I fit squarely into the (Indian) demographic they refer to in the article. My wife and I are pretty clear we will return to India in the next couple of years, and have started planning for the transition. In our case the decision is really an emotional one - we identify with India, and see no reason to change that. The latter clause would not have been true for many in the past since there was a much greater disparity in the opportunities present in the two countries then.
Having said that, the energy in India is quite palpable. There is a sense of possibility that is very compelling, despite all the barriers that still exist. So I don't think I'm going to regret the decision from the perspective of personal growth either.
This is a reasonable article, and Vivek Wadhwa is certainly entitle to express an opinion, but I do strongly object to his statement that "xenophobes will cheer" these findings.
He didn't quite claim that the only people who might disagree with him are xenophobes, but I do think he implies it.
People who have read my posts on hn are probably aware that I take a less enthusiastic view of the high tech visa programs, especially the H1B. I resent the implication that this makes me a xenophobe, as I absolutely believe that a healthy, substantial percentage of foreign nationals at our universities and in our high tech work force is without question a good and positive thing. But I think we pushed it to the point where these visas were used by high tech as a crutch, and allowed engineering careers to slowly become uncompetitive with law, mba, medicine, and so forth (a RAND institute study recently confirmed this, suggesting that the "low interest of US students in science/engineering will reverse when pay and other work conditions improve" (yes, I'm paraphrasing)
I'm not as optimistic, because you can't just revive these professions once they are decimated.. Americans were deterred from engineering to the point where they lost all interest, and these visa programs were the only way to get students. But guess what? The day will come (and soon, it appears) where we can offer as many visas and green cards as we like, but we won't find any takers.
Eventually, someone has to recognize that it wasn't wise to allow Americans to become a small minority in american engineering ms/ph.d programs, because nobody is more likely to stay in the US.
The statistic of people moving into senior management on moving 'home' suggests that companies in developing economies feel that they need American trained executives to compete with American companies.
So all this might mean is that middle managers in US companies are being automatically promoted into senior jobs in foreign companies because those companies feel insecure. This is great for the bank balance of those people but doesn't necessarily mean a great deal for the company.
It's also not a new phenomena - having a 'BtA' (Been to America) used to be almost a requirement for promotion in UK academia or medicine. It didn't lead to a huge amount of innovation in the NHS.
At the same time, when economy of China/India has enough domestic demands to sustain itself, the need for U.S. trained managers will decline. For those middle managers, betting the growth of domestic markets and starting to learn the market from now on also plays a factor.
I don't think that it is necessarily a need for US trained managers - I just think that some fairly average Indians and Chinese middle managers working in the US have seen that they can leverage their 'American Experience' into a better job back home.
Rather than a reverse brain drain - it could just be the Dilbert principle.
It's not an American thing, it's a first-world thing. Academics and businessmen in BRIC countries value colleagues who have seen the workings of first-world economies, since BRCI countries are mostly targeting customers in those places, or looking up to them in terms of technological innovation.
"When we asked what was better about the U.S. than home, 54% of Indian and 43% of Chinese said that total financial compensation for their previous U.S. positions was better than at home. Health-care benefits were also considered somewhat better in the United States by 51 percent of Chinese respondents, versus 21 percent who thought it was better in their home country. (Indian respondents were split more evenly on this)."
The article goes on to note that since returnees were surveyed, the survey results necessarily are biased toward the opinions of persons who thought going back to their native country had better trade-offs than staying in the United States. Did the survey not have any questions about national governance, democracy, or pervasive social problems in each country? Do such high-tech workers (the ones who return to the native countries or the ones who stay abroad) have no opinions on such issues?
I'll note that I don't think one would call this phenomenon a "reverse brain drain" unless people like me who grew up in the United States and who have lived abroad previously decide in large numbers to settle abroad permanently. The United States still enjoys net inward migration, and many tens of thousands of the immigrants who arrive to live permanently in the United States are still highly capable workers who could live nearly anywhere in the world if they so chose.
To some degrees, U.S. administrations after 9/11 act closer to administrations in India and China on issues on governance and immigrations. Besides, when a person grew up in an environment that stresses making money fast and first, ignoring and exploiting government corruptions, those advantages of U.S. democracy doesn't matter much to them.
Most of the Chinese and Indians "brains" in U.S are from families with privileges. Although paychecks are fatter in U.S for them, they have better social networks/relationships inherited from parents to exploit opportunities in booming China and India economies.
Globalization has been enabling higher growth in GDP in India/China than U.S. Let's imagine that you are in an economy that grows at 10% per year and you are born in the class with privileges, power and social network. It means the chance to double your assets in 3 to 5 years is very possible as long as you know whom to make deals.
I think it's fair to call it a reverse brain drain in that post-World-War-II the US has benefited from a steady stream of above-the-curve immigration. It's not a temporary thing that's switching gears -- it's been a constant ebb for the last 60 years that helped establish the US as the dominant world economy. When you remove that from the equation, there is something core to American society that goes with it.
The only real problem, however, with this essay, is that it doesn't compare to some historical baseline other than an anecdote. It's not possible just from reading this to tell how big of a change this really is.
That is true for most programming related terms. I think Google trends ranks by the percentage within total queries from a country. If in India people use Google from every IT company but it is less widespread in all households than in the US, that alone explains this bias.
And sure, I know the xenophobes are going to cheer my findings. They believe that foreign workers take American jobs away. But a growing body of evidence indicates that skilled foreign immigrants create jobs for Americans and boost our national competitiveness.
That's a bit of bait-and-switch. The concern shared by 86% of Americans is over illegal immigrants that take low-skill jobs away from Americans (particularly black Americans in the cities, where this is a huge and underreported issue), commit crimes at a disproportionate rate, and consume social services to the point that a number of US hospitals have had to close down due to non-paying illegals.
In the third sentence it's suddenly about "skilled" legal foreign workers, which is rarely the focus of the "xenophobes" (nice ad hominem!) These are two entirely different issues.
I should add that I'm married to a Chinese woman with an MD and an MS degree. Whenever I've raised the issue of living in China she stomps it down right quick. OTOH, her best friend's son when back after getting his degree b/c of the opportunities and he's doing great.
The first part with all the stats? Something like only 27% of Indians with Visas wanted to return, yet the article cites this as an indication that "it's not a visa issue". In general, the first part is entirely self-selected, as the article admits.
We then move to Indian students, who presumably haven't been here for long and haven't had all those jobs from the first part of the article. So it's an entirely different demographic.
If you're going to hang out with a group that wants stats to show large numbers of citizens returning home that's fine, but don't do it to the point that the information you are sharing is tainted (or worse, slanted)
I'm happy we have immigrants here doing IT work, although I worry about taking the best and brightest from other societies. So I'm happy also if some of them want to return home. Any kind of cultural mixing -- whether by new immigrants coming here or old ones returning home -- is a good thing for everybody involved.
But this article is not such a good source of information
Anecdotal evidence for sure, but a lot of my friends, especially those with kids are thinking about heading back. In the past they felt that they would be giving too much career-wise if they did so, but with that barrier going away all the other advantages of heading back become very tempting (family, lifestyle, culture, etc)
In the context of immigrants, it means permanently. When you talked to any non-U.S born Indians, Chinese, "Return to India/China" means permanently; "Vacation in India/China" means temporary.
Having said that, the energy in India is quite palpable. There is a sense of possibility that is very compelling, despite all the barriers that still exist. So I don't think I'm going to regret the decision from the perspective of personal growth either.