The US's Reverse Brain Drain

We may have to rethink the assumption that Silicon Valley is the hotbed of innovation in which all the world's best and brightest want to work and live. TechCrunch has a piece by an invited expert on the reverse brain drain already evident and growing in the US as Indian, Chinese, and European students and workers in the US plan to return home, or already have. From an extensive interview with Chinese and Indian workers who had already left: "We learned that these workers returned in their prime: the average age of the Indian returnees was 30 and the Chinese was 33. They were really well educated: 51% of the Chinese held masters degrees and 41% had PhDs. Among Indians, 66% held a masters and 12% had PhDs. These degrees were mostly in management, technology, and science. ... What propelled them to return home? Some 84% of the Chinese and 69% of the Indians cited professional opportunities. And while they make less money in absolute terms at home, most said their salaries brought a 'better quality of life' than what they had in the US. ... A return ticket home also put their career on steroids. About 10% of the Indians polled had held senior management jobs in the US. That number rose to 44% after they returned home. Among the Chinese, the number rose from 9% in the US to 36% in China."

Comments

Surprised?

[Tubal-Cain]

Why is this a surprise? Isn't that exactly why they came here in the first place?

Re:Surprised?

[coaxial]

Why is this a surprise? Isn't that exactly why they came here in the first place?

In the past most of them stayed. "America is the land of opportunity," you know? Only now it increasingly isn't. The fact that Chinese are returning home for "a better quality of life" really sticks a fork in that claptrap about how financial freedom brings political freedom doesn't it?

Re:Surprised?

[phantomfive]

really sticks a fork in that claptrap about how financial freedom brings political freedom doesn't it?

Not really. The number of Chinese living in poverty is still greater than the entire population of the United States. Even the few Chinese who do manage to graduate from college still have trouble finding a good job. Getting a degree at a US university merely puts them at the front of that line. And of course, there are a few in China who are filthy rich. That is everywhere.

And of course, 'better quality of life' is relative.....most parts of China, even in the cities, don't have drinkable water coming into the house. That would be unacceptable to many westerners, but if you don't mind, then it's not a problem.

Re:Surprised?

[coaxial]

sorry, i can figure out what connection you mean by that, but i don't see how that discredits the theory that if you don't have economic freedom, you don't have freedom at all.

Economic freedom not only isn't predicated on, it doesn't necessitate, political freedom.

Let me indulge in a bit of history. Back in the 80s and early 90s when Wall Street was lobbying to remove embargos on investing in China, the argument was that the US was actually opening up a giant market, not promoting trade with the regime that just slaughtered a pro-democracy movement, and by opening trade, the Chinese would see how the West lived, and then would force the dictatorial regime to fall. Then it was about how by deindustrializing and moving all production to China, they would get money in their pockets, start to make economic decisions on their own, and soon would stop wanting to only "vote with their wallets" but want to "vote with their ballots" instead. But that's not what happened, now is it? The standard of living along the coast has rapidly improved, but far from weakening the regime, it's actually strengthened it, because the average person (rightly) says, "We've got a good thing going. My life is better. My child's life will be better than mine. Why would I want to take a chance and mess that up?"

Ironically though, China is the perfect lab for what would happen in an unregulated market that libertarians argue for when they want to eliminate the EPA, FDA, and every other regulatory industry.

Re:Surprised?

[phantomfive]

OK, you linked to a report by the Sierra Club, a group that has a definite agenda. You need to be careful when doing that.

In this case, they are trying to be sensationalistic by redefining the word 'unsafe' to mean 'potentially unsafe.' They aren't saying that the water is unsafe to drink, they are saying that the water could become unsafe to drink, if there were an oil spill or a chemical spill in the source of the drinking water. Whether true or not, this is not at all the same as the drinking water in China, where you should boil the water before drinking it to avoid sickness.

Try to make sure a study is reliable before citing it.

Re:Surprised?

[UncleWilly]

But that's not what happened..

Your position is to short sighted. It's not done yet, give it another generation or two. Like the USAs strategy to isolate (and not attack) the USSR, post WWII. This policy took approximately 45 years (1945-90) to work through. I'm not saying the USA-China policy will work, but 20 years is too short to say "it failed".

Re:Surprised?

[Hognoxious]

Making the standard of living radically better is a good thing.

It is for the small minority for whom that's true.

The vast majority in the interior are still dirt poor and local government is disgustingly corrupt which helps to keep them that way.

CNN and the like don't show all that though. The comfy hotels are where the skyscrapers are, so let's make another article about handbag shops.

Re:Surprised?

[cenc]

You need to get to know China a bit better, and what they are doing.

They lifted a population equal to or greater than the U.S. population out of extrema poverty in less than a generation. Most of my friends in China have stories about relatives and friends that starved to death. I am not talking 50 years ago either. I mean like 10 years ago.

It would be impossible with a population that large to simply flip on the democracy light. Millions really would die in civil war and unrest. I am not advocating repression, but it is simply a practical fact of having population of more than billion people. The "communist" in communist party is mostly just symbolic now. Yes, it is corrupt. In fact, I believe China on some level is only functioning because the corruption keeps things moving. There is very little in common with western ideas of "communism" and "socialism". Perhaps an oligarchy is s better description of what they have. It in many ways today is much more free than many of the "allies" of the United States (e.g. all of the middle east), not to mention how well Russia is doing on that front.

An Nobel winning economist (can not remember his name right off hand), in an interview once pointed out that the big difference between the transition of Russia to open markets and democracy and the transition of China, is that the Chinese even under extreme repressive communism always had a tradition of commerce and trade. Local markets functioned, trade of goods and services went on. Russia never had that. Russia had even under the royal families a tradition of tightly controlled centralized resources.

Maybe because we treat them like criminals

[HangingChad]

the reverse brain drain already evident and growing in the US as Indian, Chinese, and European students and workers in the US plan to return home, or already have.

Between Homeland Security and treating H1-B's like slave labor, who can blame them? They can go home and enjoy a better lifestyle than they have here and not get treated like a potential terrorist.

Funny is how many of the teabirthers walking around thinking this is the best place in the world to live and everyone wants to come here.

Not anymore.

Re:Maybe because we treat them like criminals

[DaveV1.0]

treating H1-B's like slave labor

Which is why we need to do away with H1-B visa. There is no need for H1-B visas in this economic climate.

Remember H1-B visas are supposed to fill positions for which there are no American suitable candidates, but with so many workers, including IT people, out of work, it should not be a problem to fill those positions with Americans.

Who says this is a bad thing?

[ShooterNeo]

The reasons for this exodus are straight out of an economics textbook. This is SUPPOSED to happen in a free world with free trade. Overall, this move is ADVANCING human civilization and making things just a bit better for the rest of humanity. Right now, the high tech industry in California is one of the most amazing industries the world has ever known. Among other things, those highly educated people who are returning to China and India are bringing knowledge and skills that will allow them to replicate some of the wonders of California in India and China. How is that a bad thing?

Sure, those Chinese and Indian companies will compete with the U.S. firms...but competition is a good thing for humanity as a whole.

Re:Who says this is a bad thing?

[cetialphav]

those highly educated people who are returning to China and India are bringing knowledge and skills that will allow them to replicate some of the wonders of California in India and China. How is that a bad thing?

Whether it is good or bad depends on which side of the ocean you are on. As an American, I think it is terrible that we are losing brilliant people. It is these types of people that advance the state of the art and create new companies and industries. Because I am selfish, I want that to happen in my own country so that I can benefit from this.

For those in China and India, this is obviously a great thing. It means that they are starting to be able to compete with the US for the best and brightest. Instead of watching their brightest stars go to the US and get rich creating jobs for Americans, they get to have this right in their backyard.

I agree with you that this is a natural part of free trade, but that does not mean we have to just accept it. This should be a wake up call to us that we have to compete harder than ever before to keep the smartest people here. In the past, we could win this competition without even trying, but now we will have to start working at it.

Re:Sounds good to me

[Bruha]

It's also in some cases after we paid for their educations through government grants, many of which place no requirements on them remaining in the US.

Case in point, my ex attends college here free, working on her PHD. In fact she said that there's so much free money he plans on getting a second masters as well.

It'd be nice when the US Government would invest in it's own citizens.

Re:Quality of life

[Anonymous Coward]

I work in a place where the majority of my colleagues are Indian including both developers and management. I can attest to the trends. I'm the exception by not holding a masters and by being born here. I'm responding because of a false assumption you made. You guessed that the better quality of life is a materialistic quality. For the majority of my friends who moved back to India it was not about that. While that played a role, their wives and families were residing there. It was difficult to deal with the paper work. The cricket matches weren't shown live at 3am. It's a plethora of smaller items which all add up. They aren't from the US and do not necessarily share the same values as you. Think more holistically for a second and you'll understand. It's about living where you are comfortable and are content. That's why my Indian friends are moving back to India and I completely understand.

Re:What a surprise!

[Dahamma]

That's kind of misleading...

They pay non-resident tuition at public state schools, just like any US student who attends a college in a state they don't reside in. And for most private schools, there is no difference at all.

Sure, they don't get the federal grants, but those are so piss poor these days that probably barely matters (plus they may very well get grants or loans from their home country to attend a US school).

My H1-B was rejected.

[Anonymous Coward]

I am in this position right now. I am an H1-B holder. I have a Masters in Computer Science. While most of my coworkers worked 40-45 hours a week I was doing 80 and quickly gained higher positions and expertise (hard work pays off in the land of opportunity). I love the US. Its a great place to live and I've lived here since I came to do my Bachelors (Computer Science also). I paid out of state tuition for all 7 years, out of my own pocket (which totaled > 60K).

I recently applied for an extension on my H1-B after my 3 years of working at a company and it was rejected by the government. The initial reason given was that we couldn't prove that my job required a degree so they came back and asked us for more info (called an RFI - request for information). (I am involved in long term projects from architecture, design, development and process analysis). The day I found out that my visa was rejected, my company, a small business of about 30 people also found out that a dept of the state had chosen me to work for them on a project for which they interviewed 30 people from around the US. My company lost that deal because the US rejected my visa and lost out on > 500,000 dollars of revenue over the contract. The company also lost 3 other contracts with clients I was currently with which would have probably panned out to 50k-100k each per year.

The revenue from that contract would have keep me and 2 other co-workers employed for at least 3 years and now my former company is going to probably fire 2 US citizens. This was the height of irony! The government royally screwed my company.

The immigration dept has really cracked down on H1-B visa holders and is rejecting them by asking them to prove stupid claims. Here are a few questions from my RFI.

1. Why does a Senior Software Engineer position require a Computer Science degree!
2. Provide all earning statements for the last 3 years and for all states you had income from.
3. Provide all client contracts that you had in the last 3 years for the full company.
4. Provide a detailed job description along with future contracts (for all 3 years) along with locations, contacts of client companies and images of work areas.

My visa was finally rejected because they feared that I would work in California (where my company doesn't have any clients or a branch). The process is really ridiculous right now and I have started looking at canada, singapore and india. I would prefer to stay and finish my 3 years and get a path to citizenship but if I have to leave, so be it.

The icing on the cake is that since they reject my appeal, I have 10 days to leave the country. So pack your bags, sell your car and belongings (or throw them away) and get the fuck out in 10 days.

Thanks for all the fish O Land of Opportunity!

I will say this to all you US citizen and green card holders. DO NOT SQUANDER YOUR OPPORTUNITIES! The US is the greatest place on earth and if you work hard, you can really live a great life. Peace.

Re:My H1-B was rejected.

[DaveV1.0]

With so many out of work software engineers who are American citizens, why should your H1-B visa, which is supposed to be used to fill critical positions, requiring a specialized skill set, for which an American citizen can not be found. Sounds to me like while you worked hard and worked long hours, you did nothing that any one of the thousands of out of work American software engineers could not do.

You should never have been granted the H1-B visa in the first place.

Re:What a surprise!

[Idiomatick]

Your tax dollars aren't. Look at how much more you pay if you are a foreign student in your school. And look up how much of your school is funded by your tax dollars. There is a good chance that foreign students are actually FUNDING your education.

My case

[varanama]

I was born in Madrid, Spain. As i was 10 my parents changed me to a german high school and after that i went to Germany to study engineering. While I was studying Mechanical Engineering in Aachen I went one year abroad to Montreal. That's when i started realizin.g than maybe North America wasn't as advanced as i thought, But hey, Canada is not the USA. So when I finished and got the opportunity to made my Phd at Berkeley, I took it. Coming from Germany, I've always looked at Berkeley and MIT as "the future". I thought they were light years from us, another dimension, robots walking through the campus... I thought it was going to be like the jump from Spain to Germany...

When I arrived, it didnt took me long to realize how wrong I was. After two years I remember talking with my parents, and saying that at the moment the only thing I wanted was to finish as fast as possible. I just wanted to be able to put Berkeley in my resumee and leave, because I really thought I was waisting my time. I was trying as hard as possible to be productive. But it was not only that my tutor was not good enough, or that my department didn't had the money I needed, the worst part is that we were overall behind what my department in Germany was doing. I felt so frustrated spending 90% of the time reinventing the wheel and putting the USA stamp, feeling that I was leaving in the past, and trying but not finding the way to do something about it that i really wanted to leave and do something useful with my life. It was even worst when I talked with a good friend of mine who was also doing his Phd at the same department in Munich. He got almost unlimited finantiation, lots of students doing their master thesis for him, and was really learning a lot, not only about the subject, but about managing a big reserarch team and lots of long time experiments, we just didn't had the same means...

When I finished it was really easy to find interesting jobs in the states, I even doubted because of one really interesting offer at Lockheed. But the real fact was, that the offers from Germany where at a whole different level. I had been in Berkeley! For them that was... Godlike. As I came back I started working for a private company for almost three years, and after that I took a part-time management position at that company and been working there partime since. At the same time I started also working part-time in my second Phd at the university. Im not only doing what i really like, at the moment Im getting a lot of support from very good people, students included, and from the university, state, privates companies... I really feel that im working with the best people in the world.

And till now i've just mentioned the academic side! The rest of my life can be summarized in: I'm payed better in Europe than in the States and at the same time living here is cheaper! And if you add a better public transport system, higher security feeling, way better health care... it's not hard to understand way researches are not staying there. I know a lot of indian people here, and they have already moved their families in and have no plans to retourn to India in the distant future...

So yeah, people go to the states to study because of the fame. When they arrive, they realize things back home werent so bad as they thought. And when they finish things even get better at home, because due to their studies in the states, they are seen as gods... If you add that the quality of life in the states isn't even in the top10 of the world, and that the loan/expenses ratio is better in lots of other countries, you have your answer.

Re:What a surprise!

[blue_teeth]

I am an Indian and never wanted to visit the US for the mighty dollar. Never visited the US. Here is another shocker. Most of the students came purely for economic reasons. My worry is, this reverse brain-drain is also likely to bring filth in India...aka MBA shit and Wall Street greed.

I came, I saw, I left

[Alioth]

I worked in the US for a few years. So why did I leave?

Of course, everyone says the grass is greener in the US, but compared to home, really it's not - it's just different. But there were enough downsides to being in the USA which made me eventually leave. In order:

1. Family. I would prefer being close to them, 4800 miles isn't close enough. (I now live 10 minutes walk from my Dad).
2. The INS Dehumanization programme - the Kafkaesque manner in which visas and green cards are processed. I just wasn't willing to go through that any more. I hear it's even worse for people from places like India and China, I guess I'm lucky coming from Europe.
3. Healthcare - I like living somewhere where I never need to ever worry about getting healthcare, even if I fall upon bad times.
4. Bigotry and illiberalism - I lived in Texas. Too many religious people, and when I left, also Bush was President.

Don't get me wrong, I think overall the United States is a good country, and one of the best in the world - despite its faults. Any country has faults. But I just wasn't prepared to go through the unpredictable, abitrary and dehumanizing immigration processes to live somewhere that's just as faulty as my home country, but is also 4800 miles from my family.

Re:What a surprise!

[Paul Jakma]

You know that PhD and (to a lesser extent) masters students are basically the dogs-bodies of academia, right? I.e. they're usually the ones doing the heavy-lifting investigative work to support the research interests of their supervisor. If you seriously constrain the pool of available PhD students, then you're making it harder for your professors and Universities to get their research done.

The sheer ignorance on display in some parts of this discussion are amazing. Doubly amazing when you consider /.'s readership is biased towards being significantly more educated than the average American. If this represents mainstream thinking in the USA, then one must worry the USA is doomed to a dark period of shoot-in-the-foot policies driven by xenophobism.

(I say this as someone who believes the health of the USA's economy is vitally important to that of the globe's, and has a mostly-positive opinion of it. NB: the country I live in also is experiencing some measure of xenophobist-pandering policy setting).

Re:Quality of life

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Working hours are ludicrous which seems to stem from the "at will" factor - people are too scared not to work those extra hours for fear of being fired.

While that certainly does occur, my experience is that it is rare - at least at the professional level, maybe less so at the burger-flipping level. That most people work overtime because they want either the extra money or to get ahead in their career (presumably to get more money). Making it illegal to work more than 48 hours seems crazy from my perspective its like that saying "the nail that stands out gets hammered down."

And the final straw is that you don't even get decent vacation time for all those hours, I get 5 weeks here and I know plenty of people who get more.

Maybe we take our vacation in a different form. Consider the american pre-occupation with big houses, nice cars, giant televisions, etc. These are all little mini-vacations that we experience everyday. Is that better than taking a month off at the end of summer and traveling to the other side of the continent? Maybe, maybe not. But I think that ignoring it is to miss a fundamental difference in the societies.

Many others going overseas also...

[canadian_in_beijing]

It's not just Indians and Chinese 'sea turtles' going back overseas.... I have no background in China, born a Canadian of European background and spent the past 5 years in Beijing. Found thousands of Canadians and Yanks just like myself living in China. Who are these people? Most are highly ambitious entrepreneurs from good families that are searching for the new wild west, the land of opportunity. They could easily stay and work in the US but some of (maybe lots of) todays youth are not happy working in mega corporations who don't give a shit about their employees, long hours, little recognition/room for advancement, no loyalty, etc...

By many China is seen as the new wild west with new opportunities, challenges, and a sense of adventure that can't be found back home. One billion people where everyone needs new products and ideas. At least that's what the new expats believe. Easy road to riches... but that's not the case. I never met anyone over in Beijing that made a fortune off of China except the expats on big overseas packages. Most small foreign start ups are loosing or breaking even... and as a foreigner in China your chances of success are severely crippled because of your lack of Guanxi.

Benefits of living in China: Cheap cost of living, nice modern apartments with all the amenities (pools, gyms, squash, etc), extremely safe, maids, cooks, drivers, cheap taxis, new restaurants opening every day with fanatical service, rapidly expanding nightlife, modern architecture that puts most US cities to shame, cheap shopping, ability to grab weekend vacation flights around Asia for cheap, holidays like the Chinese new year with all the fireworks are amazing, etc. It is possible to live very well on $1-1500/month. Most foreigners just out of university get by on significantly less. Overall there is a great sense of adventure in daily life, nothing is routine.

Disadvantages: pollution! ...remember some days not being able to see 5 feet in front of my face, most days not being able to see a building 200 feet away... covered in smog. Hard to find quality western groceries. Chinese people are very friendly overall but it takes lots of time to build up connections and guanxi. You can't just go over there and expect to start up the next Google in a year because the locals will shut you out. In Beijing there is little life on the streets except for Wanfujing... central development has left most streets deserted because there's no shops or culture around lots of areas. Old Beijing and the hutongs are disappearing at an alarming rate to put up shiny new skyscrapers. Office culture is a nightmare in terms of productivity. Trying to get anything done that requires innovation is like building the great wall because nobody will stick their neck out and take a chance. Managing most local Chinese people is difficult and requires detailing every aspect of their job, productivity is slow. Government regulations require you to hire so many locals and it is becoming harder to fire non performing people. Office rents can be as high as in the US. Overall I found the overall cost of doing business in China was on par with costs in the US. Also government policies are highly unpredictable and can severely cripple your companies ability to do business. Long terms there are many risks and uncertainties.

Why did I leave China? Got fed up with the quality of life and lack of opportunities in China. Also there was some Chinese government visa changes. When I left about half of my friends were also planning on leaving. Lots of expats were planning on moving their business out of the country to places such as India or finding work in Dubai or elsewhere in Asia.

US is not the land of opportunity it once was. The bush era has left a bad taste in everyones mouth and it will take a long time to get over. Where are all the opportunities in the US if there's no commons (manufacturing, R&D, etc) in things like solar, electric cars, electronics, etc? The US needs to keep these hubs of innovation in the US or the talent will keep going overseas.