[Assam] ET: IITians crowded out from US immigration lines

[umesh sharma]

It seems that due to lots of non-IITians etc making a beeline for US education and jobs the elite ITians feel left out or do not follow the herd. Earlier, it seemed much easier perhaps - now wait lines - just apply for Green Card and you are the only one. 

In 2004 summer I met a retired www.berkeley.edu math professor in Aligarh UP, who mentioned  nostaligically how  he in 1961  had a cup of tea with the US Visa  officer at the US embassy in Delhi, since he was the only one applying for a US visa - straight as a math professor at Berkeley - after teaching math at Aligarh Muslim Univ. He was a devout Hindu (I would say orthodox and Brahmin supremacist). He lamented that his grandson had to stand a long line to get a visa now - an IITian going for MS at MIT.

Umesh

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/quickiearticleshow/msid-3098381.cms

Such optimism for entrepreneurship bodes well for India because it shows that the supply of senior business leaders — which can quickly become a constraint in a high-growth economy — won’t dry up, says Mr Aggarwal. And what will be the ramifications for the US? A three-part study by researchers at Duke University and University of California at Berkeley offers some interesting clues. The study showed that from 1995 to ’05, 26% of all the US technology and engineering companies started by immigrants had Indian founders.

 Will the source of this entrepreneurship disappear? Not so soon. Standard of living isn’t the only, or even the biggest, motivator for an undergraduate engineer in India planning a career. The lure of graduate education in the US is still very powerful.

 However, even here there’s a problem. Thanks to a multiyear wait for permanent-residency status in the US, there is the potential for a “reverse brain-drain” of skilled workers, say the Duke-Berkeley researchers. US education and immigration policy makers must pay close attention to the changing destination of IIT graduates. The surplus that India will export will dwindle even as the US works harder to retain the talent that eventually comes its way.


Umesh Sharma

Washington D.C. 

1-202-215-4328 [Cell]

Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005

http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)




www.gse.harvard.edu/iep  (where the above 2 are used )
http://harvardscience.harvard.edu/



http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/
       
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