As the debate over H-1B workers and skilled immigrants intensifies, we are losing sight of one important fact: The U.S. is no longer the only land of opportunity. If we don’t want the immigrants who have fueled our innovation and economic growth, they now have options elsewhere. Immigrants are returning home in greater numbers. And new research shows they are returning to enjoy a better quality of life, better career prospects, and the comfort of being close to family and friends.
Earlier research by my team suggested that a crisis was brewing because of a burgeoning immigration backlog. At the end of 2006, more than 1 million skilled professionals (engineers, scientists, doctors, researchers) and their families were in line for a yearly allotment of only 120,000 permanent resident visas. The wait time for some people ran longer than a decade. In the meantime, these workers were trapped in “immigration limbo.” If they changed jobs or even took a promotion, they risked being pushed to the back of the permanent residency queue. We predicted that skilled foreign workers would increasingly get fed up and return to countries like India and China where the economies were booming.
Why should we care? Because immigrants are critical to the country’s long-term economic health. Despite the fact that they constitute only 12% of the U.S. population, immigrants have started 52% of Silicon Valley’s technology companies and contributed to more than 25% of our global patents. They make up 24% of the U.S. science and engineering workforce holding bachelor’s degrees and 47% of science and engineering workers who have PhDs. Immigrants have co-founded firms such as Google (GOOG), Intel (INTC), eBay (EBAY), and Yahoo! (YHOO).
Who Are They? Young and Well-Educated
We tried to find hard data on how many immigrants had returned to India and China. No government authority seems to track these numbers. But human resources directors in India and China told us that what was a trickle of returnees a decade ago had become a flood. Job applications from the U.S. had increased tenfold over the last few years, they said. To get an understanding of how the returnees had fared and why they left the U.S., my team at Duke, along with AnnaLee Saxenian of the University of California at Berkeley and Richard Freeman of Harvard University, conducted a survey. Through professional networking site LinkedIn, we tracked down 1,203 Indian and Chinese immigrants who had worked or received education in the U.S. and had returned to their home countries. This research was funded by the Kauffman Foundation.
Our new paper, “America’s Loss Is the World’s Gain,” finds that the vast majority of these returnees were relatively young. The average age was 30 for Indian returnees, and 33 for Chinese. They were highly educated, with degrees in management, technology, or science. Fifty-one percent of the Chinese held master’s degrees and 41% had PhDs. Sixty-six percent of the Indians held a master’s and 12.1% had PhDs. They were at very top of the educational distribution for these highly educated immigrant groups—precisely the kind of people who make the greatest contribution to the U.S. economy and to business and job growth.
Nearly a third of the Chinese returnees and a fifth of the Indians came to the U.S. on student visas. A fifth of the Chinese and nearly half of the Indians entered on temporary work visas (such as the H-1B). The strongest factor that brought them to the U.S. was professional and educational development opportunities.
What They Miss: Family and Friends
They found life in the U.S. had many drawbacks. Returnees cited language barriers, missing their family and friends at home, difficulty with cultural assimilation, and care of parents and children as key issues. About a third of the Indians and a fifth of the Chinese said that visas were a strong factor in their decision to return home, but others left for opportunity and to be close to family and friends. And it wasn’t just new immigrants who were returning. In fact, 30% of respondents held permanent resident status or were U.S. citizens.
Eighty-seven percent of Chinese and 79% of Indians said a strong factor in their original decision to return home was the growing demand for their skills in their home countries. Their instincts generally proved right. Significant numbers moved up the organization chart. Among Indians the percentage of respondents holding senior management positions increased from 10% in the U.S. to 44% in India, and among Chinese it increased from 9% in the U.S. to 36% in China. Eighty-seven percent of Chinese and 62% of Indians said they had better opportunities for longer-term professional growth in their home countries than in the U.S. Additionally, nearly half were considering launching businesses and said entrepreneurial opportunities were better in their home countries than in the U.S.
Friends and family played an equally strong role for 88% of Indians and 77% of Chinese. Care for aging parents was considered by 89% of Indians and 79% of Chinese to be much better in their home countries. Nearly 80% of Indians and 67% of Chinese said family values were better in their home countries.
More Options Back Home
Immigrants who have arrived at America’s shores have always felt lonely and homesick. They had to make big personal sacrifices to provide their children with better opportunities than they had. But they never have had the option to return home. Now they do, and they are leaving.
It isn’t all rosy back home. Indians complained of traffic and congestion, lack of infrastructure, excessive bureaucracy, and pollution. Chinese complained of pollution, reverse culture shock, inferior education for children, frustration with government bureaucracy, and the quality of health care. Returnees said they were generally making less money in absolute terms, but they also said they enjoyed a higher quality of life.
We may not need all these workers in the U.S. during the deepening recession. But we will need them to help us recover from it. Right now, they are taking their skills and ideas back to their home countries and are unlikely to return, barring an extraordinary recruitment effort and major changes to immigration policy. That hardly seems likely given the current political climate. The policy focus now seems to be on doing whatever it takes to retain existing American jobs—even if it comes at the cost of building a workforce for the future of America.
(Wadhwa is senior research associate at the Labor & Worklife Program at Harvard Law School and executive in residence at Duke University. He is an entrepreneur who founded two technology companies. His research can be found at www.globalizationresearch.com.)
Ethiopian regime’s head of propaganda (chief liar) Bereket Simon is among those who are outraged by Tesfaye GebreAb’s tell-all book, “The Journalist Memoir”
There is no doubt that Tesfaye GebreAb’s book, “The Journalist’s Memoir” (YeGazetegnaw Mastawesha), went under the skins of Woyanne regime officials in Ethiopia. The latest reaction is a 24-page letter to Ato Tesfaye from a {www:Woyanne} insider, probably Bereket Simon, who accuses him of attempted murder, among numerous other things.
The writer repeatedly talks about how insignificant Tesfaye GebreAb is, but goes on to write 24 pages full of accusations that are intended to destroy his credibility before the book reaches Ethiopia. Currently the book is available mostly in the U.S. and Europe.
Tesfaye seems not to have been bothered by the letter. He is more interested in showing Woyanne’s outrage by forwarding the letter to Ethiopian Review. Indeed, more than any thing, the letter exposes the Woyanne mindset. Click here to read the letter to Tesfaye GebreAb.
The Ethiopian Athletics Federation (EAF) this week named its provisional squad of twenty-four athletes for the 37th IAAF World Cross Country Championships in Amman, Jordan on Saturday 28 March 2009.
With the absence of Kenenisa Bekele, Ethiopia’s hopes lie on trials winner Gebregziabher Gebremariam who won two silver medals in the 2004 edition of the championships (Photo: IAAF)
While the squad list is provisional with an actual starting line-up still to be decided closer to the championships it is now pretty certain that a slow recovery from a leg injury will rule out reigning men’s champion Kenenisa Bekele, while women’s champion Tirunesh Dibaba in an exclusive interview with the IAAF website has confirmed 100% she will miss Amman also due to injury.
But with the likes of 2006 short course champion Gelete Burka and two-time bronze medallist Meselech Melkamu picked by selectors, Ethiopia’s chances of taking honours remain good.
MEN – Could Gebremariam deliver?
The likely absence of Bekele, who has won twelve individual titles including a record six 12km victories, will be a massive blow to the Ethiopians as they will compete without the 26-year old in their squad for the first time in nine years.
The Olympic 5000m and 10,000m champion has not raced his November after he bruised his ankles while attempting the World 15km record at the 2008 Seven Hills road race in Njimegen, the Netherlands.
With Olympic silver medallist Sileshi Sihine also missing after failing to recover from training fatigue, Ethiopia’s hopes lie on trials winner Gebregziabher Gebremariam who won two silver medals in the 2004 edition of the championships. He will be joined by Tadesse Tola, seventh in Mombasa two years ago, Feyissa Lelisa, 14th in the junior race last year, and World Indoor 3000m champion Tariku Bekele.
Trials winner Ayele Abshiro, who finished in Edinburgh, leads the junior team this year hoping to make it better. Abshiro has already shown good form in cross country races this year with victory in Elgoibar, while beating Bekele in his failed World record attempt in Njimegen. Yetwale Kinde (21st) and Dejen Gebremeskel (18th) rejoin Abshiro in this year’s squad.
WOMEN – Genzebe takes the Dibaba name to Amman
Like Bekele, Dibaba’s absence is a major blow to Ethiopian medal hopes this year.
In an exclusive interview she has given to the IAAF website, Dibaba, who has competed in the last eight editions of the World Cross Country Championships, has confirmed that she will be out of action for two months and will only make a return to competition in the outdoor track season.
“I am not going to compete at the World Cross because of the injury,” she said. “It will be the first time in a long while that I won’t be running there, but it is for the better because I am injured at the moment.”
“After the wedding, I had gained a lot of weight and put pressure in my training in order to return back to shape,” she says. “The strain was maybe too much on my body and I started to feel pain in both legs at the beginning of January.”
Dibaba sought medical help in Germany, but was ruled out of her eagerly-anticipated 2009 debut in Boston where she was scheduled to run the 3000m.
“I skipped Boston as a precaution, but the pain started again whenever I trained,” she says. “I talked to the doctor if I should race in Birmingham and was advised not to take part in that race and also told to cancel my competition plans.”
“I think it is for the better that I am not running the World cross this year. I will miss running for my country, but I think it is better for me to recover from the injury. I know Genzebe (Dibaba) will miss me as she will have to look for a new roommate in the Ethiopian team.”
Without Tirunesh, junior champion Genzebe Dibaba will shoulder the expectation coming from the Dibaba family as she leads a strong junior team that also includes trials winner and World junior 5000m champion Sule Utura. Fifteen year-old Emebet Anteneh, who does not even have a club in Ethiopia, will compete outside Ethiopia for the first time.
The senior women’s team will be led by 2006 short course champion Gelete Burka and two-time bronze medalist Meselech Melkamu. Trials winner Wude Ayalew should also push for the medal positions after an impressive 2008/9 road and cross country season, while Sentayehu Ejigu, ninth in the 2004 Olympics 5000m race, is hoping for a comeback after spending the last two years out-and-form and injured.
Former street boys are seeing a dramatic change in their lives after having moved into a home run by a Maltese woman in Ethiopia. The home was set up by a 72-year-old Maltese woman Monica Tonna-Barthet, a former United Nations employee.
She had sold her home in Gharghur, her car, her collection of antiques and other possessions and used the money and her life savings to buy land and to pay for the construction of the The Angels Children’s Home back in 2007. The home was built in Addis Ababa under the umbrella of the Kebena Kidane Mihret Catholic Church.
It provides the boys, aged seven to 14, with food, shelter, clothing and medical support as well as counselling with a view to giving them the chance to experience love, friendship and discipline.
“The boys are doing extremely well in their schoolwork. They are also learning farming and producing some beautiful bamboo work” said Margaret Tonna-Barthet, Monica’s sister, after one of her regular visits to Ethiopia.
“They also love playing football and going out on education outings.”
The home is currently housing 20 sick street boys – including five who have HIV – and caring for another two who do not live in the home.
The ground floor has a refectory, a study, a kitchen and Monica’s bedroom. The first floor comprises dormitories, and the second houses a recreational area with two table tennis tables, an area for netball, a television set and games.
Ms Tonna Barthet thanked Maltese donors for their generosity, saying that their help was going a long way.
People can sponsor a child at the home at €340 per year. Cheques should be deposited at HSBC account 006 043 020 051, c/o Margaret Tonna-Barthet 61/2, Triq Windsor, Sliema 1852.
Information or photos are available from Margaret Tonna-Barthet on 2133 4162.
The voices of the Western world concerned with human rights routinely make clear that Ethiopia’s government is one of the most oppressive on earth. From sources as varied in perspective and interest as the U.S. State Department Human Rights Report and that of Human Rights Watch World Report that is the case.
Private organs like HRW do so, often with passion, in keeping with their mission but have little power. Public organs like State do so, usually with a sense of boredom at having to bother, and fail to exercise any power. However, as HRW says about the European Union’s reaction to the closing of the sole independent, though largely symbolic, sources of civil power in the country, the Western world provides not tacit but overt support for Ethiopian suffering:
“The EU should have condemned one of world’s worst laws on NGOs. Instead, it gave Ethiopia €250 million.
On 30 January, European Union policymakers sent a clear signal to Ethiopia: no matter how repressive the government becomes, vast sums of aid will continue to flow. This is emerging as a case study in bad donor policy.”
HRW has it wrong though. This is not an emerging case study of bad donor policy – this has been Western policy since 1991 when Meles Inc. took power. The basic approach was originally one of welcoming ‘anyone but Mengistu’ but over time that matured to a further embrace of low expectations.
For Europeans that became appreciating in Meles ‘an African we can deal with’ and for Americans seeing in him ‘our man in Africa’. Of course, seeming to be of use can cause many sins to be forgiven but even as reports and accounts of endemic human rights violations pile up the dictator’s words are accepted at face value. Meles is rewarded with status at G-8 summits and more importantly billions in unaccounted for aid that secure him in power and fill his personal coffers.
If not low expectations how else to explain a government with no basic institutions of civil society, not to mention democratic society, being so tolerated? There is a parliament, courts, elections, election board, etc. that only exist to give a patina of respectability to a government of thugs. None of those institutions matter – Meles makes decisions in concert with his slavish revolutionary nobility. Yet Meles’s words are heard as though they originated from any civilized process recognizable to any democrat – and Western governments eat it up.
The issue of bad donor policy extends beyond human rights to the intimately related sphere of economics. Ethiopia is one of the most desperately poor nations on earth with little prospect of improvement given the absence of every factor that made the West rich and so much else of humanity escape suffering as a tradition. Ethiopia has also, not by coincidence, one of the most corrupt governments on earth.
There is no right to own private property in Ethiopia – the people meaning the government meaning ultimately Meles own all of the land. The whole economy at every level from the debt bondage of fertilizer sales to poor farmers, local grain markets and all aid grain distribution, import-export businesses, agribusiness, construction, road building, to the absurdity of the commodities exchange are all united grasping tentacles of Meles Inc.
Every one concerned knows that no economy on earth has ever developed under those circumstances – yet the game goes on of pretending to believe what Meles says about democracy or economic growth. So far apart from Ethiopians who are on occasion heard because the West can’t pretend to ignore them any longer and apart from the support of friends of Ethiopia in places such as the US Legislature and the EU Parliament – the consequences of Western policy to Ethiopia are ignored.
This is not a ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ issue or one that finally demands that ‘Ethiopians finally get their act together’. The West has made itself an active partner in support of Ethiopia’s dictatorship. As we have so often said before the Ethiopian Civil Contract is between Meles and Western governments. Ethiopians are just spectators and hostages.
You see the West occasionally threatens and begs Meles to treat Ethiopians better (at least those known to them and those withing sight of Embassies). Meles only pretends to do so and when that does not work only has to renew his eternal threat to drag tens of millions of them even further down into the depravity of his own reality before the West gets back in line.
All of the give and take is between Meles and Westerners. Ethiopians are bit players in the drama. But … the only semi-civilized actor who may even consider the interests of Ethiopians are Westerners. Ethiopians have nowhere else to turn for help. They can only appeal to the better natures of Meles’s partners in crime in Washington and Brussels because Meles is the murderous, bratty, viceroy of the West in every way possible.
So how can the West take responsibility for its own actions and serve its own interests? The struggle against Islamic Fascism puts Western Strategic Dilemma in Eastern African into stark relief. The foreign policy of every country is based on self interest. Self interest and projections of self interest over time can combine with occasional frank altruism to bring about policy beneficial to countries like Ethiopia. Why not?
The donor nations seem to be in the process of making decisions for the future that are no longer based on wishful thinking about personalities and rhetoric. It is valuable to examine a similar situation in recent history for instruction. Once again we will ask our readers to take part in a familiar thought experiment. Close your eyes and imagine Ethiopia’s revolutionary nobility and its ruler were White and and not Black.
Especially given the foundation of the Ethiopian government de facto and de jure on ethnic / regional divide and rule where one’s tribe defines how anyone participates in society – very naturally one would make a comparison to Apartheid era South Africa or a nation fallen victim to colonialism long past its expiration date. Blacks in Apartheid era South Africa had far more political and economic rights than Ethiopians do today.
When White Africans mistreat Black Africans it seemed to matter quite a bit but when Black Africans mistreat other Black Africans that is accepted as a part of the world’s natural order. Indeed, the West is willing to finance the latter evil with no questions asked. The comparison to Apartheid era South Africa is apt. Wonder along with us why any dictator should be given credit just for looking like his victims?
There has long been an assumption that Bush was a key Meles ally solely because of the War on Terror and that the end of the Bush Presidency would mean more responsible Western policy towards Ethiopia. According to one senior State Department official quoted by HRW in 2003
“Ethiopia’s human rights record is ‘not a factor’ in the bilateral relationship.”
But … how about Clinton before Bush and his just as close alliance with Meles? Obama’s Secretary of State was decidedly not ushering in a new era of respect for human rights when she said of China’s dictators that
“We have to continue to press them. But our pressing on those issues can’t interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis.”
That is diplo-speak for beat on the Chinese as long and as hard as you like. It is hard to think that where there are security interests to be pursued that Ethiopian suffering is going to count for more than the Chinese variety where there are financial interests to be considered. From China to Ethiopia the general Western attitude is wrongheaded and ultimately harmful to the West. But those facts are either not appreciated or at best they are simply inconvenient.
In this post we will explore the nature of the Western Strategic Dilemma in Ethiopia and explore how it can be dealt with while keeping the West firmly on the side of basic morality and civilization – while serving Western interests too.
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA (afrol News) – The Ethiopian Broadcasting Agency (EBA) has ordered the existing newspapers and magazines to re-register within three months time and further barred property owners of such media from holding positions of editor or deputy editor in their media houses.
The EBA deputy director Desta Tesfaw said the aim of the new set of regulations was to guard against media monopoly and ensure diverse opinions in the industry which the official said plays a critical role in democratic dispensation.
Mr Tesfaw, said individuals registered as having more than two per cent stake in a media house, cannot be an editor-in-chief or deputy editor of publication, saying professionalism has to be brought into the local media.
According to EBA the mandate of the editor-in-chief designated by the publisher encompasses the power to supervise the publication and to determine the content so that nothing may be printed therein against his/her will.
Government critics and analysts said the new regulations are only aimed at trampling on the freedom of the press and media. “Such positions are held by proprietors who could be answerable to all the content in the paper,” one analyst said.
Local media reported Dr Haile Ayele, a specialist on Ethiopian media ethics at Vienna University, Austria saying the theoretical aspect of the law may be valid, but said it was yet another blow for Ethiopia’s media.
The EBA became the regulatory authority over print media when the Council of Ministers by regulation established the government Communications Affairs Office and thereby implicitly abolishing the Ministry of Information.
Former street boys are seeing a dramatic change in their lives after having moved into a home run by a Maltese woman in Ethiopia. The home was set up by a 72-year-old Maltese woman Monica Tonna-Barthet, a former United Nations employee.