Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Reversing the Foreign Brain Drain

I read an article today regarding how foreign graduates are leaving in droves back to their countries because of the strict Visa requirements, uncertainty about how long will take to become permanent resident here and also because the opportunity back home is far greater than it is here. I am talking specifically about India and China because they are growing the fastest while the U.S. is mired in a recession with no signs of coming out of it pretty soon (no matter what the government and the economists say otherwise).

Furthermore the cutbacks in hiring and freezing of salaries and lost opportunity due to continued recession has made the journey back home a pleasant one, not to mention being close to friends and family and a patriotic duty to contribute to the advancement of their countries have made them think twice about staying in the U.S.

But the main culprit I believe is that after September 11, 2001, the strict requirements that the highly educated people have to go through to get the work visa plus the additional regulations burdened on the American Corporations in terms of hiring these people have made these corporations hesitant to hire foreign graduates.

I know that there is very much abuse of the so called H1 visa regarding hiring of the foreign graduates with low salary and this has created a backlash. But that does not mean that we should have highly restrictive requirements to fulfill in order for the corporations to hire H1 people. After all there is also much abuse also in other government programs but they are still assisting a lot of people despite their drawbacks. So we should be devising plans to stop this brain drain from becoming a tidal wave. I will talk about this much more in my later posts.

No comments:

Post a Comment