We may have to rethink the assumption that Silicon Valley is the hotbed of innovation in which all the world's best and brightest want to work and live. TechCrunch has a piece by an invited expert on the reverse brain drain already evident and growing in the US as Indian, Chinese, and European students and workers in the US plan to return home, or already have. From an extensive interview with Chinese and Indian workers who had already left: "We learned that these workers returned in their prime: the average age of the Indian returnees was 30 and the Chinese was 33. They were really well educated: 51% of the Chinese held masters degrees and 41% had PhDs. Among Indians, 66% held a masters and 12% had PhDs. These degrees were mostly in management, technology, and science. ... What propelled them to return home? Some 84% of the Chinese and 69% of the Indians cited professional opportunities. And while they make less money in absolute terms at home, most said their salaries brought a 'better quality of life' than what they had in the US. ... A return ticket home also put their career on steroids. About 10% of the Indians polled had held senior management jobs in the US. That number rose to 44% after they returned home. Among the Chinese, the number rose from 9% in the US to 36% in China."
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Most of the people I have met who have expressed that sentiment lacked the qualifications to fill a job vacancy left by someone with a PhD in a science or engineering field.
It's also in some cases after we paid for their educations through government grants, many of which place no requirements on them remaining in the US.
Case in point, my ex attends college here free, working on her PHD. In fact she said that there's so much free money he plans on getting a second masters as well.
It'd be nice when the US Government would invest in it's own citizens.
Oh come on, there is no reason to turn this into some diatribe about the government handing out money to foreigners. Why is it that your ex is working on a PhD and you are not? Why do you think half of US PhD's are awarded to foreign born? Is it because the evil government favors foreigners? Or is that Americans just don't give a shit about science and engineering any more?
Go to any science graduate course in any of the top 10 universities, and more than half are foreign born. The US high tech and biotech industries are full of foreigners. We basically built our technological superiority by attracting bright foreigners away from their home countries. Remember Google? This process is called the "brain drain", and it is a Good Thing(Tm) to hand out money to smart foreigners to come to the states. It strengthens our economy
In my observation, scientists and engineers are much better regarded in other countries than in the US. Why is that? Don't people know that science is the foundation of all of our economic growth?
Instead of blaming the government, we should blame the policy makers, the fiscal conservatives who cut subsidies so that higher education becomes a luxury for the rich, the religious zealots wants to stop teaching science to children, the ignorant that wants to stop funding "volcano research" and fund home schooling, etc, etc.
IMHO, subsidized higher education is the best investment we can make for ourselves, and anyone who's against it is basically arguing to shoot ourselves in the foot. That means you.
Of course, I'm a college prof, so I may be biased.
That being said, I'm a college prof outside of the US, because here they'll actually pay me a decent middle-class salary for my time and degrees, whereas in the US, I literally had a hard time paying rent. As in, my food and utilities budget was what was left after I paid rent; I had no discretionary income, and didn't even have a mobile phone.
HOWEVER, I'm not in the hard sciences, but I still agree that science and technology are the basis of all developed countries' growth. There's no room for linguists and psychometricians in anyone's budgets without physicists and chemists and biologists and engineers making things that make money.
You keep referring to those "foreigners". What does it matter if they become U.S. citizens in the end? They still end up working for your country, and your economy.
When they do not - yeah, that's the problem, which is precisely what TFA is about. Broadly speaking, it means that either U.S. quality of life goes down, or that of the Other Countries goes up.
Yeah, because attracting the best and the brightest from around the world, and having them build the future from here has been such losing proposition from the very beginning of this country.
This is disturbing phenomena. It's not just the the economy marking what would previously be immigrants return home. It's that it is incredibly fucking difficult to get a job if you're not an American. The visa process is notoriously burdensome, and then ties the immigrant to a specific company, essentially indenturing them. Then that doesn't even start the green card and citizenship processes. Canada is super easy. So easy to the point that when you talk to immigrants about immigration, they'll tell you that their friends told them "Why are you going to America? Just go to Canada, it's so much easier, and it's the same!"
Why should we be aid our competition in the international economy, by training and giving all our best ideas to foreign countries, when we used to "steal" their best and have them work for us? The fact that we're no longer a magnet, illustrates just how screwed we are.
Do doesn't. It means less jobs for the rest of you. They are taking their jobs with them when they leave, very probably serving the same customers as they did before, at lower cost to them, and the money they were previously spending in California, supporting other Californian jobs is now being spent in India and China supporting other Indian and Chinese jobs.
Why is this a surprise? Isn't that exactly why they came here in the first place?
In the past most of them stayed. "America is the land of opportunity," you know? Only now it increasingly isn't. The fact that Chinese are returning home for "a better quality of life" really sticks a fork in that claptrap about how financial freedom brings political freedom doesn't it?
really sticks a fork in that claptrap about how financial freedom brings political freedom doesn't it?
Not really. The number of Chinese living in poverty is still greater than the entire population of the United States. Even the few Chinese who do manage to graduate from college still have trouble finding a good job. Getting a degree at a US university merely puts them at the front of that line. And of course, there are a few in China who are filthy rich. That is everywhere.
And of course, 'better quality of life' is relative.....most parts of China, even in the cities, don't have drinkable water coming into the house. That would be unacceptable to many westerners, but if you don't mind, then it's not a problem.
The number of Americans living in poverty is also still greater than the entire population of Scandinavia. If I continue to mirror your point it gets funny.
You need to get to know China a bit better, and what they are doing.
They lifted a population equal to or greater than the U.S. population out of extrema poverty in less than a generation. Most of my friends in China have stories about relatives and friends that starved to death. I am not talking 50 years ago either. I mean like 10 years ago.
It would be impossible with a population that large to simply flip on the democracy light. Millions really would die in civil war and unrest. I am not advocating repression, but it is simply a practical fact of having population of more than billion people. The "communist" in communist party is mostly just symbolic now. Yes, it is corrupt. In fact, I believe China on some level is only functioning because the corruption keeps things moving. There is very little in common with western ideas of "communism" and "socialism". Perhaps an oligarchy is s better description of what they have. It in many ways today is much more free than many of the "allies" of the United States (e.g. all of the middle east), not to mention how well Russia is doing on that front.
An Nobel winning economist (can not remember his name right off hand), in an interview once pointed out that the big difference between the transition of Russia to open markets and democracy and the transition of China, is that the Chinese even under extreme repressive communism always had a tradition of commerce and trade. Local markets functioned, trade of goods and services went on. Russia never had that. Russia had even under the royal families a tradition of tightly controlled centralized resources.
OK, you linked to a report by the Sierra Club, a group that has a definite agenda. You need to be careful when doing that.
In this case, they are trying to be sensationalistic by redefining the word 'unsafe' to mean 'potentially unsafe.' They aren't saying that the water is unsafe to drink, they are saying that the water could become unsafe to drink, if there were an oil spill or a chemical spill in the source of the drinking water. Whether true or not, this is not at all the same as the drinking water in China, where you should boil the water before drinking it to avoid sickness.
Try to make sure a study is reliable before citing it.
I don't know what your point is; do you really want to boil your water before you drink it? I've done it, and I'll tell you, it sucks. Not only that, you're always wondering if the drops of water you get in your mouth when you take a shower are actually going to cause problems.
In the US, I can just drink the water from the tap, without worrying about whether I'm going to get giardia or something. There's a huge difference. Are you really so focused on splitting hairs that you can't see that?
You are confusing quality of life with inequality. In china and india there is truly a land of inequality. With their fancy degrees education and experience when you stick them in a place that has people starving in the streets they are veritable gods.
Economy is such that people are able to survive but big shot CEOs while in the US might be able to afford a nicer car and a bigger house. In China they can afford a nicer garage filled with cars and a mansion with butlers and maids. While this sounds like quite the opportunity... When you look at the average it truly isn't.
I'd think again before I got jealous of a country where most of the populace doesn't have running water. Even if you knew you would be among the privileged would you really wish that on your people?
sorry, i can figure out what connection you mean by that, but i don't see how that discredits the theory that if you don't have economic freedom, you don't have freedom at all.
Economic freedom not only isn't predicated on, it doesn't necessitate, political freedom.
Let me indulge in a bit of history. Back in the 80s and early 90s when Wall Street was lobbying to remove embargos on investing in China, the argument was that the US was actually opening up a giant market, not promoting trade with the regime that just slaughtered a pro-democracy movement, and by opening trade, the Chinese would see how the West lived, and then would force the dictatorial regime to fall. Then it was about how by deindustrializing and moving all production to China, they would get money in their pockets, start to make economic decisions on their own, and soon would stop wanting to only "vote with their wallets" but want to "vote with their ballots" instead. But that's not what happened, now is it? The standard of living along the coast has rapidly improved, but far from weakening the regime, it's actually strengthened it, because the average person (rightly) says, "We've got a good thing going. My life is better. My child's life will be better than mine. Why would I want to take a chance and mess that up?"
Your position is to short sighted. It's not done yet, give it another generation or two. Like the USAs strategy to isolate (and not attack) the USSR, post WWII. This policy took approximately 45 years (1945-90) to work through. I'm not saying the USA-China policy will work, but 20 years is too short to say "it failed".
My wife and I came to this country because it is the land of opportunity. The place where the very best in the world go to build the best business. We're thinking of leaving because that don't seem to actually be true... at least, not anymore. Instead you:
treat us like criminals whenever we want to cross the border or enter a government building
limit H1 terms to force us to leave
have a surprisingly poor primary and elementary education system (on a side note... your President wants kids to stay in school longer?!? You already have them in school for more hours than other countries whose kids score better on tests... it's not the quantity you need to improve, it's the quality)
allow your religious nutjobs a frightening amount of political power. This is less evident under Obama than it was under Bush II but still scares the hell out of me
disappear people to Guantanamo under Bush II and Bagram under Obama
I wanted to make this permanent, get my green card and eventually citizenship. But it seeme to me that you guys are trending hard towards compleat paranoid xenophobia. We have kids now and I'm thinking more and more about what living here is going to do to them. I don't want my kids to grow up in what, to me, seems like a poisonous atmosphere of stranger hate, militant and religious zealotry, misplaced sense of entitlement, and a "we're the greatest because we're the greatest" view of the world.
At this point, it's just a matter of time for us. We're making pretty good money and want to pull together a large enough nest egg to allow us to move home, buy a house, and start a business. After that, we'll likely only ever return here to take the kids to Disneyworld
You don't say where "home" is, but xenophobia, nationalism, and religious zealotry in the US are quite amateur when compared to other countries.
The problem is we are backsliding in all those areas, not getting better. Assume he came here 10 years ago - his complaints probably aren't compared to some imaginary version of the US, but rather to how it was when he got here. The more time passes, the more it becomes clear that we really shot ourselves in the foot in a major way with our unhinged militaristic response to 911.
the reverse brain drain already evident and growing in the US as Indian, Chinese, and European students and workers in the US plan to return home, or already have.
Between Homeland Security and treating H1-B's like slave labor, who can blame them? They can go home and enjoy a better lifestyle than they have here and not get treated like a potential terrorist.
Funny is how many of the teabirthers walking around thinking this is the best place in the world to live and everyone wants to come here.
Funny how many people forget just how much the government has to do with the hostile treatment that immigrants face upon entering the US. Considering how much red tape and utter nonsense is baked into the system it isn't any surprise that a lot of educated people want the hell out of here.
Which is why we need to do away with H1-B visa. There is no need for H1-B visas in this economic climate.
Remember H1-B visas are supposed to fill positions for which there are no American suitable candidates, but with so many workers, including IT people, out of work, it should not be a problem to fill those positions with Americans.
...the U.S. had the greatest rise in its living standards. Scientists, engineers, and other professionals from all over the world migrated here in seach of a better life, the opportunity to live pretty much in peace and quiet, or simply to survive. It was seen as the most desireable place to live in the world, and that seemed to become a self-fulfilling prophecy as 'the best and the brightest' came here to do their best.
I wonder, are more folks returning to their home countries' simply because of money and career advancement? Or do they feel less welcome in the culture? Or perhaps their own home cultures are changing to where they feel they can shape them for the better?
This seems more like an anecdote than a study; but there is something wrong when science and engineering and other technical fields are seen as undesirable by most Americans, and the immigrants who come here to learn them decide that they'll have better opportunites back home to use them.
The reasons for this exodus are straight out of an economics textbook. This is SUPPOSED to happen in a free world with free trade. Overall, this move is ADVANCING human civilization and making things just a bit better for the rest of humanity. Right now, the high tech industry in California is one of the most amazing industries the world has ever known. Among other things, those highly educated people who are returning to China and India are bringing knowledge and skills that will allow them to replicate some of the wonders of California in India and China. How is that a bad thing?
Sure, those Chinese and Indian companies will compete with the U.S. firms...but competition is a good thing for humanity as a whole.
those highly educated people who are returning to China and India are bringing knowledge and skills that will allow them to replicate some of the wonders of California in India and China. How is that a bad thing?
Whether it is good or bad depends on which side of the ocean you are on. As an American, I think it is terrible that we are losing brilliant people. It is these types of people that advance the state of the art and create new companies and industries. Because I am selfish, I want that to happen in my own country so that I can benefit from this.
For those in China and India, this is obviously a great thing. It means that they are starting to be able to compete with the US for the best and brightest. Instead of watching their brightest stars go to the US and get rich creating jobs for Americans, they get to have this right in their backyard.
I agree with you that this is a natural part of free trade, but that does not mean we have to just accept it. This should be a wake up call to us that we have to compete harder than ever before to keep the smartest people here. In the past, we could win this competition without even trying, but now we will have to start working at it.
Two comments. First, "age of prime" is 30-33? Is IT really that anti-fogey? Second, degrees above bachelor are generally held in higher regard outside of the US. US companies value what they see as "actual productivity" and will usually trade a more productive BS for a lack-luster MS[1]. In most countries, especially Asia, advanced degrees are simply given more esteem compared to the US. More money AND more chicks.
[1] Those with advanced degrees claim their extra knowledge helps in areas that are less visible to management but still very important. But, that's another story.
Maybe my brain has been drained, too, but, if all the educated people are leaving the US, wouldn't that be a good old regular brain drain and not a reverse brain drain?
In social studies, the "Brain Drain" was something the US was doing to the rest of the world by "taking away their brains." Now, those people are going back to their countries so it is a reversal of the "Brain Drain."
by Anonymous Coward
on Sunday October 18, @01:35AM (#29782327)
I am in this position right now. I am an H1-B holder. I have a Masters in Computer Science. While most of my coworkers worked 40-45 hours a week I was doing 80 and quickly gained higher positions and expertise (hard work pays off in the land of opportunity). I love the US. Its a great place to live and I've lived here since I came to do my Bachelors (Computer Science also). I paid out of state tuition for all 7 years, out of my own pocket (which totaled > 60K).
I recently applied for an extension on my H1-B after my 3 years of working at a company and it was rejected by the government. The initial reason given was that we couldn't prove that my job required a degree so they came back and asked us for more info (called an RFI - request for information). (I am involved in long term projects from architecture, design, development and process analysis). The day I found out that my visa was rejected, my company, a small business of about 30 people also found out that a dept of the state had chosen me to work for them on a project for which they interviewed 30 people from around the US. My company lost that deal because the US rejected my visa and lost out on > 500,000 dollars of revenue over the contract. The company also lost 3 other contracts with clients I was currently with which would have probably panned out to 50k-100k each per year.
The revenue from that contract would have keep me and 2 other co-workers employed for at least 3 years and now my former company is going to probably fire 2 US citizens. This was the height of irony! The government royally screwed my company.
The immigration dept has really cracked down on H1-B visa holders and is rejecting them by asking them to prove stupid claims. Here are a few questions from my RFI.
1. Why does a Senior Software Engineer position require a Computer Science degree! 2. Provide all earning statements for the last 3 years and for all states you had income from. 3. Provide all client contracts that you had in the last 3 years for the full company. 4. Provide a detailed job description along with future contracts (for all 3 years) along with locations, contacts of client companies and images of work areas.
My visa was finally rejected because they feared that I would work in California (where my company doesn't have any clients or a branch). The process is really ridiculous right now and I have started looking at canada, singapore and india. I would prefer to stay and finish my 3 years and get a path to citizenship but if I have to leave, so be it.
The icing on the cake is that since they reject my appeal, I have 10 days to leave the country. So pack your bags, sell your car and belongings (or throw them away) and get the fuck out in 10 days.
Thanks for all the fish O Land of Opportunity!
I will say this to all you US citizen and green card holders. DO NOT SQUANDER YOUR OPPORTUNITIES! The US is the greatest place on earth and if you work hard, you can really live a great life. Peace.
With so many out of work software engineers who are American citizens, why should your H1-B visa, which is supposed to be used to fill critical positions, requiring a specialized skill set, for which an American citizen can not be found. Sounds to me like while you worked hard and worked long hours, you did nothing that any one of the thousands of out of work American software engineers could not do.
You should never have been granted the H1-B visa in the first place.
I was born in Madrid, Spain. As i was 10 my parents changed me to a german high school and after that i went to Germany to study engineering. While I was studying Mechanical Engineering in Aachen I went one year abroad to Montreal. That's when i started realizin.g than maybe North America wasn't as advanced as i thought, But hey, Canada is not the USA. So when I finished and got the opportunity to made my Phd at Berkeley, I took it. Coming from Germany, I've always looked at Berkeley and MIT as "the future". I thought they were light years from us, another dimension, robots walking through the campus... I thought it was going to be like the jump from Spain to Germany...
When I arrived, it didnt took me long to realize how wrong I was. After two years I remember talking with my parents, and saying that at the moment the only thing I wanted was to finish as fast as possible. I just wanted to be able to put Berkeley in my resumee and leave, because I really thought I was waisting my time. I was trying as hard as possible to be productive. But it was not only that my tutor was not good enough, or that my department didn't had the money I needed, the worst part is that we were overall behind what my department in Germany was doing. I felt so frustrated spending 90% of the time reinventing the wheel and putting the USA stamp, feeling that I was leaving in the past, and trying but not finding the way to do something about it that i really wanted to leave and do something useful with my life. It was even worst when I talked with a good friend of mine who was also doing his Phd at the same department in Munich. He got almost unlimited finantiation, lots of students doing their master thesis for him, and was really learning a lot, not only about the subject, but about managing a big reserarch team and lots of long time experiments, we just didn't had the same means...
When I finished it was really easy to find interesting jobs in the states, I even doubted because of one really interesting offer at Lockheed. But the real fact was, that the offers from Germany where at a whole different level. I had been in Berkeley! For them that was... Godlike. As I came back I started working for a private company for almost three years, and after that I took a part-time management position at that company and been working there partime since. At the same time I started also working part-time in my second Phd at the university. Im not only doing what i really like, at the moment Im getting a lot of support from very good people, students included, and from the university, state, privates companies... I really feel that im working with the best people in the world.
And till now i've just mentioned the academic side! The rest of my life can be summarized in: I'm payed better in Europe than in the States and at the same time living here is cheaper! And if you add a better public transport system, higher security feeling, way better health care... it's not hard to understand way researches are not staying there. I know a lot of indian people here, and they have already moved their families in and have no plans to retourn to India in the distant future...
So yeah, people go to the states to study because of the fame. When they arrive, they realize things back home werent so bad as they thought. And when they finish things even get better at home, because due to their studies in the states, they are seen as gods... If you add that the quality of life in the states isn't even in the top10 of the world, and that the loan/expenses ratio is better in lots of other countries, you have your answer.
I worked in the US for a few years. So why did I leave?
Of course, everyone says the grass is greener in the US, but compared to home, really it's not - it's just different. But there were enough downsides to being in the USA which made me eventually leave. In order:
1. Family. I would prefer being close to them, 4800 miles isn't close enough. (I now live 10 minutes walk from my Dad). 2. The INS Dehumanization programme - the Kafkaesque manner in which visas and green cards are processed. I just wasn't willing to go through that any more. I hear it's even worse for people from places like India and China, I guess I'm lucky coming from Europe. 3. Healthcare - I like living somewhere where I never need to ever worry about getting healthcare, even if I fall upon bad times. 4. Bigotry and illiberalism - I lived in Texas. Too many religious people, and when I left, also Bush was President.
Don't get me wrong, I think overall the United States is a good country, and one of the best in the world - despite its faults. Any country has faults. But I just wasn't prepared to go through the unpredictable, abitrary and dehumanizing immigration processes to live somewhere that's just as faulty as my home country, but is also 4800 miles from my family.
I'm guessing that by better quality they mean materialistically. Being a US citizen I would prefer to live in a place where human rights are championed, personal liberty is maximized and freedom of speech and freedom from government oppression is paramount.
Unless someone is afraid of being randomly assaulted or imprisoned, then no one cares. It's human nature. Bread and circuses you know? I've been to China. It's not Mao's China, not at all.
Somalia. The government is too weak to oppress anyone. Of course, that only works if you don't mind giving up a lot of your personal safety, but hey, you win some you lose some.
You really ought to define what you mean by government oppression. Would you include taxation in that category? Because you aren't going to find many governments that don't tax.....
by Anonymous Coward
on Sunday October 18, @01:22AM (#29782269)
I work in a place where the majority of my colleagues are Indian including both developers and management. I can attest to the trends. I'm the exception by not holding a masters and by being born here. I'm responding because of a false assumption you made. You guessed that the better quality of life is a materialistic quality. For the majority of my friends who moved back to India it was not about that. While that played a role, their wives and families were residing there. It was difficult to deal with the paper work. The cricket matches weren't shown live at 3am. It's a plethora of smaller items which all add up. They aren't from the US and do not necessarily share the same values as you. Think more holistically for a second and you'll understand. It's about living where you are comfortable and are content. That's why my Indian friends are moving back to India and I completely understand.
Absolutely agree with this. As a European I would never work in the US for all of the reasons listed. I don't care what money I could earn. "At will" employment scares me especially since you can be fired without any good reason. Working hours are ludicrous which seems to stem from the "at will" factor - people are too scared not to work those extra hours for fear of being fired. In the EU it is illegal to work more than 48 hours a week without special dispensation. And the final straw is that you don't even get decent vacation time for all those hours, I get 5 weeks here and I know plenty of people who get more.
Working hours are ludicrous which seems to stem from the "at will" factor - people are too scared not to work those extra hours for fear of being fired.
While that certainly does occur, my experience is that it is rare - at least at the professional level, maybe less so at the burger-flipping level. That most people work overtime because they want either the extra money or to get ahead in their career (presumably to get more money). Making it illegal to work more than 48 hours seems crazy from my perspective its like that saying "the nail that stands out gets hammered down."
And the final straw is that you don't even get decent vacation time for all those hours, I get 5 weeks here and I know plenty of people who get more.
Maybe we take our vacation in a different form. Consider the american pre-occupation with big houses, nice cars, giant televisions, etc. These are all little mini-vacations that we experience everyday. Is that better than taking a month off at the end of summer and traveling to the other side of the continent? Maybe, maybe not. But I think that ignoring it is to miss a fundamental difference in the societies.
i've been monitoring different computer performance benchmarks over the years, and back in the days up to the P4, double times were about thirty months. now they are up to three years, or more.
the heartrate of the dream is what is slowing down....
That's a pretty bold claim you're making. Let's have a look at some actual numbers, shall we? [wikimedia.org]
This chart indicates that not only are we keeping up with Moore's law, for the past 2-3 years we've actually moved ahead of where we'd expect to be. And the graph doesn't even include AMD's R800 graphics chips, which have even higher transistor densities than RV770/GT200.
we educate foreign students at the cost of displacing domestic students
I would like to see some evidence to back that claim because that does not match my experience. In my CS department, US citizens are almost automatically accepted into the graduate program, while foreign students have to compete with each other to get in. (My professor is on the admissions committee.) The reason is that there are so few US citizens that apply that they have to take as many as they can get. The only people being turned away are foreigners who got beat out by more qualified foreigners.
The fact is that the US has half of the world's colleges and universities. It is the large number of foreign students that allows us to have so many universities and that gives domestic students a wide range of choices.
I am a faculty at a US university, advising several such foreign students and postdocs.
Many of them choose to leave the US after their PhD or postdoc simply because there are often better opportunities elsewhere, especially for those interested in an academic career. Many countries are ramping up their investment in education and research, while the trend in the US is negative. In the 70's and 80's, US universities were the top. Now, researchers are often offered much better support, infrastructure, ability to grow a research group, and even salary, in other countries. So they leave.
Three of the people who worked with me are now professors; none of them is in the US.
What this says for the future pre-eminence of US science... wait, which pre-eminence?
I am an Indian and never wanted to visit the US for the mighty dollar. Never visited the US.
Here is another shocker. Most of the students came purely for economic reasons.
My worry is, this reverse brain-drain is also likely to bring filth in India...aka MBA shit and Wall Street greed.
They pay non-resident tuition at public state schools, just like any US student who attends a college in a state they don't reside in. And for most private schools, there is no difference at all.
Sure, they don't get the federal grants, but those are so piss poor these days that probably barely matters (plus they may very well get grants or loans from their home country to attend a US school).
Actually that's misleading too. I'm a foreign undergrad student (soon to be graduate, hopefully *fingers crossed*), and the sheer number of NSF-funded summer internships and other opportunities that are closed to me since I'm not a citizen is mind-boggling. Don't get me wrong, I'm not whining or anything - it's only fair for a gov't to take special care of its own citizens, and to expect anything else would be absurd - I'm just pointing out that american citizens still have it a lot better than int'l students.
Your tax dollars aren't. Look at how much more you pay if you are a foreign student in your school. And look up how much of your school is funded by your tax dollars. There is a good chance that foreign students are actually FUNDING your education.
Foreign students are considered a cash cow by schools, because their fees are much higher, and they are usually funded by sources from their home countries, not from the US. They are subsidizing the education of domestic-born students, not the other way around.
You know that PhD and (to a lesser extent) masters students are basically the dogs-bodies of academia, right? I.e. they're usually the ones doing the heavy-lifting investigative work to support the research interests of their supervisor. If you seriously constrain the pool of available PhD students, then you're making it harder for your professors and Universities to get their research done.
The sheer ignorance on display in some parts of this discussion are amazing. Doubly amazing when you consider/.'s readership is biased towards being significantly more educated than the average American. If this represents mainstream thinking in the USA, then one must worry the USA is doomed to a dark period of shoot-in-the-foot policies driven by xenophobism.
(I say this as someone who believes the health of the USA's economy is vitally important to that of the globe's, and has a mostly-positive opinion of it. NB: the country I live in also is experiencing some measure of xenophobist-pandering policy setting).
Sounds good to me (Score:4, Insightful)
More jobs for the rest of us.
Re:Sounds good to me (Score:5, Insightful)
More jobs for the rest of us.
Most of the people I have met who have expressed that sentiment lacked the qualifications to fill a job vacancy left by someone with a PhD in a science or engineering field.
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Re:Sounds good to me (Score:4, Interesting)
It's also in some cases after we paid for their educations through government grants, many of which place no requirements on them remaining in the US.
Case in point, my ex attends college here free, working on her PHD. In fact she said that there's so much free money he plans on getting a second masters as well.
It'd be nice when the US Government would invest in it's own citizens.
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Re:Sounds good to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Go to any science graduate course in any of the top 10 universities, and more than half are foreign born. The US high tech and biotech industries are full of foreigners. We basically built our technological superiority by attracting bright foreigners away from their home countries. Remember Google? This process is called the "brain drain", and it is a Good Thing(Tm) to hand out money to smart foreigners to come to the states. It strengthens our economy
In my observation, scientists and engineers are much better regarded in other countries than in the US. Why is that? Don't people know that science is the foundation of all of our economic growth?
Instead of blaming the government, we should blame the policy makers, the fiscal conservatives who cut subsidies so that higher education becomes a luxury for the rich, the religious zealots wants to stop teaching science to children, the ignorant that wants to stop funding "volcano research" and fund home schooling, etc, etc. IMHO, subsidized higher education is the best investment we can make for ourselves, and anyone who's against it is basically arguing to shoot ourselves in the foot. That means you.
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Re:Sounds good to me (Score:5, Informative)
Marry me!
Of course, I'm a college prof, so I may be biased.
That being said, I'm a college prof outside of the US, because here they'll actually pay me a decent middle-class salary for my time and degrees, whereas in the US, I literally had a hard time paying rent. As in, my food and utilities budget was what was left after I paid rent; I had no discretionary income, and didn't even have a mobile phone.
HOWEVER, I'm not in the hard sciences, but I still agree that science and technology are the basis of all developed countries' growth. There's no room for linguists and psychometricians in anyone's budgets without physicists and chemists and biologists and engineers making things that make money.
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Re:Sounds good to me (Score:5, Insightful)
You keep referring to those "foreigners". What does it matter if they become U.S. citizens in the end? They still end up working for your country, and your economy.
When they do not - yeah, that's the problem, which is precisely what TFA is about. Broadly speaking, it means that either U.S. quality of life goes down, or that of the Other Countries goes up.
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Re:Sounds good to me (Score:5, Insightful)
I say cut our military spending until it's twice what China's is. That will save us around half a trillion per year.
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Re:Sounds good to me (Score:5, Insightful)
More jobs for the rest of us.
Yeah, because attracting the best and the brightest from around the world, and having them build the future from here has been such losing proposition from the very beginning of this country.
This is disturbing phenomena. It's not just the the economy marking what would previously be immigrants return home. It's that it is incredibly fucking difficult to get a job if you're not an American. The visa process is notoriously burdensome, and then ties the immigrant to a specific company, essentially indenturing them. Then that doesn't even start the green card and citizenship processes. Canada is super easy. So easy to the point that when you talk to immigrants about immigration, they'll tell you that their friends told them "Why are you going to America? Just go to Canada, it's so much easier, and it's the same!"
Why should we be aid our competition in the international economy, by training and giving all our best ideas to foreign countries, when we used to "steal" their best and have them work for us? The fact that we're no longer a magnet, illustrates just how screwed we are.
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Re:Sounds good to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Do doesn't. It means less jobs for the rest of you. They are taking their jobs with them when they leave, very probably serving the same customers as they did before, at lower cost to them, and the money they were previously spending in California, supporting other Californian jobs is now being spent in India and China supporting other Indian and Chinese jobs.
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Surprised? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Surprised? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why is this a surprise? Isn't that exactly why they came here in the first place?
In the past most of them stayed. "America is the land of opportunity," you know? Only now it increasingly isn't. The fact that Chinese are returning home for "a better quality of life" really sticks a fork in that claptrap about how financial freedom brings political freedom doesn't it?
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Re:Surprised? (Score:5, Interesting)
really sticks a fork in that claptrap about how financial freedom brings political freedom doesn't it?
Not really. The number of Chinese living in poverty is still greater than the entire population of the United States. Even the few Chinese who do manage to graduate from college still have trouble finding a good job. Getting a degree at a US university merely puts them at the front of that line. And of course, there are a few in China who are filthy rich. That is everywhere.
And of course, 'better quality of life' is relative.....most parts of China, even in the cities, don't have drinkable water coming into the house. That would be unacceptable to many westerners, but if you don't mind, then it's not a problem.
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Re:Surprised? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
Poverty in America is entirely different than poverty in China. I mean in China there are people literally living in caves.
Poverty in Scandinavia is entirely different than poverty in America. I mean in America there are people literally living in tents.
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Re:Surprised? (Score:5, Interesting)
You need to get to know China a bit better, and what they are doing.
They lifted a population equal to or greater than the U.S. population out of extrema poverty in less than a generation. Most of my friends in China have stories about relatives and friends that starved to death. I am not talking 50 years ago either. I mean like 10 years ago.
It would be impossible with a population that large to simply flip on the democracy light. Millions really would die in civil war and unrest. I am not advocating repression, but it is simply a practical fact of having population of more than billion people. The "communist" in communist party is mostly just symbolic now. Yes, it is corrupt. In fact, I believe China on some level is only functioning because the corruption keeps things moving. There is very little in common with western ideas of "communism" and "socialism". Perhaps an oligarchy is s better description of what they have. It in many ways today is much more free than many of the "allies" of the United States (e.g. all of the middle east), not to mention how well Russia is doing on that front.
An Nobel winning economist (can not remember his name right off hand), in an interview once pointed out that the big difference between the transition of Russia to open markets and democracy and the transition of China, is that the Chinese even under extreme repressive communism always had a tradition of commerce and trade. Local markets functioned, trade of goods and services went on. Russia never had that. Russia had even under the royal families a tradition of tightly controlled centralized resources.
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Re:Surprised? (Score:5, Interesting)
In this case, they are trying to be sensationalistic by redefining the word 'unsafe' to mean 'potentially unsafe.' They aren't saying that the water is unsafe to drink, they are saying that the water could become unsafe to drink, if there were an oil spill or a chemical spill in the source of the drinking water. Whether true or not, this is not at all the same as the drinking water in China, where you should boil the water before drinking it to avoid sickness.
Try to make sure a study is reliable before citing it.
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Re:Surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
In the US, I can just drink the water from the tap, without worrying about whether I'm going to get giardia or something. There's a huge difference. Are you really so focused on splitting hairs that you can't see that?
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Re:Surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
Economy is such that people are able to survive but big shot CEOs while in the US might be able to afford a nicer car and a bigger house. In China they can afford a nicer garage filled with cars and a mansion with butlers and maids. While this sounds like quite the opportunity... When you look at the average it truly isn't.
I'd think again before I got jealous of a country where most of the populace doesn't have running water. Even if you knew you would be among the privileged would you really wish that on your people?
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Re:Surprised? (Score:5, Interesting)
sorry, i can figure out what connection you mean by that, but i don't see how that discredits the theory that if you don't have economic freedom, you don't have freedom at all.
Economic freedom not only isn't predicated on, it doesn't necessitate, political freedom.
Let me indulge in a bit of history. Back in the 80s and early 90s when Wall Street was lobbying to remove embargos on investing in China, the argument was that the US was actually opening up a giant market, not promoting trade with the regime that just slaughtered a pro-democracy movement, and by opening trade, the Chinese would see how the West lived, and then would force the dictatorial regime to fall. Then it was about how by deindustrializing and moving all production to China, they would get money in their pockets, start to make economic decisions on their own, and soon would stop wanting to only "vote with their wallets" but want to "vote with their ballots" instead. But that's not what happened, now is it? The standard of living along the coast has rapidly improved, but far from weakening the regime, it's actually strengthened it, because the average person (rightly) says, "We've got a good thing going. My life is better. My child's life will be better than mine. Why would I want to take a chance and mess that up?"
Ironically though, China is the perfect lab for what would happen in an unregulated market that libertarians argue for when they want to eliminate the EPA, FDA, and every other regulatory industry [nytimes.com].
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Re:Surprised? (Score:5, Interesting)
But that's not what happened..
Your position is to short sighted. It's not done yet, give it another generation or two. Like the USAs strategy to isolate (and not attack) the USSR, post WWII. This policy took approximately 45 years (1945-90) to work through. I'm not saying the USA-China policy will work, but 20 years is too short to say "it failed".
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Re:Surprised? (Score:5, Interesting)
It is for the small minority for whom that's true.
The vast majority in the interior are still dirt poor and local government is disgustingly corrupt which helps to keep them that way.
CNN and the like don't show all that though. The comfy hotels are where the skyscrapers are, so let's make another article about handbag shops.
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Re:Surprised? (Score:5, Informative)
My wife and I came to this country because it is the land of opportunity. The place where the very best in the world go to build the best business. We're thinking of leaving because that don't seem to actually be true... at least, not anymore. Instead you:
I wanted to make this permanent, get my green card and eventually citizenship. But it seeme to me that you guys are trending hard towards compleat paranoid xenophobia. We have kids now and I'm thinking more and more about what living here is going to do to them. I don't want my kids to grow up in what, to me, seems like a poisonous atmosphere of stranger hate, militant and religious zealotry, misplaced sense of entitlement, and a "we're the greatest because we're the greatest" view of the world.
At this point, it's just a matter of time for us. We're making pretty good money and want to pull together a large enough nest egg to allow us to move home, buy a house, and start a business. After that, we'll likely only ever return here to take the kids to Disneyworld
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Re:Surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is we are backsliding in all those areas, not getting better. Assume he came here 10 years ago - his complaints probably aren't compared to some imaginary version of the US, but rather to how it was when he got here. The more time passes, the more it becomes clear that we really shot ourselves in the foot in a major way with our unhinged militaristic response to 911.
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Maybe because we treat them like criminals (Score:5, Interesting)
the reverse brain drain already evident and growing in the US as Indian, Chinese, and European students and workers in the US plan to return home, or already have.
Between Homeland Security and treating H1-B's like slave labor, who can blame them? They can go home and enjoy a better lifestyle than they have here and not get treated like a potential terrorist.
Funny is how many of the teabirthers walking around thinking this is the best place in the world to live and everyone wants to come here.
Not anymore.
Re:Maybe because we treat them like criminals (Score:5, Informative)
Funny how many people forget just how much the government has to do with the hostile treatment that immigrants face upon entering the US. Considering how much red tape and utter nonsense is baked into the system it isn't any surprise that a lot of educated people want the hell out of here.
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Re:Maybe because we treat them like criminals (Score:5, Interesting)
Which is why we need to do away with H1-B visa. There is no need for H1-B visas in this economic climate.
Remember H1-B visas are supposed to fill positions for which there are no American suitable candidates, but with so many workers, including IT people, out of work, it should not be a problem to fill those positions with Americans.
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During and immediately after WWII... (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder, are more folks returning to their home countries' simply because of money and career advancement? Or do they feel less welcome in the culture? Or perhaps their own home cultures are changing to where they feel they can shape them for the better?
This seems more like an anecdote than a study; but there is something wrong when science and engineering and other technical fields are seen as undesirable by most Americans, and the immigrants who come here to learn them decide that they'll have better opportunites back home to use them.
Who says this is a bad thing? (Score:5, Interesting)
The reasons for this exodus are straight out of an economics textbook. This is SUPPOSED to happen in a free world with free trade. Overall, this move is ADVANCING human civilization and making things just a bit better for the rest of humanity. Right now, the high tech industry in California is one of the most amazing industries the world has ever known. Among other things, those highly educated people who are returning to China and India are bringing knowledge and skills that will allow them to replicate some of the wonders of California in India and China. How is that a bad thing?
Sure, those Chinese and Indian companies will compete with the U.S. firms...but competition is a good thing for humanity as a whole.
Re:Who says this is a bad thing? (Score:5, Interesting)
those highly educated people who are returning to China and India are bringing knowledge and skills that will allow them to replicate some of the wonders of California in India and China. How is that a bad thing?
Whether it is good or bad depends on which side of the ocean you are on. As an American, I think it is terrible that we are losing brilliant people. It is these types of people that advance the state of the art and create new companies and industries. Because I am selfish, I want that to happen in my own country so that I can benefit from this.
For those in China and India, this is obviously a great thing. It means that they are starting to be able to compete with the US for the best and brightest. Instead of watching their brightest stars go to the US and get rich creating jobs for Americans, they get to have this right in their backyard.
I agree with you that this is a natural part of free trade, but that does not mean we have to just accept it. This should be a wake up call to us that we have to compete harder than ever before to keep the smartest people here. In the past, we could win this competition without even trying, but now we will have to start working at it.
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Different Cultural Values (Score:5, Informative)
Two comments. First, "age of prime" is 30-33? Is IT really that anti-fogey? Second, degrees above bachelor are generally held in higher regard outside of the US. US companies value what they see as "actual productivity" and will usually trade a more productive BS for a lack-luster MS[1]. In most countries, especially Asia, advanced degrees are simply given more esteem compared to the US. More money AND more chicks.
[1] Those with advanced degrees claim their extra knowledge helps in areas that are less visible to management but still very important. But, that's another story.
Reverse? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe my brain has been drained, too, but, if all the educated people are leaving the US, wouldn't that be a good old regular brain drain and not a reverse brain drain?
Re:Reverse? (Score:5, Informative)
In social studies, the "Brain Drain" was something the US was doing to the rest of the world by "taking away their brains." Now, those people are going back to their countries so it is a reversal of the "Brain Drain."
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My H1-B was rejected. (Score:5, Interesting)
I am in this position right now. I am an H1-B holder. I have a Masters in Computer Science. While most of my coworkers worked 40-45 hours a week I was doing 80 and quickly gained higher positions and expertise (hard work pays off in the land of opportunity). I love the US. Its a great place to live and I've lived here since I came to do my Bachelors (Computer Science also). I paid out of state tuition for all 7 years, out of my own pocket (which totaled > 60K).
I recently applied for an extension on my H1-B after my 3 years of working at a company and it was rejected by the government. The initial reason given was that we couldn't prove that my job required a degree so they came back and asked us for more info (called an RFI - request for information). (I am involved in long term projects from architecture, design, development and process analysis). The day I found out that my visa was rejected, my company, a small business of about 30 people also found out that a dept of the state had chosen me to work for them on a project for which they interviewed 30 people from around the US. My company lost that deal because the US rejected my visa and lost out on > 500,000 dollars of revenue over the contract. The company also lost 3 other contracts with clients I was currently with which would have probably panned out to 50k-100k each per year.
The revenue from that contract would have keep me and 2 other co-workers employed for at least 3 years and now my former company is going to probably fire 2 US citizens. This was the height of irony! The government royally screwed my company.
The immigration dept has really cracked down on H1-B visa holders and is rejecting them by asking them to prove stupid claims. Here are a few questions from my RFI.
1. Why does a Senior Software Engineer position require a Computer Science degree!
2. Provide all earning statements for the last 3 years and for all states you had income from.
3. Provide all client contracts that you had in the last 3 years for the full company.
4. Provide a detailed job description along with future contracts (for all 3 years) along with locations, contacts of client companies and images of work areas.
My visa was finally rejected because they feared that I would work in California (where my company doesn't have any clients or a branch). The process is really ridiculous right now and I have started looking at canada, singapore and india. I would prefer to stay and finish my 3 years and get a path to citizenship but if I have to leave, so be it.
The icing on the cake is that since they reject my appeal, I have 10 days to leave the country. So pack your bags, sell your car and belongings (or throw them away) and get the fuck out in 10 days.
Thanks for all the fish O Land of Opportunity!
I will say this to all you US citizen and green card holders. DO NOT SQUANDER YOUR OPPORTUNITIES! The US is the greatest place on earth and if you work hard, you can really live a great life. Peace.
Re:My H1-B was rejected. (Score:5, Interesting)
With so many out of work software engineers who are American citizens, why should your H1-B visa, which is supposed to be used to fill critical positions, requiring a specialized skill set, for which an American citizen can not be found. Sounds to me like while you worked hard and worked long hours, you did nothing that any one of the thousands of out of work American software engineers could not do.
You should never have been granted the H1-B visa in the first place.
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My case (Score:5, Interesting)
When I arrived, it didnt took me long to realize how wrong I was. After two years I remember talking with my parents, and saying that at the moment the only thing I wanted was to finish as fast as possible. I just wanted to be able to put Berkeley in my resumee and leave, because I really thought I was waisting my time. I was trying as hard as possible to be productive. But it was not only that my tutor was not good enough, or that my department didn't had the money I needed, the worst part is that we were overall behind what my department in Germany was doing. I felt so frustrated spending 90% of the time reinventing the wheel and putting the USA stamp, feeling that I was leaving in the past, and trying but not finding the way to do something about it that i really wanted to leave and do something useful with my life. It was even worst when I talked with a good friend of mine who was also doing his Phd at the same department in Munich. He got almost unlimited finantiation, lots of students doing their master thesis for him, and was really learning a lot, not only about the subject, but about managing a big reserarch team and lots of long time experiments, we just didn't had the same means...
When I finished it was really easy to find interesting jobs in the states, I even doubted because of one really interesting offer at Lockheed. But the real fact was, that the offers from Germany where at a whole different level. I had been in Berkeley! For them that was... Godlike. As I came back I started working for a private company for almost three years, and after that I took a part-time management position at that company and been working there partime since. At the same time I started also working part-time in my second Phd at the university. Im not only doing what i really like, at the moment Im getting a lot of support from very good people, students included, and from the university, state, privates companies... I really feel that im working with the best people in the world.
And till now i've just mentioned the academic side! The rest of my life can be summarized in: I'm payed better in Europe than in the States and at the same time living here is cheaper! And if you add a better public transport system, higher security feeling, way better health care... it's not hard to understand way researches are not staying there. I know a lot of indian people here, and they have already moved their families in and have no plans to retourn to India in the distant future...
So yeah, people go to the states to study because of the fame. When they arrive, they realize things back home werent so bad as they thought. And when they finish things even get better at home, because due to their studies in the states, they are seen as gods... If you add that the quality of life in the states isn't even in the top10 of the world, and that the loan/expenses ratio is better in lots of other countries, you have your answer.
I came, I saw, I left (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked in the US for a few years. So why did I leave?
Of course, everyone says the grass is greener in the US, but compared to home, really it's not - it's just different. But there were enough downsides to being in the USA which made me eventually leave. In order:
1. Family. I would prefer being close to them, 4800 miles isn't close enough. (I now live 10 minutes walk from my Dad).
2. The INS Dehumanization programme - the Kafkaesque manner in which visas and green cards are processed. I just wasn't willing to go through that any more. I hear it's even worse for people from places like India and China, I guess I'm lucky coming from Europe.
3. Healthcare - I like living somewhere where I never need to ever worry about getting healthcare, even if I fall upon bad times.
4. Bigotry and illiberalism - I lived in Texas. Too many religious people, and when I left, also Bush was President.
Don't get me wrong, I think overall the United States is a good country, and one of the best in the world - despite its faults. Any country has faults. But I just wasn't prepared to go through the unpredictable, abitrary and dehumanizing immigration processes to live somewhere that's just as faulty as my home country, but is also 4800 miles from my family.
Re:Quality of life (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm guessing that by better quality they mean materialistically. Being a US citizen I would prefer to live in a place where human rights are championed, personal liberty is maximized and freedom of speech and freedom from government oppression is paramount.
Unless someone is afraid of being randomly assaulted or imprisoned, then no one cares. It's human nature. Bread and circuses you know? I've been to China. It's not Mao's China, not at all.
So, I guess I'm saying where should I move to?
Canada?
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Re:Quality of life (Score:5, Insightful)
You really ought to define what you mean by government oppression. Would you include taxation in that category? Because you aren't going to find many governments that don't tax.....
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Re:Quality of life (Score:4, Interesting)
I work in a place where the majority of my colleagues are Indian including both developers and management. I can attest to the trends. I'm the exception by not holding a masters and by being born here. I'm responding because of a false assumption you made. You guessed that the better quality of life is a materialistic quality. For the majority of my friends who moved back to India it was not about that. While that played a role, their wives and families were residing there. It was difficult to deal with the paper work. The cricket matches weren't shown live at 3am. It's a plethora of smaller items which all add up. They aren't from the US and do not necessarily share the same values as you. Think more holistically for a second and you'll understand. It's about living where you are comfortable and are content. That's why my Indian friends are moving back to India and I completely understand.
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Re:Quality of life (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Quality of life (Score:5, Interesting)
Working hours are ludicrous which seems to stem from the "at will" factor - people are too scared not to work those extra hours for fear of being fired.
While that certainly does occur, my experience is that it is rare - at least at the professional level, maybe less so at the burger-flipping level. That most people work overtime because they want either the extra money or to get ahead in their career (presumably to get more money). Making it illegal to work more than 48 hours seems crazy from my perspective its like that saying "the nail that stands out gets hammered down."
And the final straw is that you don't even get decent vacation time for all those hours, I get 5 weeks here and I know plenty of people who get more.
Maybe we take our vacation in a different form. Consider the american pre-occupation with big houses, nice cars, giant televisions, etc. These are all little mini-vacations that we experience everyday. Is that better than taking a month off at the end of summer and traveling to the other side of the continent? Maybe, maybe not. But I think that ignoring it is to miss a fundamental difference in the societies.
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Re:moore's law is "reversing" too (Score:4, Informative)
That's a pretty bold claim you're making. Let's have a look at some actual numbers, shall we? [wikimedia.org]
This chart indicates that not only are we keeping up with Moore's law, for the past 2-3 years we've actually moved ahead of where we'd expect to be. And the graph doesn't even include AMD's R800 graphics chips, which have even higher transistor densities than RV770/GT200.
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Re:What a surprise! (Score:5, Informative)
we educate foreign students at the cost of displacing domestic students
I would like to see some evidence to back that claim because that does not match my experience. In my CS department, US citizens are almost automatically accepted into the graduate program, while foreign students have to compete with each other to get in. (My professor is on the admissions committee.) The reason is that there are so few US citizens that apply that they have to take as many as they can get. The only people being turned away are foreigners who got beat out by more qualified foreigners.
The fact is that the US has half of the world's colleges and universities. It is the large number of foreign students that allows us to have so many universities and that gives domestic students a wide range of choices.
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Re:What a surprise! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:What a surprise! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:What a surprise! (Score:5, Interesting)
That's kind of misleading...
They pay non-resident tuition at public state schools, just like any US student who attends a college in a state they don't reside in. And for most private schools, there is no difference at all.
Sure, they don't get the federal grants, but those are so piss poor these days that probably barely matters (plus they may very well get grants or loans from their home country to attend a US school).
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Re:What a surprise! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:What a surprise! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:What a surprise! (Score:5, Insightful)
Foreign students are considered a cash cow by schools, because their fees are much higher, and they are usually funded by sources from their home countries, not from the US. They are subsidizing the education of domestic-born students, not the other way around.
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Re:What a surprise! (Score:5, Interesting)
You know that PhD and (to a lesser extent) masters students are basically the dogs-bodies of academia, right? I.e. they're usually the ones doing the heavy-lifting investigative work to support the research interests of their supervisor. If you seriously constrain the pool of available PhD students, then you're making it harder for your professors and Universities to get their research done.
The sheer ignorance on display in some parts of this discussion are amazing. Doubly amazing when you consider /.'s readership is biased towards being significantly more educated than the average American. If this represents mainstream thinking in the USA, then one must worry the USA is doomed to a dark period of shoot-in-the-foot policies driven by xenophobism.
(I say this as someone who believes the health of the USA's economy is vitally important to that of the globe's, and has a mostly-positive opinion of it. NB: the country I live in also is experiencing some measure of xenophobist-pandering policy setting).
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