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

Can you blame them?

[HangingChad]

The American dream used to be a house in the country. Now it's a house in another country.

Re:Can you blame them?

[thesolo]

The American dream used to be a house in the country. Now it's citizenship in another country.

Fixed that for you.

Re:Can you blame them?

[Fallingcow]

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:Can you blame them?

[home-electro.com]

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"

There's plenty of room.

[raehl]

The fact of the matter is that intelligent foreigners exist. They can work here, or they can work there. The question, then, is it better if they work here or there?

The answer is obvious - we want them here.

As for 'room' for American citizens, if you can't compete with a guy who was born in India, with all your American-born advantages, he's either just plain smarter than you, or just plain works harder than you. Either way, he deserves your job, and the American company hiring him shouldn't be saddled with your either less-intelligent or less-driven self just because the more qualified candidate was born in the wrong spot.

Re:There's plenty of room.

[CastrTroy]

I agree with this. If someone is willing to do your job for less than you are, or is able to do a better job at the same rate, then they should get the job over you. However, in many cases, the people they are hiring aren't necessarily better at the job, or better motivated. In many cases the only deciding factor is how cheaply they will work, regardless of whether they are getting sub-standard results out of the employees. No customer likes tech support from overseas, yet many companies provide this, simply to decrease operation costs. The customers are unhappy, but the business makes more money in the long run.

Re:There's plenty of room.

[Jason Earl]

Precisely. I can compete with Indians that live around the corner. They have to pay the same taxes (mostly), and they have comparable expenses. If technology continues to shift from the United States to India, however, American technology workers are screwed.

As long as all of the truly bright people in the world come to the U.S. to work then the U.S. will continue to have a long-lasting advantage over the rest of the world. When that stops happening, then the U.S. economy is really headed for trouble.

Re:There's plenty of room.

[ejtttje]

I agree, and I'll add this assumes the foreign graduates can get the visa and work permits needed to stay in the US. The harder we make it for them to stay, the more go back to their homes.

For anyone who complains about competition from foreign workers for US jobs, consider if they go home, they will be assisting or starting competing companies there. Then it's just *your personal* job that has competition, its the *entire company*, and if the foreign company wins out, *all* the jobs get laid off.

It is by far in our best interest to try to keep all the best and brightest here in our country... we should only be so lucky to have such a draw...

Re:There's plenty of room.

[joeflies]

Except that you ignore the fact that the H1-B's arent' competing with you on the open market. The h1-b must work there, or leave the country within 10 days if they can't find a new position.

So the H1-B's are working here with a neck in the guillotine - work hard, accept the conditions, and take the pay they are given or go home. They don't have a choice of finding another job they may be highly qualified for without having to get a sponsor.

So employers fill these slots with employees who will work longer and work cheaper in order to stay in the US. Does that really sound like you have a fair shot of getting that job just because you're more qualified.

Re:There's plenty of room.

[Teckla]

As for 'room' for American citizens, if you can't compete with a guy who was born in India, with all your American-born advantages, he's either just plain smarter than you, or just plain works harder than you.

Oh my God, you're such an insulting ass. And you got modded +5 for it! Unbelievable.

Even if H-1B workers are good for the U.S., which is debatable, it doesn't matter in the long run, because American companies will continue to offshore work because of the cost of living in the U.S.

It simply does not matter if an American is equal to, or better than, a foreign counterpart, because the American has an insanely high cost of living and cannot hope to compete wage-wise with someone that lives in a country with a low cost of living.

The H-1B debate is pointless. Americans are too expensive, even H-1B's living in America are too expensive. The trend will be to continue to offshore the work in order to leverage lower costs of living elsewhere.

Re:There's plenty of room.

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever actually worked with creating software? Lower cost developers equals far worse code equals shitter software equals products that end up not being able to compete. That means you have to shut down.

Want an example? Look at some of the projects Motorola closed recently. Wanna know why it was closed down? They added a lot of "cheap" workers that produced code that honestly was offensive to anyone with a proper education / proper knowledge of software.

Lowering costs often means something gotta give, only when you can produce with the same quality but at a lower price can you continue to compete.

Re:There's plenty of room.

[Red Flayer]

It simply does not matter if an American is equal to, or better than, a foreign counterpart, because the American has an insanely high cost of living and cannot hope to compete wage-wise with someone that lives in a country with a low cost of living.

And so what's the answer? We have several possible ways to fix this, which do you prefer?

-Reduce the American standard of living via increased immigration to correct the high cost of labor?
-Increase the global standard of living via offshoring to correct their low cost of labor?
-Cause stagnation via protectionist policies, then wait for other nations to pass us by on their way to a higher standard of livin and eocnomic vitality?

In all seriousness, if we open the gates to immigration, we'll reduce the cost of American labor and thus be more competitive from a labor standpoint... and if we do it via naturalization instead of stupid H1-B and other temporary visas, we'll get to *keep* the best and brightest here. If we continue to offshore jobs that we cannot compete with on labor costs, we'll raise the standard of living overseas and help level the playing field.

The truth of the matter is that the US standard of living is unsustainable, we've only kept it high so long by leveraging limited natural resources (like fossil fuels) and borrowing.

An adjustment will happen, and the US standard of living will become more like the rest of the world's... but the question is if we can help ensure that this is by elevating the SoL outside the US, or if it will be simply a reduction in the SoL in the US. I know which I'd prefer (both for selfish and humanitarian reasons).

Re:There's plenty of room.

[Fulcrum of Evil]

If someone is willing to do your job for less than you are, or is able to do a better job at the same rate, then they should get the job over you.

I'll accept that once I can do the same thing to a guy in switzerland.

Re:There's plenty of room.

[keeboo]

Another good question is why we aren't putting the money we put into these people into our own citizens; citizens who will be much less likely to sneak off and leave the hand that fed them out to dry.

Ohh... Poor Uncle Sam.

Let's say a guy gets his education in his home country. It was paid somehow, perhaps the local government paid for him, or perhaps he's indebted. In either case, it's not a trivial amount of money.
Then the guy goes to the U.S. to work. The U.S. did not pay a dime for his education, nor any other expenses he/his_parents/his_country had with him during his whole life. The U.S. did not invest in him, he came ready and is immediately productive.
Will the U.S. take the less qualified people and educate them? Sorry, no. Instead the U.S. cherry picks the best, for free, at the expense of the rest of the World.

And what if he never returns, what about his home country losing a highly qualified person? Well, that's just too bad.

And the U.S. won't be giving anything for free. No way, the guy's going to work his ass off (or else), he'll pay the same taxes as the locals but will have less rights.

If there's a parasite in this history, it's not the foreign guy.

Re:There's plenty of room.

[icannotthinkofaname]

Maybe you should fix your educational system so you'd have smart people on your own. Of course that means you'd also have to pay real wages to teachers, fire the incompetent ones who are unable to learn anything new, but have laid low long enough so you can't fire them legally, etc.

Oh, and actually teach the kids to think for themselves. In short: I don't see that happening anytime soon.

I'm American, and I can't tell you how much I share this desire for a better pubic educational system for the US. I would very much love to see the average US citizen be able to think for himself, rather than just absorb all the crap thrown at us through too many advertisements every day. If you're an average American (at least, this is my impression from what I see as stereotypes), your computer is Windows, your cable and Internet are Comcast high-speed (which isn't that fast on an absolute scale), you bought your car because either (a) it looks nice or (b) you heard that it's environmentally friendly, you work from 9 to 5 five days a week for a middle-class paycheck. And this little bubble is pretty much your life. It's safe. There's no need to think for yourself; the companies you pay monthly for their services have already done that for you.

Screw that. I wanna make my own decisions about stuff I do and buy!

Re:There's plenty of room.

[c6gunner]

Why couldn't you?

Re:There's plenty of room.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't wait for the first wave of immigrant technical workers to reach middle-age. I'm going to laugh my ass off when they start complaining about competition from younger, smarter, harder-working people. I can't wait until they have to visit the chiropractor 2 to 3 times a week for their chronic neck and back pain from all the time they spent hunched over a computer. It'll be amusing when they are completely screwed by the companies they helped build and divorced by their spouses for years of neglect.

I'm guessing that the ones that go back to their countries of origin will be the lucky ones. They'll probably go back to a more "humanly" paced culture that believes that families really do take care of each other instead of farming the old folks out to some Dickensian nursing home.

As long as the U.S. maintains its dominance in the world there will always be some country where the young people will long to be a "corporate tool". Buy hey, I'm not bitter. No, just wiser.

Re:There's plenty of room.

[Red Flayer]

-Cause stagnation via protectionist policies, then wait for other nations to pass us by on their way to a higher standard of livin and eocnomic vitality?

[Citation Needed]

Citations:

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Protectionism.html
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
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/
Another piece:http://www.morganstanley.com/views/gef/archive/2007/20070126-Fri.html

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

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:There's plenty of room.

[snaz555]

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.

Re:visa's

[Orome]

There's also the fact that many of them get scholarships/fellowships/teaching assistantships from US universities. Essentially, American taxpayer money has gone into funding their education, and because of idiotic political reasons they are going back. Of course the layman just sees them as taking up a job, and won't see the fact that
a) They could create more jobs
b) A US-educated immigrant going back is a net loss (in terms of taxpayer money) for the country.

Nice -- more of what we already knew

[erroneus]

I just have to wonder how much more of this erosion of the U.S. the U.S. is willing to accept and permit? H1-Bs and lowering of wages, offshoring and outsourcing services are all great ways for companies to increase their bottom lines. But when EVERYONE is doing it, these companies ultimately create poor and unemployed customers! This is not sustainable.

People constantly ask "so protectionism is the answer?" Right now, yes it is!

It seems that everyone and every entity is seeming short, fast turn-around and ever-increasing bottom lines using "growth percentage" as a metric for success and viability. (Reality check! In no part of the universe is growth a sustainable metric!!)

Re:Nice -- more of what we already knew

[hazem]

It seems that everyone and every entity is seeming short, fast turn-around and ever-increasing bottom lines using "growth percentage" as a metric for success and viability.

This kind of thinking is a systemic problem and not just in the job market.

Consider the mortgage foreclosure issue. For a single bank making a foreclosure decision, it makes perfect sense to foreclose a bad loan, realize the loss, and then recover the value by selling the property. This is even okay to happen "regularly" as long as it's a relatively minor level of activity. But once you reach (as another posted pointed out) a "tipping point", this behavior that's good for an individual suddenly becomes extremely detrimental to everyone.

This was magnified by an unwillingness by the banks to re-negotiate the raise in rates on adjustable rate loans. Again, on a case by case basis, it makes sense for the bank to "stick to their guns" and force the consumer to pay the higher rate. But doing this to too many people will cause a large number of them to foreclose. That just refers back to the previous paragraph.

With too many homes in foreclosure, values of entire neighborhoods drop and people are stuck with homes that aren't worth what they owe. Many walk away leaving the banks with properties they can't sell in neighborhoods that are devalued.

The short-term case of chasing the profit prevented the longer term view of seeing that what they were doing was destroying the market. And now, after so much damage, they're being forced to do the very things they should have been doing in the first place - negotiating rates to help keep homeowners in their homes.

Re:Nice -- more of what we already knew

[Red Flayer]

Let me start by saying that your username is apropos.

I just have to wonder how much more of this erosion of the U.S. the U.S. is willing to accept and permit? H1-Bs and lowering of wages, offshoring and outsourcing services are all great ways for companies to increase their bottom lines.

First, there is nothing wrong with outsourcing. Hell, I outsource my lawncare to a neighborhood kid. You do know that outsourcing is substantively different than offshoring, right?

But when EVERYONE is doing it, these companies ultimately create poor and unemployed customers! This is not sustainable.

You're right it's not sustainable; eventually those unemployed people find jobs that are either more productive and valuable to society, or they find employment doing something else... at a price more in line with what the work is worth. There is no inherent reason an artificial restriction on labor (tight immigration policy) should be allowed to prop up wages... in the long run, this results in a smaller market for goods.

In re: offshoring, I'm sure we completely disagree, but from a humanitarian perspective, it's far better to lift some people out of abject poverty in developing nations than it is to slightly increase someone's already-high standard of living in the US.

People constantly ask "so protectionism is the answer?" Right now, yes it is!

Yes, we have a surplus of labor right now. And that's painful for some. But protectionism is not the answer. It lengthened and deepened the great depression, and it will do the same thing now. Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.

It seems that everyone and every entity is seeming short, fast turn-around and ever-increasing bottom lines using "growth percentage" as a metric for success and viability. (Reality check! In no part of the universe is growth a sustainable metric!!)

Except, perhaps, the universe as a whole. Joking aside, why should economic growth not be sustainable long-term? Seriously? It's not like it's constrained by physical goods or anything... it's an intellectual construct that doesn't have absolute limits. I fully agree that "short-termism" is a flawed way to assess economic vitality of a company, and country, or an economy. But I disagree that growth is not sustainable. Consider that every trade transaction, in theory, represents economic growth (economics is not zero-sum, in case you have no knowledge of economics).

At any rate, protectionism is not the answer, now or ever. It only serves to reduce economic vitality... and this is especially so if other nations retaliate (which they surely would). If you had your way, we'd lose the benefit that all these immigrants, etc, would bring to our future economy. You want to talk about being motivated by short-term profits? You sir, with your talk of protectionism, are doing exactly that.

Re:Nice -- more of what we already knew

[erroneus]

First they enter the U.S. and depress wages. Then they leave the depressed wages in their wake. Meanwhile, the U.S. has fewer "smart" people getting such degrees and training and will take some time before a bounce back can occur.

Re:Nice -- more of what we already knew

[Red Flayer]

Oh good god. Pick an industry and grow it "forever" and see where it takes you. Real estate? Fast Food? Cell phones? Even securities? Every market can saturate. The saturation of the securities market is what led to the creation of these risky-mortgage based securities -- they needed a new market to grow in.

Why are you limiting the discussion to specific markets, first of all? Why not general economic activity? Saturation of capital in a market (like the securities market) can be bled off if other markets are more profitable... this is the basis of almost all investment. The securities problem of mortgage-based assets was not due to saturation, it was due to improper valuation of those securites, making them more attractive than other investment alternatives.

Furthermore, saturation of supply in a market is simply a supply issue... this doesn't mean that the market can't continue to grow.

And one thing I failed to mention that I wish I had (not that it adds much to the argument) is the still present trade deficit. We are buying more than we are selling. What we are selling is largely to ourselves in decreasing numbers. The poor are getting poorer.

Agreed. And this is because it is too expensive to produce goods here, because labor is too expensive. More on this below.

We do need protectionism. We need to protect our assets. We once had the strongest agricultural production and now we don't. We once had the strongest manufacturing and now we don't. We once has the strongest technology development and it is rather doubtful that we can wear that badge any longer. What do we have then? The most "rich people?" We do still have a high concentration of wealth but that concentration is confined to less than a percent of the population and a non-existent middle-class.

Agricultural production -- we're still one of the strongest, if not the strongest, in the world. Agricultural products remain one of our biggest exports. Manufacturing -- this industry has died because labor is too expensive here. Technological development -- this is dependent on 'innovative spirit' and cheap labor, both of which are stimulated by immigration -- immigrants tend to be risk-takers, which innovators by nature also are.

We do still have a high concentration of wealth but that concentration is confined to less than a percent of the population and a non-existent middle-class.

Yes. But protectionism feeds into this. There is no middle class because there aren't good jobs. There aren't good jobs because labor is too expensive. Labor is too expensive because the cost of living is too high. The cost of living is too high because we've leveraged unsustainable resources (natural resources and credit, to be specific) to inflate the standard of living. Solution: Reduce the standard of living so US labor is competitive, either by attrition (which protectionism will cause) or via immigration (which will create a larger market for US goods).

The problem with protectionism is that while it may maintain our standard of living as long as we have lots of natural resources and credit from other nations, it's not sustainable. We'll only be able to correct the trade imbalance if we all become poor (and thus globally competitive).

If we open the immigration doors, we increase the availability of cheap labor, which benefits most of us. Sure, it'll be painful until we're able to develop competitive local manufacturing, and until the waves of immigrants are economically strong enough to function as a market for our goods... but the alternative is to slowly stagnate while the rest of the world passus us by. Protectionism left China in the dust for decade after decade... only a loosening of that protectionism allowed them to raise their standard of living. Let's not follow the same path.

Re:Nice -- more of what we already knew

[rossifer]

Um, the CRA is a red herring.

The loans covered by CRA tended to have the same risk profile as other bank loans.
"liar loans", "no income, no assets loans", etc. almost entirely came from institutions not covered by CRA.

The rest of your list is not any better.

You completely missed Christopher Cox's incompetent regulation of financial institutions at the SEC, Alan Greenspan's ill-advised attempt to keep spending up by keeping interest rates near zero for most of a decade, Bush begging Americans to "keep spending" after 9/11, and the real original seed of the current disaster, which was a series of moves to deregulate banks that occurred during Bush I and Clinton leading to the creation of credit default swaps, the securitization of debt, and all sorts of other really bad ideas.

But it was nice of you to try to make Bush look a little less incompetent. The worst president in history still needs a kind word every once in a while.

Re:Nice -- more of what we already knew

[TheSync]

And one thing I failed to mention that I wish I had (not that it adds much to the argument) is the still present trade deficit. We are buying more than we are selling. What we are selling is largely to ourselves in decreasing numbers.

Actually exports have been rising (until 2009) as well as imports: see here. And keep in mind that those $3 trillion in imports are still pretty small compared with the $13 trillion domestic, non-imported US economy.

On the other hand, a global trade war would risk the $1.8 trillion in US exports and all of their respective jobs (my industry makes 1/3 of its revenue from exports), so let's not mess around with that! Plus it would raise prices on basic consumer goods, which would affect the poor the worst!

Re:Nice -- more of what we already knew

[twostix]

What a joke that first link is. Truly. Some vague hand waving, a distortion of numbers and a couple of meaningless graphs can convince some people of anything. It (intentionally I'll assume given the source) also misses the obvious, if it's going to include "benefits" it'd better include the enormously inflated cost of health care! Oh it doesn't? Then it's less than meaningless, it's misleading.

In 1970 my father, a lowly mechanic purchased a nice house (on 70% of his wage), supported a wife and raised three children in a solid middle class household.

39 years later his son, a white collar computer programmer raising three children and supporting a wife can't afford to buy a house on 100% of his wage in ANY POPULATION CENTRE. Functionally lower-middle class, one car not two, not to mention working twice as many hours and getting half the benefits!

And yet ivory tower pseudo-intellectuals such as yourself will assume to lecture to us with the help of awful graphs and twisted and distorted 'truths' that we work less for more than people did thirty years ago.

What a joke.

And why would tariffs put you out of a job? Tariffs affect imports not exports.

And holy shit of course 'real disposable income' increased in the last four months, half a million people are losing their jobs a month, people aren't buying things so prices on luxuries MUST come down. It's called a recession! You seem to have a flimsy grasp on real economics. Or an agenda to drive. Gee I wonder which.

Ideological fanatics such as yourself, who don't have a firm hand on reality, just the dogma in your minds are selling your own countries out for no reason what so ever. And China and India and other developing countries will *happily* allow that to happen, then see if they're so ready to be so open with their borders when they finally hold the upper hand.

You people are little more than an updated version of the 20th centuries Useful Idiots. How the Chinese must laugh at the west.

Re:Let them go

[shutdown -p now]

It's about time we make some room for real US citizens.

Presumably, most of those people originally wanted to become "real" (is there any other kind?) US citizens as well, but realized they have to jump through too many hoops for it to be worth it.

(or do you mean that "real US citizen" is a White Protestant guy with Anglo-Saxon lineage?)

Of course, you can have those guys working in engineering, physics or biotech fields in US - preferably as citizens - or you can have them working on thermonuclear warheads, delivery systems, and biological weapons in China or Russia. Your pick.

Tipping point

[bindo]

This is the end ....

my feeling, in 30 years this moment will be viewed as the tipping point, the moment in which america stopped being the siphon of the worlds best minds.

For the first time in history the melting pot hasn't managed to retain the best.
Those people will bring a BIG BOOST in their respoective countries ruling intellighentia.

lots of sour grapes here, but have no one else to blame ....

Re:Tipping point

[SIR_Taco]

No, a melting pot would retain the heaviest, which the US has quite well

Re:Tipping point

[cjb658]

Well, at least we still have the most guns.

Re:Tipping point

[JanneM]

Actually, this has probably not so much to do with the US itself, and more with the countries many of you immigrants come from.

I'm Swedish, and for various reasons a disproportionate number of Swedes tend to move abroad; not just academics and other highly skilled people, but "ordinary" people too. There is very little debate about it, and no screaming about "brain drain". The reason is that the vast majority eventually return. It may take three, or five, or ten years, but most come back and bringing with them more skills and experience, making it a net win for the country.

Similarly, as large countries like China and India become places where a middle-class life is attainable and normal, so will more people return home eventually where they would have settled abroad permanently before. It's not that the US has become less attractive, but that people's own home countries have become more so.

The US can and should adapt to this in two ways: first, recognize that a temporary immigrant is still valuable for the country even if they leave after some years. Second, encourage more of their own citizens to likewise move abroad for some period in order to build their skills and benefit in the same way that other countries do. While Swedes are disproportionately likely to live abroad, US citizens seem anecdotally disproportionately unlikely to do so. You seem to have a whole slew of arbitrary barriers, like the double income taxation when living abroad, that conspire to keep normal people from relocating for a few years.

Re:Let them go

[interkin3tic]

There's nothing special about the foreigners. We can make more.

You can't make more Foreigner, AND THEY ARE TOTALLY SPECIAL!

You're as cold as ice if you don't think so! Man, these head games you are playing really make me hot blooded...

Fortunately, they are still alive, well, touring, and rocking, so we don't need to make more.

Re:Good riddance

[interkin3tic]

I'm tired of the smell of curry.

Then you, sir, are tired of life.

and why do we care?

[girlintraining]

Our educational system has become so damned expensive that only people who don't live here can seemingly afford it. So it makes sense... As to why the visa system is clogged... Maybe the economic hard times have hit government offices partially responsible for it as well? Oh, what sweet revenge. -_- More seriously though, what difference does it make how well we educate people (either people who stay or leave?) if the environmental conditions necessary for real progress are absent? Our intellectual property system has gutted any hopes of "desirable individuals" doing much of anything besides occupying a desk. The medical field is screwed because people are too afraid of litigation to actually practice medicine at less than a 6000% markup on procedures, which is literally killing people who can't afford it anymore. The lawyers are the only ones in this country that are well-off anymore.

It's no wonder people are jumping ship... Some people looked down the length of the bow and see a giant iceberg in front of the USS Our Future. An iceberg made almost totally of greed, because we couldn't look farther than the end of our damn noses as the social problems we're facing. And leaving is the smart thing -- how long until Canada starts patrolling its borders to keep illegal immigrants from the United States out? Probably not long.

Re:and why do we care?

[SIR_Taco]

Honestly we, Canada, are quite content with the fact that you preach such crazy patriotism to your kids at a young age and we don't have any worries.
      We're taught more to come up with our own views and opinions of the world and the country itself (through school and society). And from looking around, myself, I feel that I live in a country that is much less off-the-wall (so to speak) than the rest of the world. I was not told through school and/or society that I need to worship Canada like it's a second/first religion, however I would put my life up for this country in a heart-beat if it were ever threatened.
      You can't force anyone to love a country, but you can let them.

Re:and why do we care?

[Cimexus]

Insightful comment (haven't got any mod points unfortunately though).

I feel the same way about my home country (Australia). Australians deep down are quite patriotic, but it is a quiet, learned patriotism, rather than the overt 'God bless America' flag-waving culture you see in the US. If you asked us, we wouldn't say we were patriotic. But most would, as you say, defend it to the death if there was a real threat. Life is just too good here to give up easily, it truly is one of the world's best places to live (Canada is nice too BTW from what I've seen) :)

I'm qualified to talk about this distinction I think, because my wife is in fact an American who has just recently permanently moved here to Australia with me. (Incidentally she's well educated, a good example of the brain drain out of the US). I've also spent a lot of time in the US myself, both for business and pleasure.

I think the US a wonderful country with some of the friendliest people you will find anywhere. But the first time I visited I could not BELIEVE the awful, tacky, in-your-face patriotism. Flags from every freaking house (here, flags are pretty much just for government buildings etc). HUGE flags on the side of highways and stuff for no apparent reason (why? seriously, why?). In a way, the US displays its national symbol so much and so often that it loses it's importance and meaning I think. Here, we treat our flag with a great deal of respect and use it only for official occasions. And I think it is more symbolic and meaningful because of that.

So I think your last comment "You can't force anyone to love a country, but you can let them", is a perfect summation. In most countries, people come to love their country gradually and deeply, because they genuinely think it's a wonderful place. In the US though it does seem as if patriotism is more ... indoctrinated into people.

Re:I guess they ran out

[shutdown -p now]

I guess they ran out of secret documents and technology to steal

Yep, they've just found out that they can themselves engineer better stuff than they can steal from the U.S. today.

Rest of the World

[Roger W Moore]

Our new paper, "America's Loss Is the World's Gain"...

Shouldn't that be "America's Loss Is the Rest of the World's Gain"? I know you insist on calling us aliens and think we use strange units like metres and kilograms but we are all part of the same world.

Anti Achievement mentality being fostered

[Shivetya]

simply tells smart immigrants to wait for a real change before coming back or planning to stay.

I work with 1 H1B and a few naturalized immigrants who all are very well educated (masters for two of them) and their drive is well beyond what the average "American" I see today. They still want it all. The difference is that they are willing to sacrifice and work for it.

When schools allow dummies to pass because it isn't fair to hold them back, when schools don't celebrate their brightest because it offends, when doing grunt work on your path through the job market is for losers, what can you expect? Fortunately there are still more of us than them. The problem is that very little is being done to encourage more of those yearning for success who will work for it instead we are now seeing more who expect everything to be done or handed to them.

Reverse brain drain? It will get worse as some of OUR brightest go overseas to excel.

Re:Anti Achievement mentality being fostered

[Red Flayer]

I work with 1 H1B and a few naturalized immigrants who all are very well educated (masters for two of them) and their drive is well beyond what the average "American" I see today. They still want it all. The difference is that they are willing to sacrifice and work for it.

And with the H1-B, we show them the door instead of welcoming them to stay. These are the people that we should be encouraging to naturalize... hell, we should scrap H1-Bs completely, IMO, but raise the immigration cap for those wishing to naturalize.

The US's great economy in the past was built on the shoulders of risk-taking, hard-working immigrants, and now we want to shut the door to protect "our" jobs? That's a recipe for economic stagnation.

This is bad strategy.

[raehl]

I think a lot of Americans don't realize why America became the superpower it is.

For thousands and thousands of years, the way to increase your nation's power was to go and invade the other nation, subjugate them, and take their stuff.

The problem is that's a pretty expensive way of going about things. The answer?

Immigration!

Why fight through the world subjugating people when you can just open up the gates of immigration and the best, brightest and hardest working of the other nation's populace will voluntarily and at their own expense subjugate themselves?

Much cheaper and more effective than invasion!

Re:This is bad strategy.

[saiha]

The issue in the US though is instead of going into development of high-tech fields, Americans have been going into management of those fields. In my biased opinion in general becoming a generic MBA is easier than engineering/science so if eng/sci is being filled by immigrants, natives will go the other route. When the immigrants leave with all our IP all we are left with is paper pushers.

We (meaning America) needs to start churning out more home-grown techies. We still want to encourage immigration though.

Re:This is bad strategy.

[Anonymous Coward]

all the while you are watering down your own culture and what made the nation great. If US immigration policy was based purely on skills and letting in the "best & brightest", that wouldn't be as big of a problem. Unfortunately, US immigration policy is based more on importing mass poverty than it is brainpower. We don't need to import some uneducated Saharan refugee to slice up cattle at 1/3 the old market rate and then allow him to bring his entire family over later on under a 'family visa'. We have enough shmucks that can do that. Unfortunately for the employers, they're not dumb enough to work at bargain basement prices.

Re:This is bad strategy.

[Red Flayer]

In my biased opinion in general becoming a generic MBA is easier than engineering/science so if eng/sci is being filled by immigrants, natives will go the other route. When the immigrants leave with all our IP all we are left with is paper pushers.

Gee, I don't know... maybe instead we could encourage them to stay? That way, *they* become Americans, and suddenly, we don't have a shortage of Americans with eng/sci backgrounds.

Re:This is bad strategy.

[swb]

We need to end the cheap (H1-B) labor for engineering.

If businesses "need" more engineering labor than the market has available, they need to pay for it, just as they would for marketing or management. Instead they suppress the salaries by importing cheap labor from overseas.

We also need to undo some of the cultural bias we have for "management" and stop treating management as some kind of aristocratic/Mandarin class entitled to special wages & privileges above the common people.

Re:This is bad strategy.

[Red Flayer]

Thus they are *labor* not immigrants and many cannot simply "stay". If they were actually immigrating to be citizens and engineers, chances are the wages they would paid would be lucrative enough to get Americans to do the jobs since the immigrants would have the same chances at other jobs as Americans (eg, if engineering doesn't pay, do something else instead of being brought here because you are an engineer).

No, it would increase the supply of skilled labor, thus reducing cost of labor across he board for those skilled positions. The immigrants would get paid less, and non-immigrant (native/already naturalized labor) would also get paid less.

I think this is necessary if we want to fix our economy long-term... reduce labor costs to make them more in line with global labor costs. Reduce our standard of living to more sustainable levels (unless you want to keep borrowing from China to support your SoL).

Re:This is bad strategy.

[SageMusings]

most of the Indians I have worked with lately have exaggerated (read:lied about) their work and education levels.

Allow me to wreck my karma: You got modded down but I completely agree because I live this hell every day. We do a lot of outsourcing and have had many immigrant coders here on visas. To look at these guys on paper you'd think they were the second coming of Turing. In actual productivity and lines of useable code, it's been a cruel joke.

Damn right they lied on their resumes and education. What's the worth of an Indian degree? No doubt there must be some jewels that come from those institutions somewhere. Someday I may meet one.

Immigrant brain drain ? Puleeeze. We are quite fond of saying 90% of developers suck. Well, that applies to immigrants, too. I don't see this supposed exodus as a reason for concern. If anything we may reach a point where companies start to invest closer to home again........nah, that ship sailed years ago.

They will lead a better life "at home"

[bogaboga]

A colleague of mine decided to return to Africa. The money he collected over seven years in the USA would enable him live a better life in his homeland.

A mansion, with a swimming pool and three maids only costs him about 900 dollars to maintain. The respect he would get from the community would be greater and he'll have a chance to eat fresh "organic" fruit.

All in all...good for them...I wish them all the best.

When the economy picks up, I will welcome them to the mighty USA.

Protectionism

[Legion_SB]

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.

I like my protectionism like I like my women: passive aggressive!

Much ado about nothing...

[jeko]

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:Much ado about nothing...

[Jherek Carnelian]

All this says is that the H1-B visa program is working as advertised.

And it shows just how stupidly designed the H1-B visa program was in the first place. These people are precisely the types we want as citizens. It should never have been temporary in the first place. It should have been designed to be a fast track to a green card. Instead it was designed as a way to put artificial leverage on these people to keep them under the thumbs of their corporate employers - in direct contradiction of traditional american values like being the "land of the free."

Re:Much ado about nothing...

[sbeckstead]

I really wonder how many of you still know what the word "Free" means or how to apply it.

Can you blame them?

[deodiaus2]

Well, there are two major factors.
1) Given the current recession, the number of jobs have fallen off. That and there is pressure to hire an American over someone on a visa. Plus, maybe the foreigners don't want to pay our debt due to all of the bailouts and "Economic stimulus".
2) Xenophobia is alive and well. Even if there were no 9/11, there was a fear of foreigners in the US. Be it left over hostiles from the Cold War, hatred towards Mexicans and South Americans for taking "good jobs" from Americans, Native Americans wanting their land back, or African-Americans wanting a piece of the American Dream and compensation from slavery, there are build up resentments which have been under the surface.
Whenever you evaluate a strategic game or a problem, you can see it by seeing it from the opponents point of view.

Great!

[xplenumx]

Training foreign students served two purposes. First, so we have an opportunity to hire the best and brightest. Secondly, so we can expose them to our culture. What better way is there to bring about change in a country than to train some of their top academic leaders? This is how you bring human rights to China and reduce corruption in Mexico.

Immigration/Emigration problem

[technomom]

The next time you complain about immigration into the USA, consider how much worse things will be when people no longer even want to come here. Worse, that American citizens start leaving for greener pastures. That day may be coming.

If we have an "immigration problem", it's generally a sign of a healthy economy. It's when we have an "emigration problem", that you know things will be really rough.

Wait a minute...

[Chris Burke]

Are you saying my immigrant coworkers who aren't planning on leaving are stupid? That seems both rash and mean. You take it back!

If the playing field were level, ...

[BillAtHRST]

then things might be different.
As it is, the H1B program has merely managed to feed the "fat cats" without improving the lot of US citizens.
By all means, encourage immigration of hard-working, talented, intelligent people.
But allow them to control their own destinies and compete without handicapping them or US citizens by institutionalizing a system that unfairly depresses wages for all.
Maybe we've just reached a sort of equilibrium here, where US wages have stagnated while the rest of world's has grown.

Re:If the playing field were level, ...

[shutdown -p now]

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:If the playing field were level, ...

[hibiki_r]

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

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.

Re:If the playing field were level, ...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

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 is only a violation if you get caught. There is, and always has been, exactly $0 in the government budget for enforcement of the wage parity requirements of the H1B program.

Re:If the playing field were level, ...

[TheGratefulNet]

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.

are you just stating the law or do you really BELIEVE this is how the real world works?

I can assure you, the two are disjoint in almost all h1b salaries.

do you ever wonder WHY HR wants to keep salaries secret?

well, sometimes its not always a secret and the truth does get out.

foreign workers are underpaid BY PLAN. not by mistake or by accident.

Re:I can't for the life of me work out what would

[radtea]

...have made them want to leave..

I've worked in the US twice, the first time in the early '90's in southern California, the second more recently in New England. Both times I felt like kissing the soil of my native country upon return.

Individual Americans are some of the most decent people I've met. Collectively, though, you people scare me.

The change between the early '90's and post-9/11 was striking, from the crazy stuff on TV (Glenn Beck pronouncing that 'security' is the most important thing to any American, when once upon a time it would have been something called 'liberty'), fast-food places with signs announcing that they only hired legal American citizens, and of course the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which temporarily stripped people like me from having access to Habeas Corpus protections.

On the surface, everything was the same. Underneath, the picture was not pretty.

The team I worked with was mostly non-Americans, from both the Far East and Europe, and most of them were highly educated and wanted to stay, but I could never figure out why.

On the good side, like Churchill said, Americans will always find the solution to the problem... after they've tried everything else.

H1B's leaving

[gravos]

You know, one thing that no one ever bothered to mention is that they might be leaving BECAUSE they can't find good jobs here. A lot of the kids at the university I went to had to go back to their own countries after graduation, not because they wanted to, they love America. They can't find an employer willing to put up with all the BS that uncle sam requires so they can become citizens.

Barriers to entry never help anybody. Uncle Sam, tear down this wall.

Re:H1B's leaving

[Hal_Porter]

Don't you think this just means that America will have fewer people but those people will be risk takers (and one suspects heart breakers too). Plus, they will be the lucky half of the risk takers. Plus they have a Masters.

Sounds pretty badass to me.

Re:H1B's leaving

[truesaer]

We're talking about employers here. They're often not willing to spend years and tens of thousands of dollars working on getting their employees green cards. The US system requires extensive work by the employer, not just the individual.

And frankly, US citizenship is not so valuable that it should be dramatically harder to obtain than an EU, UK, or Australian citizenship. But it is.

Re:H1B's leaving

[californication]

The U.S. unemployment rate is rising, meaning there are fewer and fewer jobs available. You may be willing and able to contribute and pay taxes, but so are about 20 million other people in this country.

Re:H1B's leaving

[Darinbob]

Also, having a lot of education does not make one highly skilled. Especially younger workers without much experience thrown at jobs that treat technical people as commodities.

Some of the best engineers I've known are highly educated people from China or India. However, some of the worst engineers I've met were also highly educated people from China or India...

Re:H1B's leaving

[M1rth]

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. 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:H1B's leaving

[Darinbob]

I wonder if this is because of H1B hiring tendencies. Employers either go with H1B workers because they can't find someone as highly qualified locally as the foreign applicant; or because they want cheap labor.

(granted it's not cheap to go through the H1B process, but if you've got a marginal worker who has to go through a mess of bureacracy to change jobs, you've essentially got indentured labor that you can exploit)

Re:H1B's leaving

[Cassius Corodes]

Filter your candidates for luck, you don't want unlucky people working for your company. Dump half the applications at random. Success!

Re:H1B's leaving

[EvilNTUser]

I am not an American, and I wasn't referring to any kind of superiority or fear of terrorism. This is about risk. Risk increases with uncertainty.

An infant has a probability distribution equal to infants of American parents, because it just came into being. Adult immigrants have motives and all kinds of selection pressures, even if their home country is better than America. (Of course, unscrupulous prospective immigrants might take advantage of their infant, but that's another issue.)

For example (and I am NOT saying this is reality), immigrants may be more likely to be losers because being unable to make a living in your own country is a strong motive to move abroad. On the other hand, skilled people may want to move to America to get better salaries.

Immigration policies must be based on an honest study of the motives of all types of prospective immigrants. This also doesn't mean that the current policy is perfect, but simply opening up all borders in the name of some ideal could be disastrous. Making naturalization hard is a legitimate idea for finding the most motivated people.

Notice that open borders wouldn't really be good for the countries you think I look down on either. Every person who could leave would do so, leaving the least capable parts of society in their home country. The third world would never recover. The best way to help those countries is to give the smart people a reason to build up their own country instead of escaping to industrialized nations that already have environmentally unsustainable populations.

In the mean time, I think your country (assuming you're American) has every right to pick and choose those it lets in.

Re:Good riddance

[carlzum]

I'm tired of the smell of curry.

Oh no! The summary said PhDs and business managers were leaving, so I wasn't worried. But if the restaurant proprietors are going we have to act now. This is America, you can have your doctors and scientists, but for the love of God, don't take our food.

Claiming racism and laziness is a cheap shot

[jeko]

No, for the billionth time, we don't mind competing on quality. No, for the billionth time, we're not racist. No, for the billionth time, we don't mind the competition. On the contrary, my heart goes out to the H1-Bs I work with because I know they don't have any good choices.

In the most brutal stark terms, H1-Bs are hired specifically because they don't enjoy the same political and legal protection that native workers do. They get paid less, worked like indentured servants, and disposed of like kleenex. I've actually heard one manager scream at the H1-B team he employed "If you're awake, you're working for me!"

This is why you don't see the IT market flooded with French, Canadian or Australian workers, but rather see the market flooded with people from countries struggling with poverty and political horrors.

These poor people are exploited here precisely because the conditions in their home country are so horrific. My heart goes out to the women H1-Bs I've worked with, because I've seen the haunted look in their eye when they speak of home. I once cornered another H1-B over a hideously unethical stunt he pulled to shift the blame away from his own screwup to another, more junior engineer. He robbed my righteous thunder when he got a desperate look in his eyes and pleaded with me, "Look, if he gets fired he can just get another job. If I get fired, they'd make me go back..."

For the billionth time, if we need this talent, then let's do the right thing by these people and offer them citizenship. If we're not prepared to do the right thing, then we shouldn't be using them as scabs to break the back of American labor.

Extremely misleading article

[hemp]

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:Extremely misleading article

[Jherek Carnelian]

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.

Management?

[Tubal-Cain]

They were highly educated, with degrees in management...

So that's our plan for destroying the world!

It should be a two-way street

[jeko]

As a basic matter of fairness, if Indian and Chinese citizens are going to be free to work in the United States, then US citizens should be free to work in India and China.

The problem is they're not. Some out-of-work disgruntled geek published an article looking into this a while back. The Indian consulate just laughed at him when he inquired about being allowed to work in India, while the Chinese representatives haughtily told him that Chinese jobs were for Chinese citizens.

They can't have it both ways. The Indians and the Chinese cannot argue that their citizens should be allowed to compete world-wide, but that jobs inside their own borders are only open to native citizens.

It's not just faulty logic. It's raging hypocrisy.

Re:It should be a two-way street

[mochan_s]

I remember that slashdot article.

But, the guy who wrote the article had no intention of actually getting a job in India or China. He was just trying to get somebody to say something stupid at the consulate.

Actually, if you work for a Chinese company, they will put out a press release to the local media that their company is so great that even American want to work for them (it did happen! though it was for a student who was working at a Chinese factory - not really for wages but for experience).

Re:It should be a two-way street

[thej1nx]

Or instead of hypocrisy, it is sheer xenophobia and mis-information at work. Clueless much? Apparently Indian companies do hire non-Indians. http://infotech.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1832596.cms Obviously, these folks did apply for a work permit and got one. Thing is, that most US citizens are generally only all talk about actually going to India to work. Just empty talk. It is a third world country. Period. Even if you were earning well by Indian standards(which most foreigners working in India do) you will still be dealing with mosquitoes, scorching Indian heat in summers, dirt, grime, infections, what not. India is all fun to visit as a tourist, but living there when you are a US citizen? Forget it. Think of queues 4-5 hours long, for almost everything. Indians are used to this "way of life". You as a pampered, spoiled US citizen are not. You will start cribbing about the dirt from day one. Your body has never encountered the diseases and bacterias flourishing there. Indians have developed a natural immunity. You will either have really watch what you drink and eat, or fall sick constantly. And the country is mostly conservative. Your chances of a relationship with a membership of the opposite sex are remote, unless she is interested in hooking onto your US citizenship as a wife. And all this, when your pay is in the upper brackett, allowing you to afford an air-conditioner at home at least, a car, good medical care, to compensate for some of the things you took for granted in USA. Such high-paying jobs are scarce. Being used to the US life, you are just not really in a position to survive on an actual average Indian salary. So far, it has been unthinkable that any average american would want to work in India for long-term, unless he was being ordered to, by his employer, or unless he was unaware what he was getting into, or unless he was a glutton for punishment, or all of above. If you are still game, get an Indian company to hire you first. If you are a good bargain for the value they will get, then business is business. There is no real bias against foreigners, especially if they deal with software export or US clients, in which case you might be even desirable for interfacing with their US clients. They will sponsor your Indian work permit. The procedure involved lots of red-tape but not impossible either. I personally know tons of Japanese folks working in India for example, for Indian companies that deal with Japanese companies. But please tone down the misinformation and xenophobia. It is becoming too much an american stereotype.

Re:Let them go

[Fourpole]

Presumably, most of those people originally wanted to become "real" (is there any other kind?) US citizens as well, but realized they have to jump through too many hoops for it to be worth it.

I don't know about that. I live in a city with a high number of educated workers on a visa, and I know a lot of graduate students that will be looking for work on a visa. With a couple of exceptions, they are all pretty adamant about maintaining their citizenship and staying here on a visa only. The reasons vary, but most of them don't want to give up that part of their identity.

Of course this is all anecdotal, but in my experience the majority of the educated immigrants are here for the education and job opportunities, not to stay here permanently.

Re:good riddance

[icannotthinkofaname]

Everyone knows that the Germans invented everything important

Like those ShamWow towels! :D They're made in Germany, and you know the Germans make good stuff. Just ask Vince! He won't steer you wrong. :)

You must be a liberal arts major :-)

[jeko]

I conclude that you pulled that figure out of your ass.

Most people start college at 17 or 18. Eighteen plus four equals twenty-two, at least it does in my corner of the universe. I know I graduated college at twenty-two. Twenty-two or twenty-three plus seven years lands you in the neighborhood of thirty, again, for most values of thirty.

Does the math work differently when it comes out of your ass? Perhaps you don't realize it's not customary to take seven years to finish an undergrad degree?

Re:Let them go

[mooingyak]

There's nothing special about the foreigners. We can make more.

Well, not exactly. THEY can make more. If we make them, they're not foreigners.

Why don't we ...

[damn_registrars]

... give them their PhD and their citizenship at the same time? If someone came here from another country long enough to earn their PhD, they've already worked here for somewhere around 5-7 years. Why do we make it more difficult for them to stay longer?

Add to that the fact that most grant funding agencies only give grants to citizens, and it isn't hard to figure out why so many people who come here for their PhD from other countries end up leaving afterwards - they finished their PhD and then ran straight into a career roadblock of no fault their own.

Hey! Smart people!

[Eil]

Get back on my lawn!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:The Truth Behind the Trolling

[ivan256]

Yes, this.

Give them back all of the management grads.

See if we can export some of ours too.

Re:The Truth Behind the Trolling

[PopeRatzo]

Alaren, you are absolutely correct. I'm a former academic who still has many connections and the biggest group that seems to be leaving are recently minted MBAs and B-school grads. Those are fields that just aren't doing well in an economic downturn.

My wife of 21 years was a PhD student in Math and an immigrant from Eastern Europe when we met. Her experience opened my eyes to a population and situation that I barely knew existed. So many Americans believe that immigrants "just take a test" and they're instant citizens. Many more believe all the racial and ethnic stereotypes about intelligence and science and math skills (or lack thereof). Too many believe they take more than they give.

I can barely imagine what it's like for a young person with talent who comes to America to try to better herself. I've walked with such a person for a couple of decades now. My grandparents were also such people, coming from war-torn (WWI) Italy to be shepherds and steelworkers and shirt-makers and railroad workers. Their sons fought in WWII. All their sons and daughters became proud and successful Americans and thanks to the Labor Unions that are now under attack from American "conservatives", became productive members of the US middle class.

I was one of those "liberal arts students who scored higher on verbal and lower on math" that Alaren mentioned. My wife is a mathematician in a field I can hardly understand, and my daughter, now an undergrad who gets her looks from her Mom (thank god) is pretty well-rounded. She wants to be either a mathematician or a novelist. It would not suprise me if she became both.

I get a sick feeling when I hear Americans talk down immigrants, legal and otherwise. They are as important to the formation and future of our country as the Founding Fathers.

We have to remember, the Pilgrims (you know, the guys with the funny hats and buckled shoes from Thanksgiving) were immigrants, every one.

Problem is loss of people, skills - not loss of IP

[Geof]

When the immigrants leave with all our IP all we are left with is paper pushers.

The value of so-called IP is nothing beside the value of the skills, human relationships etc. for creating and developing ideas. Those who think innovation means resting on the creativity of 10, 20, life plus 70 years ago are doomed from the start. Creativity and innovation are activities, not artifacts. A focus on the frozen ideas of "IP" diverts attention from the real issues. The problem is not that the smart immigrants are taking American ideas away: it is that they are taking themselves.

Temporary pain for later gain?

[emagery]

Granted, it hurts to lose educated people from an economy that is in desperate need of new industry (as opposed to new services and new debts) ... but ... America isn't the whole of the world, and the world as a whole has real problems. Educating these people and then dispersing them to the wind like this... it may hurt right now, but what if they take seed in places of the world in greater need of educated people... places with runaway population growth, terrible environmental records, and similarly unsustainable practices? Heck... beyond that, after a taste of democracy, who is to say all these people going back to their less tolerant homes won't also foment cultural reforms (not that our model is picture perfect right now, but...) It's a notion, anyways

Brains leave to go home

[cttnpckn]

Last week I worked for a company that has their roots here. Now the whole company is moving to India (back to where the owners are from). They have laid off all the American workers and are taking the indian workers home with them. They say that they aren't selling enough of their product here and they can sell their product in those countries back home. So, here we are: where we cannot afford to buy the products that the Indians can afford. The emerging markets are growing and our markets are not. The problem here isn't that we are loosing brain power. The problem here is that we are loosing our whole market. Of course in 10 years this might settle itself out somewhat but what will be left? Lots less than if we had controlled the money system in the first place. The problem is that corporations want something for nothing and then we are all left with lots less. The problem was that the derivative market was printing so much money no government could hope to keep up. Ultimately we rise and fall together (owners and workers), (foreign and american) and we really can't pretend that any other system will work. We have to control thieves, double check the integrity of the products that are sold. We have to keep a careful eye on how those products are produced so we don't kill our planet trying to sustain this crazy consumption lifestyle that we have created. There is no easy answer here.

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It is a shame...

[cayenne8]

Just great about the US though.

We can't seem to keep the LEGAL immigrants we want...the educated ones, that followed the laws, and contribute to the system. Instead, we are stuck with the ILLEGAL ones, that...well......generally are the opposite of the aforementioned legal ones.

*sigh*

Re:It is a shame...

[tsm_sf]

Well, treat them both the same way and see how far it gets you.

Re:It is a shame...

[ag0ny]

It probably has something to do with the fact that after 9/11 the USA has become increasingly police state-like.

Before 9/11 happened I was looking forward to go back to the US and see NYC (I liked Massachusetts). Then the planes hit and the towers fell, and after the initial scare passed your country went irrationally paranoid about security.

I decided not to set foot on the US again until your government came back to its senses. You know, I don't like to be treated as a criminal by default when visiting a foreign country. I assume this is part of the reason why those people are leaving.

It seems that now things might start to change (hopefully for good).

Re:It is a shame...

[theshowmecanuck]

It's why I moved back to Canada and decided not to work in the U.S. again, even though I have had a number of calls and offers to come back in the short time I have been away (even in this recession). It leaves me feeling a bit down since I really liked living there in Saint Louis; the first city I have really been home sick over. It drove me crazy that it was such a pain in the ass to get a green card even though I spent all told 7 years there on work visas. I kept my nose clean, at worst I got two parking tickets which I paid, and contributed time and money to a local non profit group that tries to take care of various issues the old blues musicians in town run into (the one's who are poor because of the way they were ripped off on royalties by the same recording companies trying to sue single mothers). Meanwhile I keep hearing how congress wants to grant immunity and green cards to all those who have been living there for more than a couple of years illegally.

Another thing, many Americans don't realize that working on many/most of the various work visas means you have a month to back up and get out of America if your job ends, something that does kind of wear on you after a while... especially in a slowing economy. That is, knowing you might have to not only look for new work if your job ends, but also new work in a different country while still being away (not as easy as if you are there), and finding a new home in a different country and all the moving issues around that. I left the middle of last year from the U.S. (I quit, I didn't get laid off) because of all of those kinds of issues.

"Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses longing to be free..." maybe that is more true than I thought. If I am not poor or longing to be free, if I don't need welfare or government assistance, maybe that's the reason it is so hard to get a green card if you are a computer professional. I should have applied for welfare. Ha! That's it! If I ever do go back to work in the U.S. I'll swim across the border... that way I might have a better chance of getting a green card. When the economy goes south, you want to keep the good minds since they are the ones most likely to help you get it back on the road. The reverse brain drain is a case of the U.S. having its cake and finding out what it's like to want to eat it too.

NYT: India's protectionism is a great success

[walterbyrd]

Kinda funny, I think. We are so constantly lectured that the US should not have any "protectionist" policies against India, because protectionism never works.

March 1, 2009

India Maintains Sense of Optimism and Growth

India's trillion-dollar economy remains a relative bright spot, some say, in part because the country's bureaucracy and its protectionist polices have kept it insulated from the fallout of the global downturn.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/02/business/worldbusiness/02rupee.html?_r=1&ref=world

 

Re:The Truth Behind the Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

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:This is good news, folks!

[shanen]

Gee, you'd think those slimy foreigners could love us for something besides our money, eh? Damn those socialists, and give my regards to your wife. Maybe she loved you for something besides your money, eh? We can always hope.

Yes, that's an insult, but I can't yet decide how stupid you are. Would you be worth having as a /. foe?

Just in case you aren't an idiot, I'm curious why you are so desperate for money? I currently earn about three times my expenses, and I've become rather spendthrift these years. I really can't imagine what I'd do with more money, and I don't think I would work any harder or better if I was making somewhat more or less money. Now when you get up to the level around $1 million/year, it just seems ridiculous to me. I actually think most people would find that downright demotivating and just quit working.

Or maybe the key factor ("problem" from your perspective?) is that I enjoy my work and I'm in no hurry to retire, even though I can see that age coming up pretty quickly...

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Re:The Truth Behind the Trolling

[javiercero]

With my condolences to the Monty Python:

Damn right. Besides weekends, what has organized labor done for us?

OK, OK...

Besides weekends AND vacations, what has organized labor done for us?

Hum, what... OK

Besides weekends, vacations AND paid leave, what has organized labor done for us?

Really? No kidding... OK

Besides weekend, vacation, paid leave AND fair salaries, what has organized labor done for us?

For real?

Besides weekends, vacation, paid leave, fair salaries AND safe working conditions, what has organized labor done for us?

What? Really... OK OK

Besides weekends, vacations, paid leave, fair salaries, safe working conditions AND retirements, what has organized labor done for us?

Huh? come on... OK OK

Besides weekends, vacations, paid leave, fair salaries, safe working conditions, retirement, AND medical coverage, what has organized labor done for us?

Yeah... what a bunch of dicks!