Why Skilled Immigrants Are Leaving the U.S.

BusinessWeek Online Article – Via Yahoo News
By Vivek Wadhwa

This is an extremely interesting article by Mr. Wadhwa which highlights the affects of the broken US Immigration System.  Years of backlogs and additional unnecessary delays owing to overworked and untrained service center staff, out-of-date regulations and laws are creating a vacuum within the highest ranks of this nation’s academic, business and professional sectors. 

Excerpts:

“At the end of 2006, more than 1 million skilled professionals (engineers, scientists, doctors, researchers) and their families were in line for a yearly allotment of only 120,000 permanent resident visas. The wait time for some people ran longer than a decade. In the meantime, these workers were trapped in “immigration limbo.” If they changed jobs or even took a promotion, they risked being pushed to the back of the permanent residency queue.
…
Why should we care? Because immigrants are critical to the country’s long-term economic health. Despite the fact that they constitute only 12% of the U.S. population, immigrants have started 52% of Silicon Valley‘s technology companies and contributed to more than 25% of our global patents. They make up 24% of the U.S. science and engineering workforce holding bachelor’s degrees and 47% of science and engineering workers who have PhDs.”

Read Article