With tech engineering entering the third year of its slump, a significant number of foreign-born engineers who flocked to America in the 1990s are packing up and heading back to their native countries. In some cases the returns are by choice, but increasingly they are the result of layoffs or the loss of work visas.
Experts say some foreign engineers are leaving because they think perhaps the current downsizing of the U.S. information technology industry is not a temporary thing in fact, that the U.S. is headed to becoming a second-class citizen in the world of IT. According to Microsoft strategist Craig Mundie, “If the U.S. cedes its leadership in IT” to countries like India and China, “there will not be a second chance.”
And according to a prominent Silicon Valley investor, in 20 years there may not be much software development in the United States.
Source: Janet Guyon, Waves of Doubt: The Reverse Brain Drain, Fortune, November 11, 2002.
For text http://www.fortune.com/indexw.jhtml?channel=artcol.jhtml&doc_id=210082
For more on the Effects of Immigration http://www.ncpa.org/iss/imm
FMF Policy Bulletin\12 November 2002
