7 ms·

Many thanks to the lopsided high skilled immigration rules, combined with China focused VCs, a lot of reverse brain drain to China has lead to this. Imagine if

Many thanks to the lopsided high skilled immigration rules, combined with China focused VCs, a lot of reverse brain drain to China has lead to this. Imagine if every Masters or a PhD grad was given a green card. US would still have been a leader in tech (at least wrt VC spending metric)

twblalock 8y ago
That's not the entire story. Many skilled Chinese people want to stay in China these days. It's a lot better there than it used to be.
seanmcdirmid 8y ago
The number of Chinese students staying in the US after graduation has been relatively steady for the last 10 years; the number of Chinese students coming to the US, in contrast, has exploded, pushing the stay percentage down.
- hatred 8y ago
  Do you have any links to confirm the latter? From what I have been seeing, the number of both Indian/Chinese students coming to the US for studying has gone down post the Trump administration. Also, I am seeing more Indian/Chinese folks going back home due to increase in engineering wages/opportunities. Of course, it's still not comparable to US but plenty-enough to live a very good life-style back home.
  - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
    I’m not sure if it’s gone down during the last 1.5 years of the trump admin, but it has exploded in the last 10 years. Looking at the data. Looking at the change for any given year is a bit noisy. China has really great wages for programming (I should know), but lacks in many quality of life factors. For example, many Chinese won’t go back once they have kids because of educatio, hukou, and pollution factors. They would have to pay a lot to get around those.
- calvinbhai 8y ago
  There's no point in staying in the US after graduation, if you were born in China or India. Because, instead of exploring your entrepreneurial interests during the golden years, you are shackled to an employer with an H1b, waiting to get a green card for at least 25-30 years after graduation. Instead of spending time on the product, or building a team, you have to waste time with idiotic immigration laws that were not written keeping the current tech jobs in mind. So, even if you see an Indian or a Chinese grad stay back in the US, there's very little chance that they end up being entrepreneurs funded by VCs (unless they are from the top 10 universities in the US and started on their venture well before graduating). Not sure about China, but there are quite a few examples of Indian nationals fed up with US immigration laws, going back to India and startup a VC backed tech product company, valued over $100 million.
partycoder 8y ago
Most graduate students in the US are of foreign origin anyways. At some moment studying abroad will not be necessary anymore.
- dlp211 8y ago
  This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. The US government has not invested enough in higher level education for its citizenship.
coldtea 8y ago
>Imagine if every Masters or a PhD grad was given a green card Yeah, a huge brain drain would result, to the detriment of other countries and the benefit of US.
- jdavis703 8y ago
  Why is that a problem? Any other country could also open its border to "brains" if they wanted too. The world would probably be better off if smart people (or really any one) could easily migrate to where they can be happiest.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >Why is that a problem? It's not if you an American. >Any other country could also open its border to "brains" if they wanted too. The world would probably be better off if smart people (or really any one) could easily migrate to where they can be happiest. And perhaps we could dispose of the not-so-smart left behind while at it...
  - dredmorbius 8y ago
    Geographic intellectual centres tend to be very strong natural monopolies. Mind: my own theorising, though based on a considerable bit of research. Monopolies, generally, tend to form around networks, most generally described as flows (material, energy, products, people, information), between nodes, with some cost function. That last isn't just the traditional capital and labour, but a larger set, generally: materials, energy, time, effluent, skill, technical knowledge, O&M, comms protocols (including language choice), access to finance, frictional losses (from hull drag to bribery), and yes, labour and capital. I'd also add unintended consequenses, though that's a long aside. Different locations may have favourable or unfavourable standing among various of these factors. Comparative advantage (and disadvantage). Something like Kirchoff's law of circuit flow may apply, I'm looking into this. There's some prior art, I believe associated with Jules Dupuit. Edward Glaser, Harvard, makes the interesting observation that cities are an exception to the Anna Karenina principle: major global cities tend to have their own individual focus of competence. This seems particularly the case for ephemeralised goods: television (centering on NYC again), cinema (Hollywood, though, via language frictions, also Bollywood), finance (NYC, though with regional centres in London, Frankfurt, and Tokyo). And of course the San Francisco Bay Area for software, thoughthere are a few other competing centres, notably again NYC. Glaeser also notes that diverse cities with non-monolithic industries and corporate footprints, tend to maximise diversity -- hecontrasts NYC's garment industry with the company towns of Ford's Detroit and Carnegie's Pittsburgh. (The bulk material, energy, effluent, and labour requirements of early-20th century auto and steel production are other aspects he fails to dwell on, to his loss.) But there are also things ccities need to get right: a baseline. Size. Food and water supply. Waste removal, public health, and crime prevention. Transport and tradee. Comms. Quality of life. Fail in these, and aa city wwill decline (though economic failure seems the more apparent proximate cause). For intellectual and creative activities, opportunity, freedom, removal of barriers & hassles, and lack of oppression, seem key. The mid-20th century transatlantic flow, in both directions, of European Jews west, and American Blacks east, is a particularly inteeresting case: a given location can simultaneously attract and repell. There are other dynamics: Dutch Disease, Baumal's Cost Disease, Gresham's Law (particularly applicable to brain drain), probably Jevons and Leibig's law. But getting to your assertion, simply opening borders is far from sufficient.
tiatia123 8y ago
What is a green card worth without a job? I had a green card but could not get a job in the US. Cheers from China. They actually DO need people here.
- Latteland 8y ago
  What was your area? You got a green card from previous us work or your spouse got one I suppose.
  - tiatia123 8y ago
    Nanotech I won the lottery while doing my PhD in the US. PhD was really a good time but I should basically have left immediately after I finished. Total waste of time afterwards.
    - calvinbhai 8y ago
      Curious: were you born in China and still eligible for the lottery? I thought Nanotech was a much coveted field to be in This is exactly why merit based legal immigration would push US back into the pole position, if it was done right. Lottery green card is basically a new way of excluding people from China and India from immigration, in the name of diversity. Current situation for high skilled immigrants from India in US, is basically to cross the border to Canada, with it's amazing Express Entry scheme, which treats all immigrants the same, and evaluates each one based on the same scale (of education qualifications and work experience). Unlike the US, Canadian high skilled immigration rules don't discriminate based on country of birth! My guess: In 10 years, Canada will be giving the US a tough competition for global VC spend Skate to where the puck is going to be...... :)
      - tiatia123 8y ago
        "Curious: were you born in China and still eligible for the lottery?" I was born in Western Europe. I am not Assian. "I thought Nanotech was a much coveted field to be in" Me too, but as mentioned before, Ideas are like hemorrhoids. This was mine. Not sure why. Wrong time. Wrong coast. Bad luck. I had an interview at Agilent. They had 500 applicants. You needed to have a PhD or MBA or both. I was among the last three candidates and they congratulated me, "you got the job". Then they axed the job. There was just a curse on me. Really don't want to think back about that time. Started over in China with nothing. Was basically an illegal immigrant there.
echevil 8y ago
Many of those Chinese immigrants still go back to China after they get green cards.
deleted 8y ago
- Latteland 8y ago
  What country, at least specify in US or out of US. I can't even speculate. Tear down the idea of giving green cards, you mean that people out of the us with ms/phd are not so good. Support the idea of giving green cards, the existing ones in the us are good, the bad ones left? Sorry, can't parse it. :-)
  - DiddleBit 8y ago
    I don't know what you are even trying to say. I live in a third-world country and every single ms/phd I have met were nothing but incompetent. Edit: I don't know why you are downvoting this but in this country most degrees are bought with money and the ones earned without bribery are earned in an environment where expectations from students are a lot lower than, say, in US.
    - Latteland 8y ago
      Sorry, my comment was confusing too! I was trying to ask are you saying phds in the us are bad, in the world, or everywhere.
- digaozao 8y ago
  In Brazil the same. Many are just degree getters but dont really have a good base
hevi_jos 8y ago
What would you prefer: to live in a foreign country with lots of competition, all day working, or live in your native country, few skilled competition and huge quality of living? Most people want to live in their own country , with their family, their friends and their language. Chinese people have elders to care. In China family is sacred to a level individualistic US can not understand.
calvinbhai 8y ago
Here is a classic example of the hoops entrepreneurs have to jump, to run a startup Pillpack's founder trying to ensure that he can keep the engineer: http://vdc.umb.edu/2018/07/04/can-you-help-our-friend-elliot-cohen-the-people-behind-pillpacks-success-and-why-it-takes-a-community-to-raise-a-startup/ http://vdc.umb.edu/2018/07/04/can-you-help-our-friend-elliot... Pillpack was bought by Amazon for ~ $1 billion. sad part is, even a founder who is a US Citizen, has to waste copious amounts of time navigating these idiotic frustrating US immigration rules, because the star engineer they have is an immigrant.

twblalock 8y ago

That's not the entire story. Many skilled Chinese people want to stay in China these days. It's a lot better there than it used to be.

seanmcdirmid 8y ago

The number of Chinese students staying in the US after graduation has been relatively steady for the last 10 years; the number of Chinese students coming to the US, in contrast, has exploded, pushing the stay percentage down.

hatred 8y ago
Do you have any links to confirm the latter? From what I have been seeing, the number of both Indian/Chinese students coming to the US for studying has gone down post the Trump administration. Also, I am seeing more Indian/Chinese folks going back home due to increase in engineering wages/opportunities. Of course, it's still not comparable to US but plenty-enough to live a very good life-style back home.
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  I’m not sure if it’s gone down during the last 1.5 years of the trump admin, but it has exploded in the last 10 years. Looking at the data. Looking at the change for any given year is a bit noisy. China has really great wages for programming (I should know), but lacks in many quality of life factors. For example, many Chinese won’t go back once they have kids because of educatio, hukou, and pollution factors. They would have to pay a lot to get around those.
calvinbhai 8y ago
There's no point in staying in the US after graduation, if you were born in China or India. Because, instead of exploring your entrepreneurial interests during the golden years, you are shackled to an employer with an H1b, waiting to get a green card for at least 25-30 years after graduation. Instead of spending time on the product, or building a team, you have to waste time with idiotic immigration laws that were not written keeping the current tech jobs in mind. So, even if you see an Indian or a Chinese grad stay back in the US, there's very little chance that they end up being entrepreneurs funded by VCs (unless they are from the top 10 universities in the US and started on their venture well before graduating). Not sure about China, but there are quite a few examples of Indian nationals fed up with US immigration laws, going back to India and startup a VC backed tech product company, valued over $100 million.

partycoder 8y ago

Most graduate students in the US are of foreign origin anyways. At some moment studying abroad will not be necessary anymore.

dlp211 8y ago
This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. The US government has not invested enough in higher level education for its citizenship.

coldtea 8y ago

>Imagine if every Masters or a PhD grad was given a green card Yeah, a huge brain drain would result, to the detriment of other countries and the benefit of US.

jdavis703 8y ago
Why is that a problem? Any other country could also open its border to "brains" if they wanted too. The world would probably be better off if smart people (or really any one) could easily migrate to where they can be happiest.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >Why is that a problem? It's not if you an American. >Any other country could also open its border to "brains" if they wanted too. The world would probably be better off if smart people (or really any one) could easily migrate to where they can be happiest. And perhaps we could dispose of the not-so-smart left behind while at it...
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  Geographic intellectual centres tend to be very strong natural monopolies. Mind: my own theorising, though based on a considerable bit of research. Monopolies, generally, tend to form around networks, most generally described as flows (material, energy, products, people, information), between nodes, with some cost function. That last isn't just the traditional capital and labour, but a larger set, generally: materials, energy, time, effluent, skill, technical knowledge, O&M, comms protocols (including language choice), access to finance, frictional losses (from hull drag to bribery), and yes, labour and capital. I'd also add unintended consequenses, though that's a long aside. Different locations may have favourable or unfavourable standing among various of these factors. Comparative advantage (and disadvantage). Something like Kirchoff's law of circuit flow may apply, I'm looking into this. There's some prior art, I believe associated with Jules Dupuit. Edward Glaser, Harvard, makes the interesting observation that cities are an exception to the Anna Karenina principle: major global cities tend to have their own individual focus of competence. This seems particularly the case for ephemeralised goods: television (centering on NYC again), cinema (Hollywood, though, via language frictions, also Bollywood), finance (NYC, though with regional centres in London, Frankfurt, and Tokyo). And of course the San Francisco Bay Area for software, thoughthere are a few other competing centres, notably again NYC. Glaeser also notes that diverse cities with non-monolithic industries and corporate footprints, tend to maximise diversity -- hecontrasts NYC's garment industry with the company towns of Ford's Detroit and Carnegie's Pittsburgh. (The bulk material, energy, effluent, and labour requirements of early-20th century auto and steel production are other aspects he fails to dwell on, to his loss.) But there are also things ccities need to get right: a baseline. Size. Food and water supply. Waste removal, public health, and crime prevention. Transport and tradee. Comms. Quality of life. Fail in these, and aa city wwill decline (though economic failure seems the more apparent proximate cause). For intellectual and creative activities, opportunity, freedom, removal of barriers & hassles, and lack of oppression, seem key. The mid-20th century transatlantic flow, in both directions, of European Jews west, and American Blacks east, is a particularly inteeresting case: a given location can simultaneously attract and repell. There are other dynamics: Dutch Disease, Baumal's Cost Disease, Gresham's Law (particularly applicable to brain drain), probably Jevons and Leibig's law. But getting to your assertion, simply opening borders is far from sufficient.

tiatia123 8y ago

What is a green card worth without a job? I had a green card but could not get a job in the US. Cheers from China. They actually DO need people here.

Latteland 8y ago
What was your area? You got a green card from previous us work or your spouse got one I suppose.
- tiatia123 8y ago
  Nanotech I won the lottery while doing my PhD in the US. PhD was really a good time but I should basically have left immediately after I finished. Total waste of time afterwards.
  - calvinbhai 8y ago
    Curious: were you born in China and still eligible for the lottery? I thought Nanotech was a much coveted field to be in This is exactly why merit based legal immigration would push US back into the pole position, if it was done right. Lottery green card is basically a new way of excluding people from China and India from immigration, in the name of diversity. Current situation for high skilled immigrants from India in US, is basically to cross the border to Canada, with it's amazing Express Entry scheme, which treats all immigrants the same, and evaluates each one based on the same scale (of education qualifications and work experience). Unlike the US, Canadian high skilled immigration rules don't discriminate based on country of birth! My guess: In 10 years, Canada will be giving the US a tough competition for global VC spend Skate to where the puck is going to be...... :)
    - tiatia123 8y ago
      "Curious: were you born in China and still eligible for the lottery?" I was born in Western Europe. I am not Assian. "I thought Nanotech was a much coveted field to be in" Me too, but as mentioned before, Ideas are like hemorrhoids. This was mine. Not sure why. Wrong time. Wrong coast. Bad luck. I had an interview at Agilent. They had 500 applicants. You needed to have a PhD or MBA or both. I was among the last three candidates and they congratulated me, "you got the job". Then they axed the job. There was just a curse on me. Really don't want to think back about that time. Started over in China with nothing. Was basically an illegal immigrant there.

echevil 8y ago

Many of those Chinese immigrants still go back to China after they get green cards.

deleted 8y ago

Latteland 8y ago
What country, at least specify in US or out of US. I can't even speculate. Tear down the idea of giving green cards, you mean that people out of the us with ms/phd are not so good. Support the idea of giving green cards, the existing ones in the us are good, the bad ones left? Sorry, can't parse it. :-)
- DiddleBit 8y ago
  I don't know what you are even trying to say. I live in a third-world country and every single ms/phd I have met were nothing but incompetent. Edit: I don't know why you are downvoting this but in this country most degrees are bought with money and the ones earned without bribery are earned in an environment where expectations from students are a lot lower than, say, in US.
  - Latteland 8y ago
    Sorry, my comment was confusing too! I was trying to ask are you saying phds in the us are bad, in the world, or everywhere.
digaozao 8y ago
In Brazil the same. Many are just degree getters but dont really have a good base

hevi_jos 8y ago

What would you prefer: to live in a foreign country with lots of competition, all day working, or live in your native country, few skilled competition and huge quality of living? Most people want to live in their own country , with their family, their friends and their language. Chinese people have elders to care. In China family is sacred to a level individualistic US can not understand.

calvinbhai 8y ago

Here is a classic example of the hoops entrepreneurs have to jump, to run a startup Pillpack's founder trying to ensure that he can keep the engineer: http://vdc.umb.edu/2018/07/04/can-you-help-our-friend-elliot-cohen-the-people-behind-pillpacks-success-and-why-it-takes-a-community-to-raise-a-startup/ http://vdc.umb.edu/2018/07/04/can-you-help-our-friend-elliot... Pillpack was bought by Amazon for ~ $1 billion. sad part is, even a founder who is a US Citizen, has to waste copious amounts of time navigating these idiotic frustrating US immigration rules, because the star engineer they have is an immigrant.