Leadership

Reverse Brain Drain: Is It a Threat?

By Jessica Stillman

Updated on: February 24, 2009 / 11:16 AM EST / MoneyWatch

The Find: An extended interview with two experts reveals the increasing number of highly skills immigrants who are returning to their home countries and discusses whether the phenomenon represents a threat to U.S. business.
The Source: A WorldFocus internet radio interview of Vivek Wadhwa, a senior research associate at Harvard Law School, and Michele Wucker, the executive director of the World Policy Institute, conducted by Martin Savidge.

The Takeaway: Researcher Wadhwa traveled to China and India to take a first hand look at the effects of reverse brain drain. Both countries' capacity for high level R&D work, he reports, is being driven by returnees from the United States â€" a fact that can't be good news for the efforts of the U.S. to stay at the forefront of technology. What was once a trickle of trained minds heading home has become, in Wadhwa's words, "a flood". Though hard facts are scarce, experts speculate that as many as 100,000 have already left for India and China with a further 50,000 expected to leave over the next three years.

Of course the recession is largely to blame, but the situation is aggravated by the limited number of permanent visas available, with over one million highly skilled workers waiting for green cards â€" and many forced to return home when their seven year stints on temporary visas expire. Plus, with many immigrants dependent on their employers for their papers, the system creates incentives for businesses to offer lower pay to foreign workers without alternatives, undercutting American candidates.

For those interested in the issue, the extensive radio show has much more to offer. Also available on WorldFocus are interviews with skilled workers Hanson Li and Yeniva Sisay, both of whom grew up in the U.S. but returned to their ancestral homes. Or read about the frustrations of the "slumdog immigrants" living on temporary H-1B visa in the U.S.

The Question: Wadhwa calls reverse brain drain a crisis but, with many Americans struggling to find jobs, should we really be concerned about immigrants returning home?

(Image of many suitcases by masochismtango, CC 2.0)