While there is considerable disagreement regarding the value of low-skilled immigrants (especially with regards to whether illegals deserve amnesty), almost everybody agrees that the United States is a big beneficiary when highly skilled workers, investors, and entrepreneurs from around the world come to America. So it is a bit troubling that USA Today is reporting that many Indians and Chinese are deciding that they can achieve more by going back home. It is too soon to make sweeping pronouncements about the public policy implications of this demographic shift, but this preliminary evidence of a reverse “brain drain” certainly suggests that the big-government policies of Bush and Obama have made the American economy less vibrant and less dynamic:
More skilled immigrants are giving up their American dreams to pursue careers back home, raising concerns that the U.S. may lose its competitive edge in science, technology and other fields. “What was a trickle has become a flood,” says Duke University’s Vivek Wadhwa, who studies reverse immigration. …”For the first time in American history, we are experiencing the brain drain that other countries experienced,” he says. Suren Dutia, CEO of TiE Global, a worldwide network of professionals who promote entrepreneurship, says the U.S. economy will suffer without these skilled workers. “If the country is going to maintain the kind of economic well-being that we’ve enjoyed for many years, that requires having these incredibly gifted individuals who have been educated and trained by us,” he says. …Multinational companies that belong to the American Council on International Personnel tell Executive Director Lynn Shotwell that skilled immigrants are discouraged by the immigration process, she says. Some can wait up to a decade for permanent residency, she says. “They’re frustrated with having an uncertain immigration status,” she says. “They’re giving up.”
[…] who will be creating jobs rather than people who might want to mooch off taxpayers. And we make it easier to retain job-creating foreigners who already are in the United States. What’s not to like? Am I missing […]
[…] the way, it’s a good sign when rich people want to come to the United States and a worrisome indicator when they don’t. Indeed, America would attract more really rich people if we didn’t […]
[…] people who will be creating jobs rather than people who might want to mooch off taxpayers. And we make it easier to retain job-creating foreigners who already are in the United States. What’s not to like? Am I missing […]
[…] people who will be creating jobs rather than people who might want to mooch off taxpayers. And we make it easier to retain job-creating foreigners who already are in the United States. What’s not to like? Am I missing […]
[…] Dan Mitchell from the CATO Institute comments: Perhaps the key sentence in this excerpt is the final one about the United States having a very misguided policy of what is known as “worldwide taxation.” This is the policy of taxing income earned in other nations, even though that income already is subject to all applicable taxes imposed by the governments of those other nations. This policy is a huge competitive disadvantage for American companies trying to compete in world markets (and Obama, not surprisingly, wants to make it more burdensome), but the impact on individual taxpayers is a key factor in the decision by so many U.S. taxpayers to escape the clutches of the IRS. Indeed, it may also be one of the reasons why some highly-talented foreigners – the kind of people who helped make Silicon Valley an engine of prosperity for the entire nation – no longer want American residency. […]
[…] Perhaps the key sentence in this excerpt is the final one about the United States having a very misguided policy of what is known as “worldwide taxation.” This is the policy of taxing income earned in other nations, even though that income already is subject to all applicable taxes imposed by the governments of those other nations. This policy is a huge competitive disadvantage for American companies trying to compete in world markets (and Obama, not surprisingly, wants to make it more burdensome), but the impact on individual taxpayers is a key factor in the decision by so many U.S. taxpayers to escape the clutches of the IRS. Indeed, it may also be one of the reasons why some highly-talented foreigners – the kind of people who helped make Silicon Valley an engine of prosperity for the entire nation – no longer want American residency. […]
How much would a skilled worker cost?
There is an unfortunate and suicidal aspect to US immigration policy. It deliberately acts as a filter that keeps out people who would otherwise offer very high value work. While many desperate poor immigrants are willing to risk life, in the often successful trip across the US border, by locking themselves inside railroad cars, few software engineers are willing to do so.
The US rather than embrace these high value individuals into its free markets, keeps them outside the country as pure competitors – and looses. Do Americans ever wonder how much American resource a 24 year old software engineer from MIT, ready to work, has consumed before getting to the point he/she is ready to work? Parents’ money, parents’ time (=money), schools, states, hospitals etc. My guess is $500K to $1 mil. Yet Americans close the door to many, say, Indian software engineers from say IIT (Indian Institute of Technology). Ready to work, born, raised and educated on foreign resources! Left to compete with the US from India. Who wins? I can hardly think of a more myopic US policy.
I guess Americans still considered talented foreigners are stuck on stupid, sitting on silly, and waiting on “DUMB” like other tax paying citizens that is shuffled through the mayhem of Bull- ocracy…..
everyone’s leaving
physically or mentally
far too strange here now…
Thank You.
May All Beings Be Happy.