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The US is facing the prospect of a massive reverse brain drain with an estimated backlog of 1 million highly skilled legal immigrants in the queue for LPR (Legal Permanent Resident) status, against a total yearly allotment of just over 120,000 visas. At least 30 per cent of those in the immigration limbo are estimated to be Indians. A new report released on Wednesday, which is the third part of a study titled 'Intellectual Property, the Immigration Backlog, and a Reverse Brain-Drain - America's New Immigrant Entrepreneurs', concludes that many highly skilled visa applicants waiting in the green card-queue for...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The huge backlog in US immigration visas is leading to a "reverse brain-drain" that will force skilled workers to return to their home country, a report released Wednesday concludes. The study by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation found that more than one million potential immigrants, including scientists, engineers, doctors and researchers, are competing for 120,000 permanent US resident visas each year. The report said some applicants must wait several years, in part because the number of employment visas issued to immigrants from any single country is fewer than 10,000 per year. "The United States benefits from having...

Thousands of Canadian-trained doctors ply their trade in the U.S., study finds Helen Branswell, The Canadian Press via Canada.com, Monday, April 09, 2007 TORONTO -- One in nine trained-in-Canada doctors is practising medicine in the United States, says a study published in Tuesday’s issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal. If Canadian-educated doctors who were born in the U.S. are excluded, the number is one in 12 - and the study suggests that luring back some of these Canadian physicians would go a long way towards solving the country’s doctor shortage. While they admit the exodus has abated a...

....Rather than seeing self-esteem as something that flows from good performance, they made self-esteem the first priority, assuming that good performance would flow from an inflated level of self-satisfaction. It's like those no-score ball games. The goal is good feelings. Everyone plays, no one loses, every kid gets a trophy. It's like the teachers' contracts --- no scorecard, no linking of pay hikes to performance, everyone's a winner. It's a mind-set that sees score-keeping as too judgmental, too oppressive, too capitalist, too likely to deliver inequality and injured self-images, whether it's with pay or on the ball field....

As Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez further tightens control of the South American country's economy, wealthy Venezuelans who once thought they could live with his socialist edicts are turning to their backup plan - flight to the United States, particularly Florida. Venezuelans have long gobbled up condos and pre-construction deals in Florida as investments, but the latest buyers want homes where they can live and business properties that will help them earn a green card. "First the people who come are the businessmen in the highest circles, then the losing politicians, then the military and then the professionals," said Miami-based immigration...

Middle classes escape from Chavez socialism By Jose Orozco in Caracas, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 1:31am GMT 11/02/2007 Middle-class Venezuelans are queuing to leave the country amid fears that its president, Hugo Chavez, is laying the ground for a dictatorship. Hugo Chavez said that he intended to nationalise the telecommunications and electricity industries Opponents of his "20th century socialism" are so desperate to escape that they have resorted to learning new languages and tracking down long lost European relatives in the hope of securing a visa. At the US Embassy, visa enquiries have almost doubled in recent weeks, from 400...

California growing more slowly High cost of living seen as dampening its appeal Tyche hendricks, Chronicle Staff Writer Thursday, December 21, 2006 California's population growth rate slipped for a sixth year in a row as tens of thousands of residents left for other states, according to new estimates the state released Wednesday. Demographers said many of those who left probably were seeking a lower cost of living. New arrivals from other countries and babies born in California more than offset the departure of residents for other states, bringing California to an estimated total population of 37.4 million on July 1....

NEW ORLEANS - It wasn't the flooding that drove Dr. David Jones out of New Orleans for good. His house in the Lakeview neighborhood stayed dry. Instead, it was the way Hurricane Katrina eroded the orthopedic surgeon's practice. With fewer patients to treat and no patience for the sluggish pace of the city's recovery, he moved his family and practice to Raleigh, N.C., in July. "I love New Orleans and always will," said Jones, 39, who now works at a hospital affiliated with Duke University. "I could have made a go of it there, but it would have been slow...

A generation gone south National Post Monday, November 20, 2006 Byline: Lorne Gunter Remember the brain drain? In the late 1990s and early part of this decade, it was a hot topic for commentators and opposition politicians. Tens of thousands of skilled Canadians were leaving each year for the United States. According to all of the fables Canadians have been fed since the Trudeau era, it shouldn't have been happening. The U.S. was dark territory, Canada the peaceable kingdom. America was rife with racism, poverty, crime, gun violence and homelessness. If you got sick there, and were uninsured, you...

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Some nations face a severe brain drain in the coming decades as a direct result of the European Union's policy to increase student mobility, experts have warned. Emerging Eastern European countries in particular are being hit by the exodus of top students choosing Britain as their ideal destination for higher education, they add. Britain is emerging as their top destination for students from across Europe. These young migrants are not heading to the UK for a gap year, but to study full time in British colleges and universities. But the flow of students that leave home...

MOSCOW: Andrei Aleyev is just the kind of promising young scientist that President Vladimir Putin says he wants to persuade to stay in Russia. So, thanks to Putin, his salary will rise over the next four years ... by $200. Already earning $800 a month at his prestigious nuclear physics lab, 22-year-old Aleyev is doing well by Russian standards. But that means he will see little difference when Putin's policy on stopping the country's brain drain takes effect, with $1,000 salaries being phased in for the best researchers between 2006 and 2010. While many impoverished scientists here would dream of...

BANGALORE, India (UPI) -- India`s booming economy has set off a reverse brain drain, encouraging talented Indians trained in the West to return home to lucrative executive jobs. These jobs are being offered by Western companies setting up operations in India and letting their Indian employees manage them. Top Indian companies also are contributing to the reverse brain drain with offers of attractive jobs. No where in India is this trend more evident than in Bangalore, home of the country`s information technology industry, which triggered explosive growth in recent years. The gated community of Palm Meadows in Bangalore`s Whitefield suburbs,...

France’s Brain Drain November 9th, 2005 Writing recently in The Telegraph, columnist Mark Steyn noted that the ongoing riots in France and neighboring countries are likely to exacerbate Europe’s demographic woes. “Europe could face a continent-wide version of the ‘white flight’ phenomenon seen in crime-ridden American cities during the 1970s, as Danes and Dutch scram to America, Australia or anywhere else that will have them,” Steyn said. Those especially likely to leave include France’s 160,000 scientists, who have long been frustrated by the difficulties of doing research in their native country. In France the majority of scientists work for government-financed...

The Canadian brain drain to the U.S. used to be only a spit in the bucket for most of the twentieth century. It became a steady drizzle in the eighties, rain in the nineties and can be best described as coming down in buckets today. And so, according to the article on page A4 of today's National Post, Canada is now ready to start scouting in other countries to replace the brains we lose to the United States. This is all fine and dandy except it won't work! You see, even if Canada is successful in recruiting brains, what's stopping...

In Iran, a PhD means... Pizza Hut Delivery work Tue May 31, 2:28 AM ET TEHRAN (AFP) - The United States may see oil and terrorism as Islamic Iran's main exports, but many young people here will be quick to disagree. The Islamic republic, home to some of the most qualified young people in the Middle East, has been exporting its brain-power at an alarming rate -- with an estimated 150,000 frustrated graduates taking flight every year. And as a joke going around Iranian universities puts it, having a PhD means you're more than likely to head overseas for a...

Many argue that communism will never be possible because of "human nature". The essence of this false argument is the belief that a communist society would consist of an all-powerful central government that would tell everybody what to do--and would therefore undermine the creative initiative of individuals and the search for happiness. • This argument is based on two false assumptions: (1) It assumes that a communist society will look like the former Soviet Union, or the current China, North Korea, etc (ie: corrupt police states with a feudal-style ruling class) (2) It assumes that people will only work in...

The tide is turning. A recent US report warned that the challenge for science and technology in America is that even if it does everything right, the world (read India, China) poses unprecedented competitive challenges. Ten years ago, such a report would have been scoffed at. Not any longer. More and more Indian techies, scientists, doctors are homeward bound, giving up high-paying jobs abroad and joining R&D units, hospitals, government institutions or even their alma mater here. America's brain drain is becoming India's brain gain. "It's a really exciting time to be here," declares Kunal Bajaj, project consultant with Telecom...

CHENNAI: Concerned over the shortage of specialised doctors, India may revive a 25-year-old law to prevent them from leaving the country. "There was legislation 25 years ago which banned the outflow of doctors in specialties like cardiology, neurology and anaesthesia" and this could be revived "if the need arose", Health Minister R. Anbumani said Monday night. "They were not allowed to go abroad. If the need to restrict their outflow from the country is urgently felt, we will discuss the matter with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and see what can be done about it," he told reporters on the sidelines...

Anti-Semitism is on the rise in their homeland. Philippe Goldenstein, 39, once a bodyguard for France's Grand Rabbi Joseph Sitruk, doesn't scare easily. So when his yarmulke drew hostility on the streets of his native Paris, where anti-Semitic attacks are escalating, he fought back. ''One Arab on his bicycle called me a dirty Jew,'' he said. ``I had to beat him up.'' But like many French Jews who have settled in South Florida recently, Goldenstein and his wife, Katia, began to fear for their children, now 2 and 3 years old. ''Since the intifada started [in 2002], things are degrading...

If you had to go by the headlines, you'd be forgiven for concluding that the Old World's best and brightest all look down on an intellectually inferior America. But the truth seems to be that Europe's brightest minds are concluding that the U.S. is the place to be -- at least when it comes to the sciences. Plainly it's something that worries official Europe, which explains a recent conference in Paris dedicated to the subject. According to a European Commission survey, more than 70% of the EU-born recipients of U.S. doctorates between 1991 and 2000 planned to stay in America....