Brain Circulation

Date: Friday, May 24, 2002 2:22 PM

*** H-1B NEWSLETTER ***

Get the Facts on H-1B at
www.ZaZona.com

AnnaLee Saxenian, a professor of city and regional planning at the
University of California at Berkeley, calls these highly trained
foreign-born professionals "agents of global economic change" and then
bleets how they go home to India and China once a year to share
technology
secrets with their colleagues.

This "brain circulation" activity used to be called corporate espionage
and
spying. If corporations are so stupid and short-sighted that they will
allow
this to happen because of their lust for cheap labor that is one issue,
but
many of these H-1Bs are working at government institutions like Los
Alamos
National Labs and Lawrence Livermore Research labs. The FBI should stop
this
leaking of government secrets immediately.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11708-2002May13.htmlwashingtonpost.com
Out of Silicon Valley, and Looking Homeward

By Richard Morin and Claudia Deane

Tuesday, May 14, 2002; Page A19

Engineers and entrepreneurs from India and China who work in Silicon
Valley
are quietly fueling a high-tech revolution in their native countries in
ways
that challenge traditional notions of a "brain drain," according to a
new
study by the Public Policy Institute of California.

AnnaLee Saxenian, a professor of city and regional planning at the
University of California at Berkeley, calls these highly trained
foreign-born professionals "agents of global economic change." She found
that many of these immigrants regularly return to their native countries
to
talk tech, advise local businesses or consult with government officials
about business or technology.

Last year, Saxenian surveyed 2,273 members of the 17 leading technology
and
business professional associations in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Overall,
about 9 in 10 were born outside the United States. Of these tech
workers, 43
percent were born in India, 30 percent in China and 12 percent in
Taiwan.
The rest were from other countries.

Saxenian found evidence of a reverse brain drain. Nearly three-fourths
of
the Indian respondents and two-thirds of the Chinese said they knew
between
1 and 10 immigrant professionals who had returned home. About 3 in 4
survey
participants said they would consider starting businesses in their
native
countries.

Half of all Silicon Valley foreign-born professionals said they traveled
to
their native countries for business at least once a year. Some make the
trans-Pacific hop so often that they're called "astronauts," Saxenian
wrote,
"because they appear to spend their lives in airplanes."

According to her study, 8 in 10 reported that they shared information
about
technology with colleagues in their native countries. Four in 10 said
they
helped to arrange business contracts back home. One-third said they meet
with government officials and more than 1 in 4 served as an adviser or
consultant for a company in their country of birth, she found.

"The 'brain drain' from developing countries such as India and China has
been transformed into a more complex, two-way process of 'brain
circulation'
linking Silicon Valley to select urban centers in India and China,"
Saxenian
concluded.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

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