Smart Immigrants Going Home

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.

Comments

Re:Much ado about nothing...

[whoever57]

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.

You are wrong on both counts.

Firstly, H1 visas are considered a "dual intent" visa. It is expected that some people on H1s will transition to Green Cards and then to citizenship.

Secondly, if the average age of H1s is "fresh out of college", that would imply that half the H1s come into the country before graduating. Since having a degree is usually required for an H1-b visa, this seems rather unlikely, so I conclude that you pulled that figure out of your ass.

Re:OK, now I'm feeling guilty

[whoever57]

There is no point continuing the discussion with you since you are clearly clue-resistant. Let me just point out a couple of things before I go: 1. You have not refuted my other correction about "dual intent". 2. A set where all the members are identical is interesting but unrepresentative of either the ages of people who get H1-B visas or teenagers getting licenses. Apparently in your world, the range of ages at which people get H1-B visas is zero -- in other words, everyone gets their visa at the same age. There are many people who get H1-B visas who are several years or decades out of college. Apparently, these people don't exist in your fantasy world. In a normal distribution, there are population members above the average and population members below the average, in roughly equal numbers. According to you, since the average number of years out of college at which people get H1-B visas is zero, there should be a population of H1-B visa holders who got their visa at something less than their degree age. Now do you see the problem?

Re:OK, now I'm feeling guilty

[whoever57]

One more thing -- by "average" you may be thinking of "mode" -- ie. the value that occurs most often. That definition does not imply a significant number of H1-Bs without college degrees, but I don't believe that the mode of ages at which people get H1-b visas is college graduation age.

If mode is what you meant by average, then I challenge you to find some documentation to support it. Otherwise STFU.