takes over 9 months for people seeking asylum, And close to two years for employment-based applications. Someone with an October 2007 filing date probably has another year or two left, given the flood of applications they had that summer.
So it's not just the H1-B process that is slowing people's mobility. The H1-B's trying to stay, and that work for companies willing to jump through all the hoops for them, have flooded the Green Card process anyway.
it's pretty much common knowledge (Score:3, Informative)
PhD students in the sciences and engineering do not pay for their education. Nearly 100% of them are funded in one way or another, whether it's fellowships, research assistantships, or teaching assistantships.
Re:Extremely misleading article (Score:4, Informative)
The article is extremely misleading and makes you think that these companies may have been started by people that came to the US on H1-B visas
They never break out the number of immigrants who come to the US on H1-B visas that start technology companies (H1-B is of course a temporary non-immigration visa).
However, they DO break out the percentage of returnees that are H1B/temporary - 1/5th of chinese and 1/2 of the indians. That means that 4/5ths of the chinese and half of the indian returnees had green-cards or full citizenship.
Re:There's plenty of room. (Score:1, Informative)
That is exactly right. They work hard with the idea that their hard work will pay off later on. They believe that all you need to do is work hard and tough through the hard times and later when they become established they will benefit from it. But instead they get replaced by another ignorant sap who is willing to work hard for nothing because they believe it will pay off in the end.
Completely Untrue (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Get-Out-Sourcing? (Score:0, Informative)
Your burger flipping skills are of no use; Indians generally are vegetarians and those who eat meat prefer chicken and/or lamb. Off course you could learn to cook chat items and open your own dhela on chowpati.
And it takes a PHD to be a call-center slave in India?
Re:There's plenty of room. (Score:5, Informative)
Citations:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Protectionism.html [econlib.org]
For you Austrian school folks (God, I can't believe I'm linking to Mises to support my position): http://mises.org/rothbard/protectionism.asp [mises.org]
For the interventionists, a counterpiece by Krugman, saying protectionism has a place... provided that other means fail: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/protectionism-and-stimulus-wonkish/ [nytimes.com]
Another piece:http://www.morganstanley.com/views/gef/archive/2007/20070126-Fri.html [morganstanley.com]
In the news, another danger of protectionism (as was seen in the great depression): http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/world/world/general/wto-fears-protectionism-domino-effect/1449424.aspx [canberratimes.com.au]
The risk is that we adopt protectionist policies, and other nations adopt them against us -- but not with eachother. Thus we get left behind in the expansionary economies the other nations will go through. This is the problem that Krugman misses... protectionism globally will reduce the impact of economic problems in each country on the whole, only if the protectionism is directed to all trading partners. If the EU, for example, raises protective barriers agains the US, but not the rest of the world, we've got problems. Please note that this is in re: protective trade restrictions; subsidies (like the stimulus package) are another form of protectionism, that by nature are partner-agnostic, and I think this form of protectionism is what Krugman refers to.
However, we're discussing labor protectionism, which is a slightly different beast.
Re:Can you blame them? (Score:3, Informative)
When was the last time you'd been at the border?
Just so you know, Canada takes 200000+ immigrants every year. Like green card kind of immigrants, not H1B.
So year, consider this a sign "come and take if you can"
But that's the point... (Score:3, Informative)
You sound like some company taking advantage of H1B visa applicants. The whole theory of H1B is that they do go back home.
The goal is to raise the quality of life for the world. To create jobs and worldwide economic success. Our chief export should be success.
Just watch ten or twenty years from now when the tech companies using H1B applicants and the ones shipping jobs offshore find out that they created their own competition. Competition that is very hungry and aggressive. Competition that will one day be hiring the top 10% of American talent. Not because it's cheap but because of greater demand of genuine skills and talent.
The real plight of immigrants (Score:1, Informative)
Re:H1B's leaving (Score:5, Informative)
Reverse is also true: a large number of US workers are consistently being looked over for being "overqualified" after being dumped onto the market in favor of more and more H1-B's the past few years.
Consider the following: if you are married, if you have more than 5 years experience, you are more likely to (a) be fired and (b) be passed over for a "new grad" or H1-B.
Why? Benefits and pay grade. H1-B's at companies like Microsoft have been the latest in a series of BELL-like maneuvers (look up Continental Can Co. and the "Bell Plan" if you want to understand how insidious this kind of behavior is) by major US firms.
Up until they started announcing layoffs, Microsoft was pushing for more and more H1-B's [arstechnica.com]. It's not that there weren't very qualified US workers applying for those jobs, but that they didn't want to pay the market wage for people with real experience when they could pay the H1-B's less AND get away with forcing the H1-B's to work 80-90 hour weeks because they wouldn't have family back home to complain about it.
Re:It should be a two-way street (Score:1, Informative)
You are wrong. The process in India and China is similar - you apply for a work visa and if approved (same as here) you are allowed to work.
Re:The Truth Behind the Trolling (Score:3, Informative)
Labor unions are under attack because they've gone from organizations that were concerned about worker health and safety to parasites that exist only to suck as many concessions for the industries they deal with. So, not only are the companies hobbled with an over priced work force, they are crippled to how flexible they can be with respect to adopting new technology or simple things as job duties. You have to look no further than the UAW and its contracts with the US auto makers. To their credit, GM and Ford do operate some efficient world class factories. The problem is that NONE of them are in North America because of the UAW. On top of it all, they take dues that are meant for collective benefits for the workers and use that to support political parties that the workers may or may not support.
I have relatives that are or were UAW auto workers and it is unbelievable how slack their jobs are or what nonsense the hard core slackers can get away with.
Re:It should be a two-way street (Score:1, Informative)
Source of this claim, please? Several companies in India employ foreigners, usually at top positions. So while the number of westerners working in India is nowhere near that of Indians in the US or the UK, I don't think India has been discouraging outsiders from working here. It is just that the economics does not work out very well for outsiders. So they don't come.
We have millions of illegal immigrants from countries like Bangladesh and Nepal entering India to work. They often end up staying over. But Indians do not go there to work. Why? You get better money in India, not Bangladesh or Nepal.
Re:It should be a two-way street (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This is bad strategy. (Score:3, Informative)
You demonstrate an unsurpassed lack of understanding of macro-economics.
If the labor is expensive, than pray thee, how do you make american products compete in the international market? There is a reason why global markets are flooded with China-made products. They are cheaper than competing products of similar quality.
Productivity. It's not the cost of labor but the cost per unit of production. If an item is labor intensive then the cost of labor is a significant input and you will look to lower your production cost by seeking cheap labor. This is general an item that requires little skill to produce. OTOH, if you can produce a lot of products or a high value product with your labor, the cost of the labor is less important. In many cases, this requires a skilled labor pool that is not easily replicated by simply moving a factory.
China produces a lot of goods because they can be mass produced cheaply with a lot of labor; and labor is easy to get rid of when demand drops. China is just starting to see the social costs it faces as a result of its economic model; from both the downturn and competition from other places that are even cheaper. That's nothing new, it happened to the US, Japan and Korea as other countries became cheaper sources of labor; and companies moved to more those places or went up the food chain to higher end products and automation to become more productive.
Re:There's plenty of room. (Score:5, Informative)
Because the swiss have some sort of problem with a foreigner just waltzing into their country and taking a job when they've already got swiss that can do it.
As a scientist with a PhD and in your early 30s (i.e. with about 10 years' experience) you would:
1. Fly to Switzerland and stay up to 90 days without a visa if you're American/Canadian
2. Find employment in your field.
3. Have the employer obtain a specialist visa.
4. Work ten months.
5. Get an unlimited "C" work permit/visa.
With a "C" visa you're no longer tied to that particular employer but can move freely on the labor market.
Much easier than if you're an Indian PhD who wants to work in the U.S. - or a Swiss one for that matter. H1Bs are far more restrictive, and there is nothing like the Swiss "C" visa for when you're somewhere between H1B and permanent residency (at 48months IIRC). You also won't have to jump through silly administrative hoops, like go back to your home country to apply for the visa. And the Swiss will be nice, polite, and actually helpful at the border and immigration offices. As opposed to the snarling, incompetent, rude, bottom-of-the-barrel idiots you encounter here. If there's something wrong with your application or paperwork they will helpfully suggest how to correct it. Again, very different from U.S. government standards.
You are misinformed (Score:3, Informative)
At least people can get US citizenship, they only need to live and work in the states 3 years.
Compare that with say Germany where you have to live 8 years and you may never get citizenship.
Or Switzerland, where people in your community vote on you and if you should be allowed to get citizenship. So don't piss your neighbors off ever.