Brain Drain in the USA

Interesting (and not unexpected but still not all that good) demographic. From MS/NBC / Business Week:

Skilled immigrants fleeing the U.S.
The �brain drain� is reversing as the recession slashes jobs, opportunities

Lured by the prospect of climbing to the top of his field, New Delhi native Swaroop Ganguly came to the U.S. 10 years ago and earned a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 2005.

He became an expert in an emerging technology called spintronics, used to power semiconductors, and worked at several chip companies, including Freescale Semiconductor. But Ganguly, now 32, is moving back to India this summer.

Although he has been doing postdoctoral work at the University of Texas, he figures his prospects for research and professional development are probably better in his home country. "I feel quite excited about going back," he says.

Ganguly has already accepted a job as a professor of electrical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. The position will pay a fraction of the salary he had been earning in the private sector�about $15,000 compared with $100,000�but it will offer considerably more job security and the freedom to do the exploratory research he wants to do.

"The real lure of being in the U.S. is to do really innovative work, but the space for that seems to be shrinking," he says. "The Indian government is putting a huge amount of funding into science and technology, so even if they can't pay high salaries, it's an attractive prospect."

Not mentioned but obvious is that it is a lot cheaper to live over there. Get in on the ground floor and these people will be golden. It is a shame that the US companies have outsourced so much of our basic manufacture as this is the engine that really drives R&D and the tech market. Sure, you can manufacture a television set for cheaper in China but you are also training all of those Chinese technicians to compete with us and when they reach parity and when we no longer have the ability to tool up a manufacturing line, our days will be if not over, greatly diminished. If the US was a star, we would become a red giant...