Skilled foreign workers in the United States are controversial for a variety of reasons. They get caught up in the politics of immigration and what people call a brain drain from other countries.
But UC San Diego economics professor Gaurav Khanna said those who see migration in that negative way mistakenly believe that it’s a zero-sum game.
“When immigrants come they take away jobs so it must be zero-sum,” Khanna said. “On the other side, when you think of origin countries – the countries that send immigrants – there's also an idea that this is a zero-sum gain in the sense that you’re losing the brightest minds when these folks leave the country.”
But he said a close look at the data reveals that there are not just winners and losers when students and workers migrate to the U.S. The situation is much more nuanced and generally quite positive.
Khanna is co-author of a paper that was published in the journal Science. He said he and his fellow scholars from several universities examined records of visa applications, administrative data and patent data, to understand cross-border innovations.
In light of the research, Khanna suggests migration is a win-win situation, even as it defies many hopes and expectations.
Consider the example of an Indian native trained in science or engineering who dreams of getting a high-paying job in Silicon Valley. But their work visa runs out or they can’t get one in the first place.
“So they stay back in India,” said Khanna, himself a migrant from India. “But what that means is that in India there is a skilled workforce. Right? They’re trained and ready to work. Then Indian firms tap into the skilled workforce and the Indian tech boom takes off.”
American firms also see that skilled workforce overseas so they choose to off-shore jobs to India. Khanna says a similar situation has occurred with Filipino nurses trained in the U.S.
“The US really needed a lot of nurses. So they made it easier for Filipino nurses to come to the U.S. But what that led to was a lot of women in the Philippines getting nursing degrees and started going to medical school. Right? And over time there was a big increase in the health care sector in the Philippines," Khanna said.
And those Filipino nurses who did get jobs in the U.S? They sent a lot of money back home, creating more wealth for their families and more educational options for Filipino kids.
Khanna said reverse migration plays a big role in understanding the economic implications of migration to the United States. A big county with a big economy, like China, is much more likely to see its young people return home after gaining skills in the U.S.
That means engineers trained at American universities may return to China to compete with American companies in the global marketplace.
So what has the U.S. gained from the migration and training of skilled foreign workers?
Khanna said America has benefitted from an expanding tech economy that relies on foreign workers. He also points to what he calls the downstream benefits of the innovations that also come from foreign workers.
“If you think of the car manufacturing sector in Detroit, it’s a long way from Silicon Valley,” Khanna said. “But it uses a lot of software, not only in the production process but our cars have software in it. Now, that innovation actually occurred in Silicon Valley by a bunch of Indian immigrants.”
Americans of most political stripes see things in this global economy that they don’t like. But Khanna argues that the end result is not a brain drain, but a brain gain for all the countries involved.
