Each year more than one million highly skilled immigrant workers, including scientists, engineers, doctors and researchers and their families, compete for 120,000 permanent U.S. resident visas. According to a recent study of immigration statistics entitled "Intellectual Property, the Immigration Backlog, and a Reverse Brain-Drain," the disparity between the large number of skilled workers waiting for visas and the small number that can be admitted to the U.S. is creating a potentially sizeable reverse brain-drain of highly skilled labor from  the U.S. to the workers' home countries.
 

Neera Bahl joined Dixit & Youn, LLP as an associate in 2005. Before joining the firm, Ms. Bahl interned at the Jimmy Carter Center (Human Rights Division); worked as a Constituent Representative for U.S. Rep. Denise Majette (GA Dem. '04-'05), focusing on immigration issues; and served as law clerk for Fulton County Superior Court Judge Gail S. Tusan. Licensed in Georgia ,

The study, conducted at Duke, NYU and Harvard, found that most Indian and Chinese foreign nationals in the U.S. have graduate degrees - a highly desired asset in their home countries' newly thriving economies- and rather than endure the long green card application process many are
returning home. In 2003, approximately one in five new legal immigrants in the United States and about one in three employment-based new legal  immigrants either planned to leave the United States or were uncertain about remaining.

Earlier research revealed a dramatic increase in the contributions of foreign nationals to U.S. intellectual property over an eight-year period. The latest study, however, offers a more refined measure of this change and seeks to explain this increase with an analysis of the immigrant-visa backlog for skilled workers. The key finding from this research is that the number of skilled workers waiting for visas is significantly larger than the number that can be admitted to the United States. This imbalance creates the potential for a sizeable reverse brain-drain from the United States to the skilled workers' home countries.
Celeste Wells, a human resources consultant specializing in international work permits and residency issues, said the impact of the H-1B backlog is being felt both on research university campuses and in the private sector. "Given that the U.S. comparative advantage in the global economy is in creating knowledge and applying it to business" said Robert Litan, vice president of Research and Policy at the Kauffman Foundation "it behooves the country to consider how we might adjust policies to reduce the immigration backlog, encourage innovative foreign minds
to remain in the country, and entice new innovators to come."

The US employers should urge Congress to take immediate steps to address the crisis facing American businesses as a result of an H-1B "blackout" and serious employment-based (EB) green card backlogs. Companies seeking access to the best and brightest global talent have been confronted with an unprecedented 18-month restriction on access to new H-1B temporary professional employees and multi-year delays in EB green cards for permanent hires. This is in addition to the 16-month H-1B blackout we suffered the prior fiscal year.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that the FY 2008 numerical cap limiting the H-1B program for workers was reached on April 2, 2007, the very first day H-1B petitions could be filed this year. The USCIS received over 130,000 H-1B petitions that day, well over the statutory limit. That means that H-1B petitions will undergo a random lottery to determine which ones will actually be selected for processing. This also means that U.S. companies are being denied access to topflight global talent for 18 months, disrupting-if not destroying-crucial research and development projects in critical industries. It will also retard technological innovation and undermine our ability to create and sustain domestic employment opportunities.
A similar crisis is occurring with EB green cards. Because these visas are distributed equally among all countries, with a quota set for each country, backlogs have resulted for individuals coming from high-demand countries, even when the overall cap has not been reached and regardless of the fact that these high-demand countries are often the only source of individuals capable of filling high-skilled jobs American businesses need. Once the quota is met for nationals of a given country, only those who applied before a set cut-off date are able to get visas. The rest are forced to spend up to seven years waiting, unable to become true stakeholders in our country, putting their lives on hold in the hopes that a green card will eventually become available to them. Not surprisingly, these talented professionals often tire of waiting and leave the U.S. to put their knowledge and skills to use in other countries eager to compete with and surpass the U.S.
Every day that passes without access to these high-skilled workers is a lost opportunity for growth, productivity, and innovation. If U.S. companies do not gain immediate access to the best and brightest, the competitors on the global stage will continue to advance and America's competitive advantage will decline. Global competition is no longer for the control of raw materials, but for this productive knowledge. The H-1B blackout and employment-based (EB) green card backlogs are bad for business, and only relief from restrictive caps and unwarranted delays will improve the situation.