Indian immigration helped US more than US aid to India

WASHINGTON: India may have provided more in intellectual capital to the US just over the last decade than all of the financial aid the US has given to India over the last 60 years, says an Indian American entrepreneur researcher who has done a study on the immigration issue.

"So one may ask - who's helping who, here," said Delhi born Vivek Wadhwa, a technology entrepreneur currently working as Wertheim Fellow at Harvard Law School and executive in residence at Duke University on the release of the study Wednesday by Kauffman Foundation.

But for the first time in its history the US faces the prospect of a reverse brain drain because of its flawed immigration policies, says the study, the third in a series of studies focusing on immigrants' contributions to the competitiveness of the US economy.

The US should bring in highly skilled immigrants not as temporary workers but to stay if it does not want to lose them to countries like India and China, the study suggests.

The study is co-authored by Guillermina Jasso, professor of sociology at New York University, Ben Rissing and Gary Gereffi research scholars at Duke University and Richard Freeman, Herbert Asherman Chair in Economics at Harvard University.

Noting that the number of skilled workers waiting for visas is significantly larger than the number that can be admitted to the US, it says this imbalance creates the potential for a sizeable reverse brain-drain from America to the skilled workers' home countries.

The study estimated "there are more than one million individuals waiting in line for legal permanent resident status. The wait time for visas for countries with the largest populations, like India and China, ranged to four years in June - not counting visa processing time - and may be even higher when visas are again available in October.

This backlog is likely to increase substantially, given the limited number of visas available, it said. Evidence from the "New Immigrant Survey" indicates that approximately one in five new legal immigrants and about one in three employment principals either plan to leave the US or are uncertain about remaining.

Moreover, media reports suggest that increasing numbers of skilled workers have begun to return home to countries like India and China where the economies are booming, the study noted.

"So far, the US has the benefit of attracting the worlds best and brightest.  They have typically come here for the freedom and economic opportunities that America offers," said Wadhwa.

"Now, because of our flawed immigration policies, we have not set the stage for the departure of hundreds of thousands of highly skilled professionals - who we have trained in our technology, techniques and markets and made even more valuable.

"This is lose-lose for the US. Our corporations lose key talent that is contributing to innovation and competitiveness, and we end up creating potential competitors," he said.

Wadhwa said he was by no means advocating an expansion of the numbers of H-1B visas for skilled workers. "In fact, part of this problem has been created by our expanding the numbers of temporary workers we admit and not increasing the numbers of permanent resident visas."

Noting that the focus of the immigration debate in US has been on the plight of the unskilled workers who have entered the country illegally, he said If Washington waited five years to reform the immigration system, the illegal and unskilled will still be here as these poor people have few options.

"But the highly educated and skilled - who are fuelling economic growth and contributing significantly to US global competitiveness will be long gone.  They are in even more demand in countries like India and China than they are in the US. Our loss will be the gain of their home countries," Wadhwa said.

Key findings:

* Foreign nationals residing in the US were named as inventors or co-inventors in 25.6 percent of international patent applications filed from the United States in 2006, up from 7.6 percent in 1998.

* In 2006, 16.8 percent of international patent applications from the United States had an inventor or co-inventor with a Chinese-heritage name, representing an increase from 11.2 percent in 1998.

* The contribution of inventors with Indian-heritage names increased to 13.7 percent from 9.5 percent in the same period.

* While Chinese inventors tended to reside in California, New Jersey, and New York, Indian inventors chose California, New Jersey, and Texas.

* Both Indian and Chinese inventors tended to file most patents in the fields of sanitation/medical preparations, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, and electronics, according to the study.

* Foreign nationals and foreign residents contributed to more than half of the international patents filed by a number of large, multi-national companies

* These included: Qualcomm (72 percent), Merck & Co. (65 percent), General Electric (64 percent), Siemens (63 percent), and Cisco (60 percent).

* Foreign nationals contributed to relatively smaller numbers of international patent applications at other firms, such as Microsoft (3 percent) and General Motors (6 percent).

* Forty-one percent of the patents filed by the US government had foreign nationals or foreign residents as inventors or co-inventors.

* Foreign nationals' contribution was the highest in California, Massachusetts, and New Jersey.