There’s a disturbing dynamic taking place – Highly educated, skilled immigrants are leaving the U.S.
Why should we care? Because immigrants are critical to the country’s long-term economic health. Despite the fact that they constitute only 12% of the U.S. population, immigrants have started 52% of Silicon Valley’s technology companies and contributed to more than 25% of our global patents. They make up 24% of the U.S. science and engineering workforce holding bachelor’s degrees and 47% of science and engineering workers who have PhDs. Immigrants have co-founded firms such as Google (GOOG), Intel (INTC), eBay (EBAY), and Yahoo! (YHOO).
What’s worse, we’re not in a position to replace them.
Few U.S. college graduates receive technical degrees. As a culture, we seem to value law or political science more than engineering or science, but we need engineers and scientists to compete in an increasing technological world. Our technical competence needs to be deeper than programming a VCR or sending text messages on a cell phone.
We need workers capable of applying creative and innovative thought to underlying technical and scientific principles, and we need more of them.
The U.S. has the best technical colleges and universities in the world, but many of our engineering graduate students are foreigners. Foreigners value our technical education. Soon China will graduate ten times (and India five times) more engineers and scientists than the U.S. We are being left behind.
Highly educated, skilled immigrants, proficient in fields we are not pursuing, are leaving and we’re being left behind. Remember when these immigrants overcame homesickness, etc. because the US was their only option when it came to their career path and quality of life?
Ah… the good old days.