[snova]

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.

Wadhwa projects that in the next five years, 100,000 immigrants will go back to India and 100,000 to China, countries that have had rapid economic growth.

"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.

Wadhwa surveyed 1,203 Indian and Chinese immigrants who had worked or been educated here before returning to their homelands and found the exodus has less to do with the faltering U.S. economy than with other factors:
More of world's talented workers opt to leave USA - USATODAY.com

[exsmoker]

hey, our kids are well trained to be psychologists, lawyers, and to respect diversity, isn't that enough?

[rbVmVlQ2]

anyway we can get them back to Mexico before we go broke?

[exsmoker]

anyway we can get them back to Mexico before we go broke?

it's the americans that need to leave, friggin lazy slobs

[Dwencejed]

it's the americans that need to leave, friggin lazy slobs

This is true; could we send my white trash, drug-dealing neighbors to Mexico and import some more quiet, hard-working Hispanics? I'd like that

[rbVmVlQ2]

This is true; could we send my white trash, drug-dealing neighbors to Mexico and import some more quiet, hard-working Hispanics? I'd like that

as long as you personally pay their tax and medical bills, you can keep all the illegals you want .

[elton]

as long as you personally pay their tax and medical bills, you can keep all the illegals you want .

"Illegals" pay taxes, genius, and they also get far fewer services in return.

And their medical bills would be a lot lower if the racists in your camp wouldn't go out of their way to deny preventive care to them. It's common sense that waiting until something warrants an ER visit is going to end up being more serious and more expensive than taking a couple of cheap antibiotics initially.

But again, I wonder, why I even bother with you.

[Quigoxito]

hmm...sounds suspiciously like what happened to cities around the late 50's and 60's.

The folks who are educated and good citizens flee, leading to race riots, ridiculously poor political leaders, increases in taxes and an overall decline of quality of life.

I'm not sure exactly how the whole topic of illegals came into play. If you came here from India to get a medical degree, I think that hardly qualifies as an illegal immigrant.

[Precturge]

That's the thing:
Some of my clients are Indian. A lot of the people "fleeing" were immigrants to begin with (legal, folks, legal.) They got their education, worked here, and now that things are not going se well (due in part to outsourcing), they are leaving for greener pastures with U.S. dollars that go pretty darn far.

If I was Indian, I'd do the exact same thing.

[bs44MhUW]

Just an anecdote; one of my apartmentmates at Texas A&M was a grad student from India, here to study Industrial Engineering; A&M's industrial engineering program is ranked very highly in the U.S., usually in the top 5. After graduation, he didn't find jobs at places like BCG and Accenture that had maxed out their H1B visas; finally he got a consulting gig with a small private firm in Seattle. He worked with them for a year, wowed the owner, then moved to India to start his own company and be his own boss. Now his ex-boss outsources some work to him, and his fledgling company is doing well enough to where now he has two guys working for him in a Houston office and he comes for visits about twice a year and to drum up more biz.

When they reduced the H1B visa quotas, and made it difficult for foreign grad students to find jobs once they graduated here, they basically made it that much more easier for these folks to move back to their homelands that are now anyways growing at a pretty fast clip.

[bs44MhUW]

Here's another thought: could something similar be happening within the U.S., with high cost, high tax areas such as the Northeast and California losing populations and jobs to other parts of the country? At least at first, this doesn't seem right because most of the "brains" jobs are in those high cost areas (which are partly high cost exactly because lots of people want to live and work there).