Exporting Brains, and Jobs

Great piece in today's WaPo entitled, "They're Taking Their Brains and Going Home," by Vivek Wadhwa, a senior research associate at Harvard Law School, yet another strong argument against the ill-advised Grassley-Sanders bill.

Wadhwa makes the case for keeping immigrants -- especially US-educated immigrants -- in this country and reminds us once again that in a global economy, the jobs follow the innovation, not the other way around. Among the salient points he makes therein:

• Almost 25 percent of all international patent applications filed from the United States in 2006 named foreign nationals as inventors;
• Immigrants founded a quarter of all U.S. engineering and technology companies started between 1995 and 2005, including half of those in Silicon Valley;
• In 2005 alone, immigrants' businesses generated $52 billion in sales and employed 450,000 workers;
• Although immigrants accounted for only 12 percent of the U.S. workforce, they made up 47 percent of all scientists and engineers with doctorates; 
• Fully 67 percent of all those who entered the fields of science and engineering between 1995 and 2006 were immigrants.

Yet we have an immigration policy built for the last century, cobbled together by negotiation with the groups who screamed loudest, and based on erroneous assumptions and a trove of misinformation. As a result, we chase away the best and brightest that graduate from American universities every year, send 'em packing back home, only to compete with us later.

"What will happen to America's competitive edge when these people go home?" asks Wadhwa. Sadly, we're seeing the answer unfold before our eyes.