Foreign Grads Return Home

Substantial numbers of highly skilled immigrant workers have begun leaving the United States for their home countries, potentially damaging the economy’s ability to recover by removing a key source of talent, suggests a recent study led by a Harvard researcher.

Skilled immigrants who have historically stayed in the United States have proved a key source of innovation for the nation’s economy, according to Vivek Wadhwa, a Law School senior research associate who led the study.

Wadhwa said 52 percent of Silicon Valley startups and a quarter of startups nationwide were started by immigrants in the last decade.

But as the U.S. job market stagnates amid an unprecedented recession and economic opportunities increase in fast-developing nations such as China and India, immigrants have begun returning home, depriving the United States of thousands of skilled workers.

“When they go home, they’re going to create new opportunities at their home, bring innovation to their home,” Wadhwa said. “The economic recovery which would have happened in the United States is being exported to India and China.”

Returnees who were forced to work their way up through society in the United States now typically see better starting positions in their home countries, bolstered by the prestige of U.S. educations and job experience, Wadwha said.

“They don’t have to make sacrifices, they can be close to their friends and families, and be in societies where they’re at the top of the social ladder,” he said.

Wadhwa also places part of the blame for the increase in returnees on U.S. immigration policy, which can make finding a job and staying in the country after college difficult for international students.

While many of Harvard’s nearly 4,000 international students intend to stay in the United States to work, others, like Ivan Z. Posavec ’10 and Zeina Oweis ’11, echo the study’s findings.

“I love the United States, but I miss home, I miss my parents, my brothers,” said Posavec, a native of Serbia. “I cannot see myself spending the rest of my life thousands of miles away from here.”

Oweis said that many international students come to the United States planning to go back to their own countries to serve.

Some countries, he added, even give these students scholarships, in the hopes of encouraging their returns.

Beyond his desire to be with his family, Posavec said his Harvard degree is in higher demand back home than in the United States.

“Back home with a Harvard degree you can pretty much get a job anywhere in any bank,” Posavec said.