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 Editorials | Issues | August 2007 
One Million Skilled Workers Stuck in 'Immigration Limbo'
 Susan Donaldson James - ABC News
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| | America faces 'reverse brain drain' as flawed laws and green card backlog send Asians home. |
Eight years ago India-born Sacheen Kamath was hired by a U.S. technology start-up that was so successful it was quickly gobbled up by a California networking giant.
Although Kamath's work as computer engineer has been stellar - he's led the development of a next-generation networking product - his life here has begun to fall apart.
With his temporary visa, he can't get a promotion, look for a new job or even buy a house. Kamath's wife is unhappy because she can't work, and now he has developed hypertension.
Kamath is caught in "immigration limbo" - like one million other talented legal immigrants waiting for a mere 140,000 permanent residency visas parsed out each year to highly skilled workers.
He applied for his so-called green card in 2004, but when his company's intellectual property was bought out, he was forced to reapply, throwing him to the back of the line and another four to five-year wait.
Now, Kamath wants to take his expertise and brain power home.
A recent study conducted by researchers at Duke, Harvard and New York universities suggests that the frustration of legal, skilled immigrants like Kamath is setting the stage for what could be the first "reverse brain drain" in American history.
"I have begun to hate my work and my life in the U.S." said Kamath. "I think that it is better to be king in a third world country than a helpless immigrant in a superpower developed one."
If he returns to India's vibrant economy, Kamath would work for his company's research center there, bringing along others who work for him.
"My company is already thinking of outsourcing work to India," he said. "But it's not easy to pack up eight years of your life, relocate and restart in a new country, not even your own."
For decades the backbone of America's competitive economy has been its highly educated legal immigrants.
The majority come from India, China, Mexico and Philippines, attracted to the U.S. by the world's best universities, most vibrant companies and highest standard of living.
The study revealed that immigrants founded half of the tech and engineering companies started in Silicon Valley between 1995 and 2005. Nationwide, about one-quarter were started by immigrants.
It also discovered that 41% of the U.S. government's global patents had foreign-nationals listed as inventors.
But today these skilled immigrants - the cream of America's crop - are finding their lives in disarray because of flawed laws and a bureaucratic backlog that started after heightened security checks after 9/11.
These are not the 12 million illegal immigrants who have captivated national attention, but doctors, engineers and technology superstars who have played by the rules and helped fuel the booming American economy.
"We are obsessed with the undocumented aliens who are unskilled, but there is a major crisis with our skilled labor," said Robert Litan, vice president of research at the Kauffman Foundation, which released the study Aug. 22.
"It would be a national tragedy if they went back," he told ABCNews.com. "We have our eyes focused on the wrong ball."
The collaborative study - "Intellectual Property, the Immigration Backlog and Reverse Brain Drain: America's New Immigrant Entrepreneurs" - was based on data from the U.S. departments of Homeland Security, Labor and State.
According to the study, one in five new legal immigrants and about one in three business principals either plan to leave the U.S. or are uncertain about staying.
Immigrants like Leigh Plimmer, an Atlanta CPA from South Africa, feel unwelcome and argue that the national debate on illegal workers has painted a false picture of all immigrants as "illegal, lazy, criminal, unbeneficial and parasitic."
Each year, the U.S. gives out a total of 900,000 green cards - the first step to citizenship. The vast majority go to relatives of new immigrants or to refugees or asylum seekers.
Since the 1960s, U.S. immigration policy has been less Euro-centric and offered visas equally to all countries. Greater emphasis was placed on family ties, rather than on education and skills.
The problem, said Litan, was the cap Congress put on skilled immigration - only 7 percent of the total 140,000 available green cards allotted to each country.
Most of the highly educated immigrants come from India, China, Philippines and Mexico, populous countries with historical family ties in the U.S. For them, the line is the longest.
A small country like Iceland is allowed the same number of immigrants - about 9,800 a year - as industrial giants like India and China, countries whose growing economies are now luring their emigrants back. .
Some skilled immigrants could wait up to 10 years for their green cards, forcing them to make hard professional and personal choices.
Nigerian Kola Akinwande, a manager at a major Arizona company, is so discouraged that he has applied for immigration to Canada. He came to the U.S. in 2001, but a series of company mergers and acquisitions threw his plans into turmoil.
He cannot get a raise or switch jobs without sacrificing his green card application. His wife, with a master's in child psychology, cannot work. His two college-age sons do not qualify for in-state tuition and a third son is headed for college next year.
"I have ideas of starting a venture that would employ at least 10 American workers, but I can't," he told ABCNews.com. "We are stuck in limbo. I cannot go home now without wasting six years of my life."
"But I prefer to stay here because we have put down roots," he said.
Companies started by immigrants employed 450,000 workers and generated $52 billion in revenue in 2006, according to earlier studies. Indian immigrants founded more companies than the next four groups from the United Kingdom, China, Taiwan and Japan.
Immigrant founders were highly educated in science, technology, math, and engineering-related, disciplines, with 96 percent holding bachelor's degrees and 75 percent holding master's or Ph.Ds.
The largest foreign-born patent application group was from China, according to an analysis of the World Intellectual Property Organization. Indian nationals were second, followed by Canadians and the British.
"It becomes clear that we're headed for a crisis," said Vivek Wadhwa, a Wertheim Fellow at Harvard University who led the study with noted economist Richard Freeman and NYU sociologist Guillermina Jasso.
"The data was astonishing," said Wadhwa, also executive in residence at Duke University. "No one knew how many were in line."
"We brought hundreds of thousands of workers to the U.S. on temporary visas, trained them in our technology and market and now are forcing them to leave, just when they have become even more valuable."
He predicts that unless immigration laws are reformed and backlogs corrected, hundreds of thousands of highly skilled immigrants could leave. Many who are educated in the U.S. and raised their families here, will take American know-how elsewhere.
Many will close companies putting employees out of work and set up shop overseas, competing against the U.S. or attracting American companies eager to outsource, he said.
"The yearly inflow of talent from the world to the U.S. is worth billions of dollars," said Wadhwa, an India-born technology executive.
"It could be that India has provided more in intellectual-capital to the U.S. just over the last decade than all of the financial aid the U.S. has given to India over the last 60 years," he said. "So one may ask - who's helping who, here."
Immigration Voice, a grassroots organization that represents the nation's skilled immigrants, expects 5,000 of its members to march in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 18 to press Congress for reform.
"The issue of undocumented has over-shadowed the issue of legal skilled immigrants," said organization spokesman Jay Pradhan.
Pradhan, a Nevada software developer, has worked in the U. S. for seven years, filed for his green card in 2004, but fears he may have to wait another three to four years.
"I can't really plan my life and my career without knowing what is going to happen," said Pradhan. "Congress has to let us know if they want us here or not."
For the Kauffman Foundation, whose main mission is to advance understanding of entrepreneurship, the stakes are high.
"Immigrants are a high-growth force and power in the economy," said vice-president Litan. "Put aside nationality, throughout American history immigrants are disproportionately entrepreneurial because they are locked out of the mainstream. The way to get to the first rung is to open their own businesses."
He rejects the notion that hiring Indians and Chinese workers takes jobs from Americans.
"We've run out of American tech workers, and companies like Cisco and Microsoft have to go follow [skilled immigrants.] If we let them go home you accelerate the outsourcing of American research and development." |
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