Immigration Policy and Brain Drain benefited China and India

“Human resource is the main asset which builds the nations.” This basic law of economics is being unlearn  by the policy makers of US and UK  and their national economy is paying the price. Late Apple founder of Apple Steve Jobs believed so.

Steve Jobs

Early  this year during a dinner meeting with President Obama along with some other CEOs of leading IT firms Jobs expressed his views  and  told the President, “'You're headed for a one-term presidency.” Jobs was Obama supporter, but as a professional he was not happy with the policies adopted by the US government about immigration and work permits. Apple's founder said regulations had created too many burdens on the economy.

US economy is service based  so it needs more of the trained talents and not the protectionist policies. Jobs stressed the need for more trained engineers and suggested that any foreign students who earned an engineering degree in the U.S. should be given a visa to stay in the country.

By not allowing the foreigner engineers educated at top U.S. universities to work in US, the government is forcing the companies to outsource their work. Apple  employs 7,00,000 workers in China  and  fails to get 30,000 trained engineers in US because the policy  sends them home immediately after completion of education. Along with them goes the job.

The U.S. issues 140,000 green cards a year, which is not enough to meet demand of service industry. There is one  more tag to work-permit law which says that the residents of no country can get more than 7% of the permits. This restricts the numbers of  Chinese and Indian engineers who are better in learning and more in numbers at universities.

The result of current US immigration policy is making China and India economically stronger. This also gives  a message to Indian policy makers who are not liberal in granting Visa to Chinese skilled labourers  who work far more efficiently that their Indian counterparts. By allowing them to work in India we can improve the working standards and efficiency levels.

But the answer to this suggestion by Indian Policy makers will not be different than what Barak . Obama responded to Steve Jobs, “This would have to await broader immigration reform, which I can’t accomplish in current scenario.” Politicians are same everywhere.


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