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Comment by jacobwilliamroy | Hacker News Reader

The U.S. has a brain drain problem. This is what I was trying to explain to all my friends who jumped ship after the 2016 presidential election. The only way to save the U.S. is for all the good people to stay but "noooooooooooooooo", all the smart people wanted to run off to canada or germany or whatever.

Please come back. It's getting really bad.

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your bubble does not represent reality. the u. s. is and has been the destination for brain drain for decades. and our decades long green card application list shows it’s not going anywhere

Maybe your bubble doesn't represent reality.

Ten years ago the U.S. was the default destination to go and get rich as a tech worker. Now, I don't think I know anyone who wouldn't have serious misgivings about moving there.

Anecdotal, but: I work in an engineering department at a major U.S. university. Non-citizen grad students (i.e. grad students) I personally know -- and their friends at other universities -- upon graduation decided to seek (and obtained) employment abroad (Netherlands, Canada are the two countries I know of) rather than stay in the U.S. Before Trump they wouldn't have considered this.

I doubt our handling of the covid-19 crisis has helped, either. My wife is German and in frequent contact with her family in Germany. They look at us with pity. I feel like my country has really lost its shine. Maybe permanently (hopefully not).

Things have changed. Young budding engineers, researchers, medical professionals and others are actively choosing not to come any longer. This has rippling effects. Once this cohort settles into their lives in whatever country, they will be less inclined to come to the US.

It's not too hard to imagine. Serious people with kids and families will never come to a place where they are harassed or their lives can be uprooted by a bureaucratic process abruptly.

Things were different until a few years ago and all the immigrants and tech companies you see today are the rewards of seeds down earlier.

I think that has reversed for Europeans at least somewhat. I’ve talked to a German very successful Havard Professor, who considered a move back to Germany because of the situation in the US. I personally would have loved to work in the US at some point in the past, now I am not sure it is worth it.

I have a lot of French and Indian friends that we have met in the Bay Area in the last seven years. 7 out of 8 of the French tech workers we met here have gone back to France within 5 years. Out of the 40 or so Indian immigrant tech folks I know, there have been very few recent immigrations, a lot of the flow dropped off about three to four years ago, all preferring to go to Europe or Canada. Of those who did come here before that time period, around 5-6 have gone back to India, as the number of unicorns in Bangalore have increased and salaries in tech giants there are pretty good now. Another 2-3 left for Europe. All of them are elite school grads from India.

The reasons cited are mostly (1) random lottery to move from f1 to h1b, with less than 50% chance of making it, (2) the decades long queues for h1b to green card with lots of process overhead, low certainty, random restrictions on travel and arbitrary changes in immigration laws.

The queues will still be long for years to come, as the old applications clear out... But the trend downward has already started.

Brain drain happens because of compensation and some way to immigrate. The Canadian tech industry still does not pay nearly as well as the Canadian side or the rest of the world for the most part.

The people in Canada who 'would have went to the USA' are there because of immigration dice.

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