Highly Skilled US Immigrants are Emigrating: What's the deal?

I think it’s fair to say that immigrants have long been positive contributors to the US economy.  In recent years, highly skilled immigrants have filled high demand jobs in science, technology, and  health care related fields.  Many of these immigrants have attended US universities and have advanced degrees.  They are relatively well positioned in US society, so why would they leave?

According to Vivek Wadhwa in this article from business Week, the pull to emigrate (Remember emigration with an “E” means exit.) back to their countries of origin has several origins.  The researchers on Wadhwa’s team, surveyed Chinese and Indian emigrants.  Some reasons given were personal and cultural,

Returnees cited language barriers, missing their family and friends at home, difficulty with cultural assimilation, and care of parents and children as key issues.

Another factor for the return was bureaucratic barriers that visa seekers faced in the US.

However, there were several pull factors that lead emigrants to feel they would have more opportunities in their countries of origin:

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.

The researchers don’t mention discrimination here in the US as a factor, but these statistics don’t preclude it as a possibility.  In previous studies, many Asian Americans, from both immigrant and non-immigrant backgrounds have reported difficulties in promotions.  These difficulties can be related to immigration status, ethnicity, or race.

Given the terrible state of the economy, I wonder if the sacrifice of leaving one’s culture and family isn’t being offset by financial rewards here in the US.  I’ve also read recent reports about a decline in remittances sent to Mexico and other countries.  This could mean either immigrants are living here but keeping money for themselves and/or immigrants are returning to their home countries.  Then again, these trends may have been happening even without the economic down turn since the economies in places like India and China are rapidly expanding.

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49 Responses to Highly Skilled US Immigrants are Emigrating: What's the deal?

  1. 1
    marmalade says:

    When I was a Teacher’s Assistant in grad school helping with a biochemistry class the prof told me to not bother to learn the names of the international students (mostly Asian) . . . because they couldn’t really speak English anyway and were just sucking up the university’s resources and not worth the bother.

    But when I got to know these students I was so awed at what they were doing . . . they were living in a foreign country with an unfamiliar language and culture learning a really hard thing like biochemistry. And it struck me that the US was appropriating some of the smartest and most courageous people of the next generation – what a boon for our economy (some of them wanted to stay here), and a boon for US-born students!

    Our nativist attitudes and policies are a great disservice not only to these pioneers seeking education and international communication, but also to ourselves and economic self-interest.

  2. 2
    Manju says:

    yeah, this is common immigrant experience. for the first ten years or so of my life in America i remember my parents always saying we’re going back to India, sometimes as a threat when i was caught drinking or with a girl or something.

    all my friends immigrant parents had dreams of going back after getting rich, but no one ever did. from what I’ve read even earlier European immigrants had similar experiences.

    but the crucial difference now is the arrival of capitalism to communities formerly terrorized by socialism, especially India and china. white supremacy, built on colonialism and slavery , mixed with the productive power of capitalism and the virtues of liberal democracy, will come to an end now that the natives have discovered free markets…assuming President Obama saves her from herself.

  3. 3
    Manju says:

    Our nativist attitudes and policies are a great disservice not only to these pioneers seeking education and international communication, but also to ourselves and economic self-interest.

    Don’t be too hard on yourself. Nativism sucks , but it’s human universal. Your democracy, individual rights, and free markets more than makes up for it.

    God Bless America.

  4. 4
    Sailorman says:

    Our nativist attitudes and policies are a great disservice not only to these pioneers seeking education and international communication, but also to ourselves and economic self-interest.

    Doesn’t the post suggest something else?

    Generally speaking, educating people costs money. but you gain it back by what they do after they are educated. When we educate immigrants who stay here and work it’s in our economic self interest, just like educating anyone who stays here and works. But if immigrants begin to leave, the benefits of educating them leave along with them, and from a purely economic perspective it would make less sense to do.

  5. 5
    Rachel S. says:

    I think that’s a good point Saliorman in the last sentence. Many of these immigrants, as the article suggestions, are in fields where we have a shortage of qualified/educated native born people, so it’s to our benefit to train people in these fields and try to keep them here.

    However, there is a conflicting Nativist streak. It get the sense that the Nativist streak is drummed up by politicians, and posed as a threat to the working class, inparticular.

  6. 6
    Dianne says:

    They are relatively well positioned in US society, so why would they leave?

    Um…they’d rather live somewhere else? The US routinely treats immigrants horribly, inlcuding skilled immigrants (remember this story about an engineer from China who was put in a detention center, was denied medical care, and died because he had overstayed a visa–probably just forgot to fill out a form). Why should US-Americans expect loyalty or even interest in staying from immigrants? I’m feeling like it’s time to spend some time out of the country myself and that’s even with Bush out of office.

  7. 7
    RonF says:

    I’d think the reason why more skilled immigrants are leaving the U.S. is because opportunities for their skills are increasing in their home countries. As those opportunities increase it becomes much more attractive to move back home where the language, food, etc. is the same as what you grew up on.

    I’m curious about how you are measuring American attitudes towards immigrants. It is highly misleading to talk about attitudes in the U.S. towards immigrants if you lump together illegal aliens with low skills and legal immigrants with professional-level skills.

    Dianne:

    The US routinely treats immigrants horribly, inlcuding skilled immigrants (remember this story about an engineer from China who was put in a detention center, was denied medical care, and died because he had overstayed a visa–probably just forgot to fill out a form).

    Do you have anything to offer for your assertion than a single (although certainly horrible) instance? The immigrants – by which I mean people who move here legally with an intent to stay – that I know are highly skilled folks in my industry (information technologies) and they seem to like it here quite a bit.

    As far as availability for promotions, etc., there aren’t that many opportunities available for anybody these days. Also, I’d like to see the distinction between true immigrants (people who moved here with the intention of staying permanently) and people who have never made that committment; e.g., people who have never sought permanent residency or citizenship. If I was running a company I might very well distinguish between the two when I was considering who to promote and bet the future of my company on.

  8. 8
    idyllicmollusk says:

    RonF said: “Do you have anything to offer for your assertion than a single (although certainly horrible) instance?”

    After a minute of reflection, I have a feeling you would recall how terribly we treat people without white skin, people without citizenship, and people with accents here in the US. While being high-skill and high-income mitigates that somewhat, it does not end it.

    As for further examples, I’ve posted several on my blog:

    South Asian hospital administrator “randomly” stopped 21 times by NYPD

    Comp of recent incidents where immigrants, some highly skilled, died of medical neglect in detention

    Latino immigrant attacked and killed, without his assailants stopping to see if he was highly-skilled

  9. 9
    idyllicmollusk says:

    One reason that this emigration of highly-skilled non-citizens can be looked on with a positive light is this: it reverses the brain-drain caused by the pull of America’s education and work opportunities.

    Not entirely, but at least partially. I think its a good thing that there are opportunities for highly-skilled individuals in places like India and China. And not for Nativist reasons neither!

  10. 10
    Dianne says:

    Do you have anything to offer for your assertion than a single (although certainly horrible) instance?

    I volunteer with PHR and have gone to detention centers to perform physical exams to document claims of torture or maltreatment in the home countries of asylum seekers a number of times. The conditions there are horrid. The people I’ve examined invariably end up telling me about other problems they have besides those that led them to flee their countries (which are horrid enough…HIPAA and a desire not to push secondary PTSD on anyone forbid me from going into further details). At least one (light skinned) person appeared to have vitamin D deficiency–and turned out to have not been allowed outside for a number of months (there are no windows, naturally.) Several have had symptoms consistent with hypothyroidism–enough to make me wonder if they are being deprived of iodine in their diets entirely. None have had any medical care given to them (all have insisted that I was the first doctor they’d ever seen while in detention.) Yeah, this is anecdote, but I’d be quite surprised if conditions were different in other parts of the US than in the two centers I’ve seen.

    The immigrants – by which I mean people who move here legally with an intent to stay – that I know are highly skilled folks in my industry (information technologies) and they seem to like it here quite a bit.

    I know a number of immigrants, both highly skilled and otherwise, who were reasonably happy to be in the US too. Some of them have stayed long term, may be settling permanently. The US can be a nice place overall, despite it’s downsides. But I’ve also seen several graduate students, engineers, and doctors run into immigration troubles bad enough to make them say “heck with this, the US isn’t worth it.” (And by immigration problems I mean having their paperwork rejected for no good reason, being told that they can’t reenter the US after a visit to their home countries despite valid visas, being delayed in getting visas for so long that they lose the job or school position that they were coming to the US for, etc.–things that are either not their fault or in which they have made trivial errors, the sort that usually have no consequence at all, i.e. a spelling error on a form.)

  11. 11
    marmalade says:

    Sailorman writes:

    But if immigrants begin to leave, the benefits of educating them leave along with them, and from a purely economic perspective it would make less sense to do.

    Yes, I agree. The US looses the direct economic benefits of people who are educated here – subsidized to a greater or lesser degree by the state – and then go home (and perhaps even directly compete with us). Some would argue that the US should educate very very few foreigners relative to native-borns, since the majority of native-borns will stay.

    But I believe the US gets the better end of the deal, even if the percentage of “stayers” is low – because I think the number of human beings with true genius AND determination is a limiting factor for societal success . . . and our country’s ability to adopt talent from around the world and co-opt the benefit of their work is, and always has been, a great benefit to us.

    And I also think that the people who come to the US to learn and get to know us better and then go home also benefit our society, and the greater human endeavor. I think the US (and other Western) education and social systems have a great ability to take the raw clay of a good mind and make it a much more valuable tool for humanity – whoever it benefits. Undoubtedly other systems do too, so it’s good for US citizens to go abroad and try other ed systems.

    So I guess I’m in favor of the US continuing to open the university doors to brilliant folks from other countries – even at the costs of increased tax burden and fewer opportunities for some mid-level-talent native-born students. Also I think we should try to keep a high percentage of the foreign-born students here – both to benefit from their knowledge and promote native-born US citizens’ understanding of other cultures.

    Perhaps my ideas are self-contradictory, but I have more of a cooperative-success model of humanity rather than a competitive-success model, and my judgment is very much influenced by this.

  12. 12
    Sailorman says:

    What strikes me is more of the contradiction that is going on.

    We subsidize education and we allow immigrants* to take spots which citizens want. But then we don’t do what is necessary to keep them happy in the country and we lose our investment.

    That makes no sense. We should either stop subsidizing people who are unlikely to stay, or we should figure out how to make them happy so that they DO stay.

    My own feeling is that anyone who is smart enough to deserve subsidies and/or admission to a competitive graduate program is someone who is smart enough to make the country want them as a citizen. May as well grant them citizenship.

    But if we’re not going to do that, then we should start preferentially admitting US citizens to graduate programs and high tech jobs, in the hopes of preventing the inexorable decline of our academic structure.

    *by which I am referring to non-citizens. I would use the proper term “legal aliens” but IIRC Amp doesn’t want it used here.

  13. 13
    RonF says:

    Sailorman, there’s a further caveat on the use of the word “immigrant”. Someone who comes to the U.S. to get an education with the idea in mind that they intend to return home is not an immigrant. Only someone who travels from country A to country B with the intent of staying in B and making their home there is an immigrant to country B.

    So when you say “We subsidize education and we allow immigrants to take spots which citizens want”, are you referring to people who come here on (for example) an H2B visa (to take work that could be filled by an American citizen, perhaps, although likely with a higher salary and benefits demand)? If that person is here to pile up a bunch of cash they’d be unlikely to earn in their home country and perhaps get some training as well (which I’m not condemning) but is either not at all intending to say or is undecided, they are not an immigrant. They’re simply a resident alien – and BTW that’s exactly the term that is printed in bold letters across the top of the ID issued to them by the Federal government.

  14. 14
    RonF says:

    Which, BTW, also calls into question the use of the term “emigrant” in the title of this posting. You are only an emigrant if you are leaving your native country or a country where you are a citizen or native. If your presence in a country is on a temporary basis, you are not an emigrant if you leave it.

    Now, if we are talking about people who came to the U.S. and became citizens and then left to go back to their native country, then those are emigrants. But if someone came here to study and then left to go back where they came from, they’re not emigrants.

  15. 15
    Dianne says:

    We subsidize education and we allow immigrants* to take spots which citizens want. But then we don’t do what is necessary to keep them happy in the country and we lose our investment.

    Just want to point one thing out, which is that academics (to give one group of highly educated people) tend to be quite international. Wander through any university anywhere in the first world, BRIC country, or probably even developed “third world” country and you’ll see people from all over: US-Americans at the MPI, British in Brazil, Japanese at Stanford, Guianese in New York, Danes in Costa Rica*. Demanding that anyone educated in your country stay there permanently or even for X years is impractical and will only lead to people staying away because they don’t want to get trapped in one place. Incentives to stay will only be partially successful because the main attractor is not the country but the research group: people will go wherever they can best do their research and that is dependent on the university more than the country. Probably the best bet would be more NSF?NIH funding. (Of course, this does not apply to anyone but academics, so may be of limited value as advice.)

    *All examples drawn from life.

  16. 16
    Dianne says:

    But if we’re not going to do that, then we should start preferentially admitting US citizens to graduate programs and high tech jobs, in the hopes of preventing the inexorable decline of our academic structure.

    Das tun wir schon. Es hilft weniger als man erwarten wurde weil, erstaundlich als es scheint, Americanern bleiben auch nicht immer und ewig in denn USA.

    (And despite the US’s attempts to trap its citizens with these stupid english only laws and conventions, some US-Americans even learn foreign languages well enough to feel comfortable moving…especially since english is the academic language most places in the world–partly because so many foreigners go to school in the US–so that one need not be anywhere close to fluent.)

  17. 17
    Sailorman says:

    Dianne, are you saying you think U.S. academics are equally as likely to benefit from out-of-country instruction as aliens are to benefit from U.S. instruction? While I certainly concur that there is some level of exchange, it doesn’t seem from my own anecdotal experience to be equal: we have a comparatively high proportion of world-class institutions at the undergraduate and graduate level, and more people are driven to come here to study than are seeking to go elsewhere to study.

    Those who leave the U.S. for study generally fall into one of three groups:
    1) people seeking a skill or high level school which is unavailable in the U.S. (rare)
    2) people seeking the experience of attending school in a foreign country, whether or not the school is “better” than their own (more common); and
    3) people seeking admission to a program for which they cannot gain admission in the U.S., such as the common sight of U.S. students in Central and South American medical schools.

  18. 18
    Dianne says:

    Sailorman: No, I’m saying that restricting admission to US academic institutions doesn’t guarentee that graduates will stay in the US. Academics, at least, will go wherever there’s a job and colleagues who are interesting and productive to work with. If you make it too hard for bright foreigners to come to the US to work (and Bush was trying his best to do so) then US-Americans will go abroad. I regularly go abroad to work with a colleague that heads a group that is doing things that people in the US simply aren’t. If I had to choose between continuing my academic collaborations and the US I’d pack now. My partner has collaborators on every continent (well, ok, the ones in Antarctica aren’t permanent residents…). He is not atypical for his field. How happy would they be if they couldn’t recruit foreigners for sabbaticals or permanent positions? Not very at all.

    Ultimately, anything that increases the amount of knowledge and education in the world will benefit all countries. Restricting the flow of knowledge, i.e. saying that you must hire a US-American whether or not s/he is the best person for the job or that you can’t admit non-US students, even if they are the best qualified, hurts the US and every other country.

  19. 19
    Dianne says:

    Ironically, I’m sitting in front of a computer with intermittent free time right now because I’m running an epidemiology program taught to me by a German researcher who spent some time studying in the US. The professor in question didn’t stay in the US, as far as I know has no intention of returning to the US at any future date, but his training certainly helped me and, given that he developed a radically new technique for examining survival–one that gives much more accurate results, probably helped the US and the world in general considerably too. So how is it a bad thing that people study in the US again?

  20. 20
    Sailorman says:

    Dianne Writes:
    March 6th, 2009 at 11:09 am

    Sailorman: No, I’m saying that restricting admission to US academic institutions doesn’t guarantee that graduates will stay in the US.

    I’m not suggesting that we restrict en masse; I’m suggesting that we tie it to citizenship in a manner that INCLUDES offering citizenship to a variety of people who might want it. And even so, I would make room for the occasional academic who wants to just hang out and then return home.

    But given two roughly similarly-qualified people, if we can choose between the one who will become/is a citizen and the one who will not, we should be aiming our limited recourses at the first group.

    Ultimately, anything that increases the amount of knowledge and education in the world will benefit all countries. Restricting the flow of knowledge, i.e. saying that you must hire a US-American whether or not s/he is the best person for the job or that you can’t admit non-US students, even if they are the best qualified, hurts the US and every other country.

    I read you as saying that there is a common benefit. but while I agree taht the world might benefit from it, i’m not sure there’s a benefit to the U.S.

  21. 21
    Sailorman says:

    Dianne Writes:
    March 6th, 2009 at 11:39 am

    Ironically, I’m sitting in front of a computer with intermittent free time right now because I’m running an epidemiology program taught to me by a German researcher who spent some time studying in the US. The professor in question didn’t stay in the US, as far as I know has no intention of returning to the US at any future date, but his training certainly helped me and, given that he developed a radically new technique for examining survival–one that gives much more accurate results, probably helped the US and the world in general considerably too. So how is it a bad thing that people study in the US again?

    Com on, Dianne, you’re way beyond logic there.

    He could have made the same contribution had he gone somewhere else.
    Or someone else could have done it in his place.
    Or he could simply be an outlier.
    Or…

  22. 22
    Ampersand says:

    Generally speaking, educating people costs money. but you gain it back by what they do after they are educated. When we educate immigrants who stay here and work it’s in our economic self interest, just like educating anyone who stays here and works. But if immigrants begin to leave, the benefits of educating them leave along with them, and from a purely economic perspective it would make less sense to do.

    According to both the Congressional Research Service (pdf link) and the Chronicle of Higher Education, “undergraduate foreign students pay full tuition and are therefore an important source of revenues for universities.” Colleges object to making it harder for out-of-country students to obtain student visas because that would lead to colleges losing a lot of income.

    The only way we “subsidize” foreign science students is by paying them for work-study jobs. I’m not sure it’s fair to call paying people for work they do a subsidy. And it’s clear that foreign students are subsidized far less, on average, than their American counterparts. In fact, because they pay full tuition, it’s likely that part of the reason colleges can afford subsidizing American students is because of money from foreign students.

    I agree that it benefits the US when immigrants choose to stay here. But you haven’t presented any evidence at all to support your belief that it’s harmful to US interests to educate foreign students who then leave the country.

    You don’t consider the myriad of indirect ways that the US can benefit from the economic growth of other countries — and that economic growth is presumably enhanced if students can choose to get technical training where they think they’ll learn the most (including in the US).

    Speaking of indirect benefits, Dianne has it right; benefits to the word stock of knowledgeable, trained people benefit people in the US, just as inventions and innovations created by people in the US can benefit the rest of the world. More open systems are better at creating innovation and benefits than more closed systems; so while it’s true that people can get training elsewhere, closing off US universities would theoretically bring a marginal reduction in innovation worldwide.

    Since you’ve presented no evidence at all to support your view that it harms us when someone from another country is educated here, why should we be willing to accept even a marginal, theoretical reduction in benefits, let alone forgo the tuition students from abroad pay?

  23. 23
    Dianne says:

    I read you as saying that there is a common benefit. but while I agree taht the world might benefit from it, i’m not sure there’s a benefit to the U.S.

    Ultimately, I’m more concerned with the benefit to the world than the benefit to the US. The US being a part of the world and a rich, powerful part at that, I’m assuming that it will share in the common benefit and can probably take care of itself in most competitive situations.

  24. 24
    Sailorman says:

    But you haven’t presented any evidence at all to support your belief that it’s harmful to US interests to educate foreign students who then leave the country.

    Other than the article which is the subject of the post? Because that seems to imply pretty clearly that it sucks to lose people who are skilled and who we need. Which makes quite a bit of sense. It creates a cost to the country.

    If we educate people who stay, and don’t leave, then–voila!–we don’t have that cost. The skilled people still exist, but they’re here, not somewhere else.

    Also, let’s clarify what we are talking about, scope-wise: I am referring to the sort of competitive programs for which entry is highly restricted and for which applicants are numerous and highly qualified. Harvard. MIT. Stanford. Medical school. PhD programs (many of them.) Etc. There are no shortage of people in the U.S. who would attend those places at full tuition.

    Sure, there’s plenty of schools that are less competitive who admit internationals. That is a different thing, though, because the pool of availability is so much bigger.

    And since you keep bringing up evidence, do you have any evidence that educating people who leave is beneficial to the U.S. economy?

    I agree that it benefits the US when immigrants choose to stay here. But you haven’t presented any evidence at all to support your belief that it’s harmful to US interests to educate foreign students who then leave the country.

    When you say “it benefits the US when immigrants choose to stay here” you clearly imply “…therefore it is a relative cost to the U.S. when they leave.”

    I think we’re in agreement there.

    I think you would also agree with the followup: the benefit of people staying (economically) is related to their economic value, i.e. trained people are better, educated people are better, etc. in other words, we WANT more educated, trained, people. We want them because that training and education have value.

    My point then becomes that when you have a limited good like very high-level education and/or training, it is sensible to try to keep that good in the country. Doing so means some combination of favoring citizens in getting the goods, giving the highly qualified folk citizenship so they can get the goods, and trying to filter out those who will take the goods and leave.

    Speaking of indirect benefits, Dianne has it right; benefits to the word stock of knowledgeable, trained people benefit people in the US, just as inventions and innovations created by people in the US can benefit the rest of the world. More open systems are better at creating innovation and benefits than more closed systems; so while it’s true that people can get training elsewhere, closing off US universities would theoretically bring a marginal reduction in innovation worldwide.

    People keep asserting this. not only am i not certain I agree with you, but so what? I am clearly discussing this from the perspective of national issues, in which the questio is what benefits the U.S., not what benefits the world as a whole.

  25. 25
    nobody.really says:

    “[U]ndergraduate foreign students pay full tuition and are therefore an important source of revenues for universities.” Colleges object to making it harder for out-of-country students to obtain student visas because that would lead to colleges losing a lot of income.

    The only way we “subsidize” foreign science students is by paying them for work-study jobs. I’m not sure it’s fair to call paying people for work they do a subsidy. And it’s clear that foreign students are subsidized far less, on average, than their American counterparts. In fact, because they pay full tuition, it’s likely that part of the reason colleges can afford subsidizing American students is because of money from foreign students.

    What does “subsidy” mean here?

    I think of a subsidy to mean “any choice to allocate a resource sub-optimally from some perspective.” Without knowing the perspective, I can’t evaluate the subsidy.

    Arguably the incremental cost to a university to stick one more chair in a classroom is pretty small. Almost any addition of tuition would be worth it, and certainly the addition of someone who is paying “full” tuition. Heck, a university might derive optimal benefit by treating admissions like any other market good and selling it to the highest bidder. Thus from a market perspective, the choice to allocate admissions on the basis of academic merit is a subsidy to the academically gifted.

    Similarly, I’m hardly surprised to hear the universities like attracting gifted, “full”-tuition students, foreign or otherwise. But the university’s perspective is different from a government’s perspective, which is different from the world’s perspective. If your government grants a university tax-exempt status – puts out the university’s burning buildings free of charge, etc. – can you truly say that any of the students are paying “full” tuition? And should the government’s perspective receive due consideration in deciding how best to allocate the institution’s admissions resources?

  26. 26
    nobody.really says:

    I am clearly discussing this from the perspective of national issues, in which the question is what benefits the U.S., not what benefits the world as a whole.

    I find good arguments on each side of this issue, but the matter seems hopelessly fact-laden. Here’s my best effort to build a evaluation model:

    Some decision-maker – say, the US – faces a choice between two ways of allocating admissions to some exclusive institution:

    1. Admitting a qualified foreign national Xho. This will result in a stream of consequences equal to the sum of –
    A. the value of Xho’s tuition payments
    B. x% of the benefits to the US of Xho’s productivity in the US, where x is the likelihood that Xho stays in the US
    C. (1-x%) of the benefits to the US of Xho’s productivity abroad
    D. The decremental loss of benefit that might have accrued to the US if Joe (or anyone else) had attended the exclusive educational institution instead.

    2. Admitting a somewhat less qualified US national Joe. This will result in a stream of consequences equal to the sum of –
    A. the value of Joe’s tuition payments.
    B. y% of the benefits to the US of Joe’s productivity in the US, where y is the likelihood that Joe says in the US (and x is presumably < y)
    C. (1-y%) of the benefits to the US of Joe’s productivity abroad.
    D. The decremental loss of benefit that might have accrued to the US if Xho (or anyone else) had attended the exclusive educational institution instead.

    Consider Factor A: Yes, the US probably benefits more from getting Xho’s tuition payments than Joe’s. First, Xho is more likely to pay “full” tuition. Second, Xho is more likely to pay with resources from abroad and therefore represent a net importation of resources. From a national perspective, Joe’s payments represent a re-allocation of domestic resources.

    Consider Factors B. and C: Given that Xho is better qualified, there’s cause to believe that Xho will gain greater productivity from the education from a global perspective. But there’s also cause to believe that Xho has a greater likelihood of leaving the US, and that the benefit the US derives from Xho’s work abroad – while not $0 – may be less than the benefit the US might derive from Xho’s work domestically. Conversely, there’s cause to believe that Joe would derive a smaller productivity increase than Xho from a global perspective. But because Joe has a greater likelihood of staying in the US, permitting the US to harness a greater share of his productivity, the US my find advantages to favoring Joe.

    Consider Factor D: People are not unmitigated blessings to a nation. The choice to offer admissions to Xho should reflect not merely the good that will result from Xho, but also the potential loss of good (or even harm) that will result from Joe. Perhaps the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts correctly optimized Factors A, B and C when they elected to extend admissions to someone other than Adolph Hitler. In retrospect it’s hard not to suspect that they failed to optimize Factor D. Conversely, the choice to offer admissions to Joe should reflect the potential loss of good (or even harm) that will result from Xho. The choice not to admit Castro into the NY Yankees franchise (hey, it’s an exclusive institution!*) arguably benefitted some other player, but it also cost a lot.

    Anyway, clearly the decision-maker will want to optimize the stream of benefits. So all we need are good metrics for each of these factors, and presto, Bob’s yer uncle. Have at it!

    (* Ok, Snopes says the idea that Castro was an aspiring professional ballplayer is bogus. Killjoys.)

  27. 27
    nobody.really says:

    Finally, correct me if I’m wrong, but is Sailorman effectively arguing for Affirmative Action for US natives? That is, government policy should direct resources not to people on the basis of their academic performance, but rather on the basis of their social group?

    And conversely, are Amp and Dianne making the classic meritocracy argument against Affirmative Action? That is, we should allocate resources to those who have demonstrated the best capacity to use them; this is the swiftest path for improving the world for people of all social groups?

    …just stirrin’ the pot….

  28. 28
    Sailorman says:

    It’s not really like affirmative action, because I include in my model the goal of also offering citizenship to those who we would want to stay. And I am not by any means certain how the overall argument should turn out, as there are many factors involved.

    But I think there is (or should be) good support for the concept that a government should, generally speaking, attempt to aim the nation’s resources at its citizens. That’s one of government’s primary duties.

  29. 29
    Dianne says:

    Nobody, the point of affirmative action is to level the playing field, not tip it further: US-Americans are not, as a group, underprivileged.

    In fact, I would argue that one of the points of affirmative action is, ultimately, to facilitate the movement of highly talented but relatively poorly educated people into positions where their talent can be best utilized. In other words, as a mechanism for establishing meritocracy. (Or at least a situation in which people’s life course is determined by their talents and goals rather than accidents of their birth.)

    Er…not to derail or anything.

  30. 30
    sylphhead says:

    Now, if we are talking about people who came to the U.S. and became citizens and then left to go back to their native country, then those are emigrants. But if someone came here to study and then left to go back where they came from, they’re not emigrants.

    My impression is that for many here on visas, if not most, the situation isn’t so binary. They may be considering staying in the US along a sliding scale of preference, and factors that make the US a less attractive place to live push them to move back.

    And conversely, are Amp and Dianne making the classic meritocracy argument against Affirmative Action?

    Well, this presumes that “meritocracy” and “Affirmative Action” are negational and the only two options. By that standard, any time anyone is hired/admitted/promoted based on anything but pure meritocratic concerns, it counts as “Affirmative Action”. Now, these include a lot of non-racial factors that actually do count as Affirmative Action, though some forget – geography, income, first-generation status – but they’d also include a lot of factors like:

    (a) legacy status. Both explicitly in universities, and implicitly elsewhere

    (b) how much your interviewer or whomever likes you on a personal level

    (c) presentability or professionalism

    (d) sharing similar dispositions, interests, foibles, or personal backstories as many others in the group. Usually they try to fish it out in the “what do you like about/why do you want to join ” type questions.

    (e) how much you “stick out” from a pool of other applicants, which is an important factor in having your name stick beyond the first round of eliminations. As it applies here, the “sticky” factor is something that’s not directly related to merit; it could be something really interesting on your resume (say, filming lions for nature documentaries) that’s not directly relevant to what you’re going to be doing (say, selling paper for Dunder Mifflin)

    (f) increasing subjectivity or fogginess of criteria once the pool is down to two or three equally good candidates

    (g) more factors that I can’t think of at the mo’

    (Now, one could argue functional – and therefore partially meritocratic – bases for any of the above. For instance, someone who more easily establishes familiarity with coworkers could contribute more to group productivity. But so could someone who brings diversity. The neutral ground is to take “merit” to mean “standardized, rigorous, quantifiable merit”, such as years of prior relevant experience and educational attainment/training.)

    Do all of these count as Affirmative Action? Well, obviously, no. AA belongs to only a subset of all possible non-meritocratic factors – namely, those that either try to normalize for past discrimination or reduced opportunities that may have served to depress a candidate’s relevant numbers, or those that try to redress a perceived demographic imbalance, or both. There’s no contradiction between opposing special status for native US applicants and supporting AA – all it requires is for one to believe that neither of the above two reasons apply to native US applicants. Regardless of whether that judgment’s true or false in every individual case, there’s nothing inherently contradictory here.

  31. 31
    Schala says:

    Nobody, the point of affirmative action is to level the playing field, not tip it further: US-Americans are not, as a group, underprivileged.

    In theory, maybe. In practice, women get exclusive affirmative action-like incentative to studying, even though they make the majority of people in higher education already.

    There’s a program here called “Chapeau, les filles!” (translates roughly to “I tip my hat to you, girls!”) to incite women going into sciences. There is no program aimed at inciting men going into nursing however (or any men who aren’t part of a minority), even with the pretty high lack of nurses at the moment here.

    In the papers here, which is in French, whenever nurses are referred, and it isn’t a specific incident involving a male nurse, the feminine form is used. It is the “Organisation des Infirmières and Infirmiers du Québec”, but typically the “Infirmiers” (male form) is omitted. According to the last statistics I’ve seen, females make up 95% of nurses here.

    So nobody’s argument that it sounds like affirmative action isn’t all that wrong, in practice.

  32. 32
    chingona says:

    My impression is that for many here on visas, if not most, the situation isn’t so binary. They may be considering staying in the US along a sliding scale of preference, and factors that make the US a less attractive place to live push them to move back.

    That’s my impression as well. My university had a decent number of international students, and most of my friends from school who were not already citizens or permanent residents would have preferred to stay here but eventually lost their visas. The only folks I can think of who are still here are the ones who married Americans.

  33. 33
    Turtle Wexler says:

    Wow, yeah, that’s pretty sexist, Schala. It’s the association of female nurses and male nurses, and nurses are usually referred to in the feminine.

    It’s also the association of male engineers only, in Quebec. It’s the order of male pharmacists only. Both those are referred to in the masculine. The difference for nurses is that it’s so rare that people actually notice it.

    Men made up over 9% of nurses in Quebec in 2006 — not a lot, granted, but given how few people in general are going into nursing, the problem seems to be more about the salary and hours.

    FWIW, “Chapeau, les filles!” is about going into technical, trade and vocational fields, not science or engineering (except as a technician).

  34. 34
    Schala says:

    It’s also the association of male engineers only, in Quebec. It’s the order of male pharmacists only. Both those are referred to in the masculine.

    Even in very-gendered French, masculine is still the default form in language, as in, masculine also designates feminine.

    For example if I say “Un testeur de jeux vidéo” (A videogame tester), it also includes female testers (such as I). If I say “L’ordre des pharmaciens”, (Order of Pharmacists), it also includes female pharmacists. Same for engineer. Using the female form however does not include the male one.

    If you want this grammatical rule changed, petition to France or Quebec’s government so French language can refer to a group of people by either default masculine or default feminine, to include everyone.

    English is also not immune to this. I have had games with rather aimed-at-girls content, refer to the potential user as female (she, her), which I think reinforces sexist stereotypes, essentially saying “No guy would ever want to play this game, and if he does, he’s not a real man anyways.”

    FWIW, “Chapeau, les filles!” is about going into technical, trade and vocational fields, not science or engineering (except as a technician).

    I didn’t mention engineering, which I consider to be specialized enough not to be a science per se (unlike chemistry and physics which pretty much define the idea people have of science). If anything, I didn’t include it when I said “into sciences”.

    Men made up over 9% of nurses in Quebec in 2006 — not a lot, granted, but given how few people in general are going into nursing, the problem seems to be more about the salary and hours.

    Well, conditions should be ameliorated for nursing, or they’ll just go elsewhere where the grass is greener (and the paycheck a lot more appealing). But I still maintain that no program exist that help boys and men access predominantly female programs, such as secretarial or nursing, even when boys and men make up a minority of those in higher education in general.

    Ergo: My point was that affirmative action can be used for other things than leveling the playing field, or be entirely lacking (a program) to do so.

    This doesn’t really affect me, since I can’t even afford higher education, and have no desire to be considered male by anyone, even if it actually gave me tangible benefits.

    I just find it unfair that boys and men are considered “definitely advantaged” (even in schooling) when their proportion is significantly lower in higher education. They’re also not all in trades and such that require less-than-higher education.

    I have three younger brothers. One graduated high school and plans to stop there, not specialize in anything or go in trades – just work at minimum wage. The second didn’t graduate. He works at above minimum wage because he found a nice boss who liked him and his abilities (in doing physical work). The third probably won’t graduate due to a (mentally) disabling accident he got at 3 years old, he has ADHD and no interest at all in school. He might get disability benefits, this remains to be determined.

    So 0/3 are going in higher education, wether it be paid for or not (and it would be, since my father would continue paying child support for a child going in higher education). They didn’t get the “extra encouragement their female siblings didn’t get”, since their only female sibling is me, and I’m the “genius” (never needed to study, A-grade student) of the family.

    I was not particularly encouraged either, even when treated as male, and my abilities in school recognized as above-average.

    Though my father feels bad that he can’t be proud of one of his children for succeeding (ie going in college getting a degree, like he did). He says he has nothing to brag about and almost wanted us (his children) to pity him for it…

  35. 35
    sylphhead says:

    I agree that we could have stronger incentives to get men into traditionally female fields. Especially at an early age, for subjects such as English. I think the curriculum is female-biased at times, though I don’t really fault the school system so much as general literary attitudes that English teachers are reflecting: science fiction isn’t “real” fiction, reading magazines/nonfiction isn’t “real” reading, etc.

    More importantly, however, I wouldn’t be averse to applying different standards to male and female students altogether. Most inclusive public universities use a rote numerical formula involving GPA’s and SAT’s to decide enrollment, I believe. Perhaps the formula for men could be adjusted to put greater emphasis on the verbal, and for women greater emphasis on math? This would be the quick and easy solution, though I do realize there’s a slippery slope here; we could start doing this whenever there’s a social disparity between groups till there’s no semblance of a unified objective standard or transparency.

    I should say, though, Schala, that the US probably does, on the net, practice a form of affirmative action for male college students. I don’t know much about the public state schools to make pronouncements off the top of my head, but I do know most top private institutions strive to maintain a relative 50/50 gender balance in the student body. Canada is instructive of what the situation would look like if this balancing were done. All of Canada’s top schools are public, and they have much stricter laws governing this sort of thing* (sort of the same reason the UC system can’t cap Asian enrollment, I guess). 60 F/40 M gender ratios are not uncommon.

    * Having grown up in Canada, let me tell you that gaining acceptance into a Canadian university is purely about grades, there being no equivalent to the SATs up north. There’s even some schools now where apparently you write in your grades on the application website, click submit, and the next page tells you whether you got in or not. I don’t know how such a system arose, but I’m certain that left to their own devices, Queen’s and McGill would much rather go the Harvard and Princeton route. I’m sure government is behind it.

  36. 36
    Turtle Wexler says:

    I disagree that I feel magically included by the masculine in French. If the masculine made all women feel included, they never would have bothered to name the nursing order with both.

    I agree: as far as I know, there’s no push to get boys into office admin and nursing. Again, I think that the reason men do not go into nursing is that it is a poorly paid field, and that with higher pay, there would be a change. If fixing the pay structure didn’t work, then I’d support a strong push to make nursing more even. (Note for people who are living else: Quebecois are not very mobile, and do not tend to move across the country for better-paid jobs. Some do, but it’s fairly rare (historically, anyhow; it’s growing now, but it’s still uncommon here, especially compared to the US), so nursing pay in, say, Alberta is irrelevant in a discussion about Quebec. There are also language barriers.)

    But also recall that nursing and office admin are low paid, low prestige jobs. Maybe they shouldn’t be, but they are. I’m not clear why we’d want to push people into that. Unless you’re arguing that having men in these positions would change this?

    I have anecdotes about women in Quebec who didn’t continue past high school (either permanently, or temporarily, returning to school 10+ years later), and men who did. They’re pretty meaningless.

    The data support that boys drop out of school at a much higher rate than girls; they also support that these boys end up more highly paid than girls who drop out — in 2004, men without a high school diploma earned, on average, the same as women with one, and men at all levels earned more, on average, than women with the same amount of education, and often more than women with more education. So on the one hand, yes, there needs to be a commitment to keeping boys in high school; on the other hand, there’s a reason they drop out and girls don’t.

  37. 37
    Schala says:

    Do those averages count all students or only the employed ones? Do jobs count commissions and tips (retail, services) that others don’t have (anything involving warehousing, manufacturing) in wages?

    I heard about nurses being offered basically twice the wage, plus pretty competitive health plans, in the US. Most of the student body learns English as a second language. It is compulsory since 1st grade (used to be 4th grade, the 1st grade thing is recent). Where I work, in videogame testing, people can at least converse in English to some degree, and they’re mostly Quebecois as well (some people there ONLY speak English, few speak only French – we have an immigrated Californian, who can’t speak more than a few words in French, and he’s in a managerial position, so French-speaking testers have to communicate with him – in English.)

    I expect people in nursing to have a similar degree of bilinguism, though yes, most people here tend not to export their skills. Given such harsh conditions as those in nursing (what I heard of it), given a super-good opportunity in the US, I might take it.

    Oh and videogame testing is low-pay low-prestige, but hyped especially with young gamers (both boys and girls, from what I gather). I’m paid slightly above minimal wage (10 cents more, wee), with no social advantage, no insurance whatsoever, and no guarantee I won’t be fired (no union, no permanence).

    This job attracts a great majority of boys and men versus girls and women, even though it is low pay. Most are relatively young (average age is probably 21), but work full-time year-round. We get students in the summer, doubling the off-season numbers. The ratio male/female would be about 90-95/5-10%. One thing I can be glad about this is the female bathroom is pretty clean and smells good.

    My intuition is that nursing would get ratios closer to 70/30 if the stereotypes about it being a female-only jobs were done with. Videogame testing probably would get such a ratio as well, if gaming wasn’t considered the province of boys except for few “girly” games (Disney games, Barbie, pet games, Sims) which are considered acceptable for girls.

  38. 38
    Turtle Wexler says:

    Schala, it’s unfair to compare rates of bilingualism in Montreal with rates elsewhere in the province. And age matters — people under, say, 40 are much more bilingual than those over it. I’m also thinking there’s self-selection in your job. In any case, I think the language barrier has been historically part of the reason people didn’t emigrate. But I met someone who was running some tech company in Quebec, and she said the main reason she had the programmers here is that she didn’t have to match offers from NYC and Seattle and San Francisco, only offers from within Montreal — it’s much easier to have a stable workforce.

    The statistics are average hourly salaries for employees in jobs requiring different levels of education. I do not know if tips are included. The report is available in French here.

    You still have the normal rights for notice etc, even if you don’t have permanence (more or less equivalent to tenure). There aren’t many jobs that have permanence, really: education, medicine, government, police, firefighters and the trades. (Most of these tend towards having more men, in particular white de souche men.)

  39. 39
    RonF says:

    My impression is that for many here on visas, if not most, the situation isn’t so binary. They may be considering staying in the US along a sliding scale of preference, and factors that make the US a less attractive place to live push them to move back.

    The situation becomes binary once the decision is made. Someone who enters the U.S. to get a degree but has not made up their mind whether or not to stay here is not an immigrant. If they never decide to stay here and eventually leave, they were never an immigrant and are not an emigrant. If someone comes here undedcided and then decides to stay and applies for the necessary legal status once their student visa expires, then they become an immigrant.

    Most inclusive public universities use a rote numerical formula involving GPA’s and SAT’s to decide enrollment, I believe. Perhaps the formula for men could be adjusted to put greater emphasis on the verbal, and for women greater emphasis on math?

    MIT faced the opposite situation. When I attended there the sex ratio was 10:1::male:female. So among other measures they put more emphasis on good verbal scores on the SAT in that portion of the admission decision process that SAT scores were considered. Now the school is about 53:47::male:female. I’m sure that other factors figure in as well.

  40. 40
    Dianne says:

    So among other measures they put more emphasis on good verbal scores on the SAT in that portion of the admission decision process that SAT scores were considered.

    When I applied to MIT they weren’t even using SAT scores anymore.

  41. 41
    Mandolin says:

    “When I applied to MIT they weren’t even using SAT scores anymore.”

    When was that? They were using them in 2000.

  42. Pingback: the nutshell paragraph » Blog Archive » Everyone else is talking about Watchmen, so why can’t I?

  43. 42
    Schala says:

    Schala, it’s unfair to compare rates of bilingualism in Montreal with rates elsewhere in the province.

    I’m not in Montreal, I’m in Saint-Jerome. We work in Sainte-Adèle.

    You still have the normal rights for notice etc, even if you don’t have permanence (more or less equivalent to tenure). There aren’t many jobs that have permanence, really: education, medicine, government, police, firefighters and the trades. (Most of these tend towards having more men, in particular white de souche men.)

    All places with union where someone works full-time have permanence. I was a “permanent” in that warehouse company I worked 30 months at. Our pay increase was also very superior to the non-unionized office that did the bills and clerical things. I’m not sure how common it is for warehouse jobs to be unionized though, since it was my first warehouse job that actually was (and I hope my last warehouse job…).

    It might just be me, but trying to apply for a cashier position, you’ll get the stock placement position if they think you’re male. Even if you’re too small and physically weak to actually do the job. Hey, you got a M on your ID, you can do it…that gives you super strength or something.

    I was often asked to do tasks that were beyond my strength, and got fired from two jobs for not performing enough to their liking. In both case I had applied for something else than heavy work (one I wasn’t speficic, the other I applied for entry-level office). Both times I was called to do heavy work instead. I couldn’t refuse because I had run out of unemployment.

    The last warehousing job, they initially were like the others, but the job wasn’t as straining…but I eventually got to perform in terms of speed compared to more lazy co-workers when the items were light, so bosses didn’t want to fire me. I quit of my own in prevision of transitioning. No way I was doing it there (or at any work). Out of 21~26 employees, there were 2~3 female employees depending on the time (that’s just the warehouse part). Including me.

    I got beaten up and had a death threat made against me, on the job (inside the building as well). None knew about my trans status. This helped my decision to quit.

  44. 43
    chingona says:

    Someone who enters the U.S. to get a degree but has not made up their mind whether or not to stay here is not an immigrant. If they never decide to stay here and eventually leave, they were never an immigrant and are not an emigrant. If someone comes here undedcided and then decides to stay and applies for the necessary legal status once their student visa expires, then they become an immigrant.

    This is true enough when taken on its own, but it doesn’t really account for what tends to happen, at least what has happened to the people I know personally. After graduation, many of my former classmates obtained work visas – this was pre-9/11 – and many would have liked to have stayed. But it became increasingly difficult over time to keep the work visa, especially post-9/11. I have friends who worked at the same job for three or four years, with no problems, only to have a routine renewal of their visa denied and be given one month to leave the country. It is a little awkward to call them “emigrants” because many of them had not decided what they would ultimately do. Giving up your citizenship is a big deal, and many of them had not yet made that decision. But their lives were here, and this country, increasingly, was their home. Then the decision got taken out of their hands for reasons that were never made clear.

    I realize that’s not the only kind of situation the OP refers to. Some people voluntarily repatriate for a variety of reasons (and it’s always been this way for economic migrants – I’ve read that roughly half of all Italians who ever came here returned to Italy). But I think it’s important to recognize this isn’t just a matter of personal choice.

  45. 44
    Schala says:

    The statistics are average hourly salaries for employees in jobs requiring different levels of education. I do not know if tips are included. The report is available in French here.

    Hourly wages won’t include tips, since tips vary. From what I heard, serving tables pays about as much in tips as in hourly wage if you work in a restaurant with enough clients per day (doesn’t need to be that big). I heard that from people who’ve worked in Terrebonne in restaurants as cooks and cook-helpers.

    I may not be legally considered female, but that’s exactly what the problem is, rather than anything helpful. Wether or not my papers say M or F, I’ll be presenting and living as female either way. If it says M, it’s just an additional way where I might be discriminated. Pretty sure they won’t increase my pay just because of my legal status.

    Even when I presented as male, it was a disadvantage. I applied for over 20 jobs in retail, and none called. I didn’t care for the poor pay, at least it wasn’t far from home…but nope, I had to go to Anjou (from Repentigny) to work at minimal wage in a warehouse (where I applied for an office position). I also got a work accident while there. They wanted to “get rid of me” quickly enough, and the way they do that is by giving you jobs you’ll be disgusted of and that most likely will make you quit before they fire you. They made me have the work accident by trying to “disgust me” from the job. Strained back.

    Given I’ve never been representative of males physically (except where people think it counts), so I might not be the best example.

  46. 45
    RonF says:

    MIT requires either the SAT or the ACT. So technically you don’t have to take the SAT, but the bottom line is that they require a standardized test of some kind, and putting more emphasis on having a good verbal (i.e., language/communications) score was supposedly a factor in increasing the number of women there.

  47. 46
    Dianne says:

    The situation becomes binary once the decision is made. Someone who enters the U.S. to get a degree but has not made up their mind whether or not to stay here is not an immigrant. If they never decide to stay here and eventually leave, they were never an immigrant and are not an emigrant.

    There could still be ambiguous cases. For example, suppose someone plans to stay in the US permanently and goes so far as to obtain citizenship but then leaves for whatever reason. Are they emigrants? Does it count as emigration if they don’t make it clear that they are leaving permanently (i.e. changing their citizenship again)?

    Does the US even keep track of emigration statistics? If so, does anyone know where they can be obtained?

  48. 47
    Dianne says:

    When was that? They were using them in 2000

    In the late 1980s. 1985-86 to be exact. Must have been a fad. Or I’m confusing them with some other pseudo-ivy

  49. 48
    RonF says:

    If someone obtains citizenship and then leaves I’d call that emigration.