My comments on an IHT Article on skilled immigrant workers in the US returning home

The Real High-Tech Immigrant Problem: They’re Leaving

On reading the comments:
What an interesting set of discussions, wide-ranging and hitting on some good topics ,with the usual range of informed and uninformed opinions. I am an engineer, though not in IT, and I did a masters degree in the US, returned to England, and then was transferred to the US for a number of years before moving on to Hong Kong.

While I am not keen on exceptionalism and ostrich-patriotism, I think that the US has many wonderful people, some great scenery and a great constitution, and I am glad to have had the chance to live there. (End of intro)

In my experience, the US is short of engineers. I would say that this reflects the wage imbalance that is only now being addressed. Why rack up large debts to study engineering, when you can do finance or law and pay back your debts quickly? Of course, the WRONG solution is to allow short-sighted companies to simply import cheap labour from other countries, and many posters have identified this problem. However, the US has benefitted massively from immigration, and many of those complaining about immigrants are only alive because their ancestors managed to get to the US despite the actions of the "Native American" Movement of 1844 (these were British-Americans, who wanted to restrict Catholic Irish immigration) and similar anti-immigrant movements.

I agree with the poster who says that people should direct their complaints against the government and not against those on H1-Bs. Also don't forget that people with H1-Bs are a diverse group, some do indeed want to settle, some want to move home after making some money. Don't tar all with the same brush.

On the unfair advantage of "subsidised education", I believe it is true that Indians do not typically receive subsidised education. I on the other hand received a free university education in the UK. Perhaps I should therefore be the first to propose that you kick those free-loading Brits out before anyone else! Incidentally, despite the characterisation of some posters, some of the Indians who are posting have flawless English, well above the general standard of postings!

In my opinion the (current) global pre-eminence of the US can be attributed to a number of factors, and it is unwise to focus on one or two. By the second world war, the US had recovered from its crippling internal war and had learned to compete very well as a country with a large, relatively open internal market, plentiful cheap natural resources and a relatively low-cost, well-educated work-force in a business environment with legally enforceable contracts. The end of the second world war left it as the only industrialised nation without war damage, and as a major creditor nation, which allowed it to build economic strength. This, naturally enough encouraged immigration of skilled people who, together with descendants of earlier immigrants, built a strong economy, supported by ready investment. What we are seeing now, is a country that is still powerful, with a large internal market, but that is increasingly a debtor nation, with less money to invest in the future, and therefore less attractive to skilled immigrants.

So my conclusions are; remove some of the economic imbalance against engineering (i.e. don't pay gamblers for short-term returns), pay H1b engineers a market wage (which will remove some of the incentive to import people unnecessarily) and hire the best from a long-term perspective (which means treasuring expertise). Don't make it difficult for qualified people who are already committed to the US to continue to work there. Accept that there is going to be some pain in the next few years, but that moving forwards cooperatively is not necessarily a zero sum game and that it can lead to better, if not always richer, times. Look out for your neighbours and follow the Golden Rule. (How about that for an untypically British positive ending...?)