As an Indian immigrant living in Silicon Valley, I see both sides of the coin on the immigration policy debate. Economic recession has hit the US pretty bad. Tech industry has taken its share of the hit too. So I understand that there are many US citizens looking for a job and it is important to find ways for them to get employed again. But making it difficult for qualified, skilled and in many cases US educated immigrants to work in the US is a pretty short sighted policy. US is losing big time on this one. The contributions of these immigrants to US economy and the creation of jobs is overlooked. US loss is other countries’ gain. Sarah Lacy provides a good anaysis of this is issue.
It’s happening: Lou Dobbs’ dream come true and Silicon Valley’s worst nightmare. We’re already seeing the reverse brain drain
as smart immigrants take their US educations and experience building companies and creating technology back to their home countries. But now, xenophobia and the lack of any sensible H-1B visa policy is keeping the world’s brightest minds from coming to the U.S. in the first place
U.S. grad school admissions for would-be international students plummeted this year, according to the Council of Graduate Schools—the first decline in five years. The decline was 3% on average, thanks to increases from China and the Middle East, but some countries saw double-digit declines in interest in a U.S. education. Applicants from India and South Korea fell 12% and 9% respectively—with students turning their sights on schools in Asia and Europe instead.
This shouldn’t be a surprise. Much of the world’s economic growth—hence, jobs—is in emerging markets, the schools are far cheaper and in many cases competitive academically, and then there’s the H-1B issue. If America won’t allow a PhD just trained in our top schools to work here and contribute to the economy—why come here and take on the student loans to begin with?
Make no mistake: This is a huge blow for the United States, and particularly Silicon Valley. It’s killing diversity in graduate schools at a time future business leaders most need to understand other countries, especially Asian ones. The reality is one out of every four tech companies is started by an immigrant. In the tech industry, immigrants have created more high paying jobs than they’ve “stolen.”
And nearly every CEO will tell you how much added cost and hassle there is in hiring a foreign-born worker—they do it because they physically can not find enough appropriately skilled workers in the U.S. (Below is an interview I did with LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman about this very subject a few months ago, and he wrote a guest post on TechCrunch discussing the issue as well.)
Indeed, a recent study by the Bay Area Council, the Campaign for College Opportunity and IHELP showed that we’d need a 90% upswing in people graduating with degrees in science, technology, math or engineering to keep up with all the new jobs being created in that discipline. What created Silicon Valley was a culture of openness and there is no future to Silicon Valley without it.
I recently visited India and the number of experienced NRIs (Non Resident Indians) returning to India from US has exploded. These are people that contributed heavily to US that are now going to help make India a global power. That is a good thing as it is high time Indians that benefitted from Indian education and resources contribute to India. India deserves its place as a global power. These people are not returning as a favor to India though. They see much better opportunities for themselves in India and they get to stay close to their loved ones. Now many Indians graduating from Indian schools are staying back as it simply not worth the trouble of going to the US with all the draconian visa policies. All this is a gain to India and a loss to the US. US is certainly shooting itself in the foot in terms of its own interests. Indian should thank the US administration and Lou Dobbs.