Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Report Sees Growing Immigrant Entrepreneur "Brain Drain"

A new report released today by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, sees an entrepreneur "brain-drain" forming in the United States, as skilled workers are returning to their home countries. The study blamed the small number of permanent U.S. resident visas being issued each year, saying that more than one million skilled immigrant workers, including scientists, engineers, doctors, and researchers, are competing for only 120,000 visas each year. The study was conducted by researchers at Duke Unviersity, New York University, and Harvard. According to the study, "Intellectual Property, the Immigration Backlog, and a Reverse Brain-Drain," 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. The study follows an earlier report from the foundation, which found that one in four engineering and technology companies founded between 1995 and 2005 were co-founded by an immigrant, and now employ 450,000 workers and generated $52 billion in revenue in 2006.

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