China provides many opportunities for its citizens to study abroad and expand their horizons, and the US is happy to take that money and nearly free brain labor. But when the fruits of all that training is ripe to pluck, the scale flips and now it is a fight between those two countries to retain the talents. And the US is losing badly.
Maybe China is playing it dirty and forces these scientists to come back. Or maybe it is simply that the US immigration is so hostile they don't see a future here. One of the main reasons people tried to go here is because of a chance of a better life. But when the naturalization process is so grueling and drawn out, they just don't bother anymore. Especially when China in big cities is providing pretty high standards of living to its citizens. Sure, "freedom" and "human rights" are something but frankly, those concerns are not relevant when we are talking about the upper class Han people. Stereotypes of rich Asian international students exist for a reason and that is because many of them come from rich and influential families. To these people, as long as you don't stir things up politically, they will feel safer and enjoy more rights in China than in the US.
Lots of US citizens do not understand the pain of immigration. It is in every way a demeaning and torturous process. You get treated like second class human beings and are forced to fight and prove you deserve something others were simply born with. There must be an incentive for these people to endure that kind of process. And for many Chinese whose homeland in every way a direct competitor to the US, there aren't enough reasons.
Odd to frame it that we're losing badly because /some/ Chinese scientists are going back to China but tons of them are still staying here, and the reverse is simply not happening at any scale.
If you want to see America in decline, you'll see it everywhere you look.
The US is losing it. If you do not consider a 5-folds increase in the number of Chinese scientists leaving the US an issue worth addressing, then that is just ignoring the problem.
The US had it very good in the past. And that helped it retain its top spot. But it also means once you are at the top, if you don't keep going up at the same rate as others, you are going down. And trends of losing steam can sometimes get swept under the rug because of "we are number one" sentiment.
yeah. for a few years, but especially recently, every time I re-enter the USA, I cannot help but think, for a long time, how it feels like such decline is so visible everywhere.
It feels quite dispiriting. I'm not sure I'd go to china as my first choice, especially as I don't speak mandarin or cantonese, but I'd _love_ to leave the USA. There's many great options I'd consider. Maybe in a year or two, I'll be hailing from outside the USA!
Losing badly against the status quo. The trend is in the wrong direction, even though in absolute numbers the US is still winning the talent war. But not if it keeps changing this way.
Immigration is no small feat and when the US govt throws suspicions at immigrants and makes their life difficult, it becomes an easy choice to call it quit, admit defeat and just go back to a known quantity where you'll be treated better.
I bet you if the US attitude was opposite, the vast majority of these folks wouldn't go back.
Agree with the odd framing. Because some Chinese scientists are going back to China, doesn't mean America has lost the game. There is lots of brain power in the world, not only from China. America gets and can get smart immigrants from many other places.
Agreed, the US immigration system is only just barely decent to you if you're a highly skilled scientist in an in-demand field, but when your home country is quickly catching up on offering good opportunities and can pay more relative to cost of living, it's understandable that they're increasingly choosing not to stay.
Especially if they're of Chinese or Russian origin, it's many years of fighting to prove you deserve to be here with increased scrutiny whenever it's politically favorable for whoever is in charge.
Even with India, immigration is such a grueling process, with just another decade or so of development to create more opportunities and we'll probably be seeing a similar process with Indians. India even has a slightly lower barrier in that compared to Russia and China there's less totalitarianism to make people prefer the US.
US Immigration bad? 3 million Indian H1B's have arrived in the last 20 or so years. How can it be bad? The US accepts more immigrants every year than any other country in the world, how can it be bad?
>>> It is in every way a demeaning and torturous process. You get treated like second class human beings and are forced to fight and prove you deserve something others were simply born with
Did you have a very bad experience with US immigration? I've been dealing with it for a couple of decades, from non immigrant visas to GC and while its definitely a pain in the ass, it hasn't been anything like that^.
There's a lot of waiting, and a lot of uncertainty and anxiety but it was never personal for me or anyone I know.
There was just a few days ago an AMA by a US immigration lawyer filed to the brim with stories of rich tech workers in all sorts of ridiculous scenarios at the hands of absurd US immigration policy and personnel.
Personally I got married due to visa issues and then had to leave the US for a year and a half (spent in London) until we got the greencard. This and all the paperwork and the shitty way they talk to people at the border is nothing compared to the other people I know that either couldn’t work (or their spouse couldn’t work) due to the visa type OR they were slaves of their employers til they got their greencard. Fuck US immigration.
That being said I’ve heard my country (France) isn’t that much better when it comes to handling immigration.
My experience matched yours, and I am not Caucasian, but I completed mine well over a decade ago and it was a normal application.
I believe immigration policy has had a major change around seven years ago for the worse. This is anecdotal, but one of my uni friends is a from an allied country (S Korea) and he had a terrible experience. I don’t remember all the details, but the process seems years longer now and they treated him like he was an enemy spy even though he’s been here for decades prior, has published several papers, and likely has no connections with anything sketchy. Most people would have just said fuck it and went back home. Thankfully, he endured and is now tenured as a CompE prof.
Imo the US is likely no longer reaping the benefits from the brain drain due to the new draconian policies for legal immigration. It is a dumb (or even racist) overreaction when you lump in even people from allied countries in light of the chip war
The only thing I can say is that yes I had bad experiences with them. The kinds of scrutiny and restrictions they put on me made me feel like a criminal even though I have not even a speeding ticket in this country. I am not comfortable saying anything else.
May I ask what is your birth country? From what I know, it depends a lot on where you come from.
I'm a natural-born US citizen and it has repeatedly been a serious pain for me. One such case... I was managing a team that was hiring someone away from another company. That person was in the US on an H-1B visa. When we put in the application to transfer her visa, the government responded with an RFE (Request For Evidence). They wanted evidence that we truly needed her skills, that we couldn't find a US citizen with the same skills, and that we weren't just a staffing agency (the last one was silly - the company is a household name in the US with a large engineering org and no connection whatsoever to staffing).
Our immigration lawyers' first advice was to rescind the offer as it wasn't worth the work unless the new hire was truly exceptional. This was at a time when RFE success rates where at an all time low (our lawyers told us to expect a 90% chance of failure). We believed she was worth it, so we decided to move forward. The lawyers also told us that we only get one shot - there is no second chance or appeal. So you must provide overwhelming evidence.
It consumed my time for weeks, making all kinds of other things fall behind, all with no guarantee of paying off. And she was riddled with stress throughout the process. The lawyers gave me a laundry list of tasks to do. I ended up producing ~100 pages of documentation about what the team did, what she would do in a typical day, examples of what her work product would be, how it was connected to the company's business, and why it required a graduate degree in mathematics. Some of that was difficult as our lawyers said I couldn't reveal the nature of our proprietary algorithms because these documents are treated as private. On top of demonstrating that it required a graduate degree, we had to demonstrate why a US citizen with nothing more than a high school education could not do the job (and evidence that a PhD in math was needed was not enough according to our lawyers).
Part of it involved me spending two hours being interviewed by a math prof from a top US university. The first hour was convincing him that I knew enough math to know what I was talking about (kind of like my first math final in 30 years). Then explaining enough about the systems the team worked on to convince him that it required an advanced math degree. Luckily he was fascinated by our problems/solutions and every idea he brought up about approaches to try were things we had already incorporated or ruled out. Helping him understand why they did / did not work ended up being pretty convincing.
After we supplied our RFE response, we waited for another month or two. Luckily her transfer was approved. She started a week later and I'm glad we put in the work - she was amazing.
To tie it back to the article, two years later she left to move back to China because she wanted to have kids and she didn't want them exposed to the overt racism that she faced in the US (especially the horrific behavior she faced in the weeks leading up to lockdown). And going back was no easy task. She applied for jobs at ~20 companies there. She received two offers and took one of them in Beijing. When she got there, she learned that they had over 1,000 applicants with PhDs for the single position she filled. It's hard to imagine that level of competition. We wouldn't have had to go through the RFE pain if so much talent were available in the US. But she was happy to face that competition to raise her kids in China.
I have a colleague from China who originally tried to move to the US. He became so disillusioned by the process that he gave up and tried Japan instead, as it provides a similar level of freedom. Within 3 years of just working a regular software job and studying the language, he got permanent residency. A lawyer did all of the heavy lifting. Just an anecdote, but maybe an example of the US losing talent to its insane immigration system.
Japan is a nation whose birthrates are so low its own government speaks of extinction of the japanese people. They aren't exactly in a position to refuse immigrants. The US won't be either if current trends continue.
I think you’re vastly overestimating the degree to which the us government wants to keep them here, and I’d be far from surprised to see caps put in place for Chinese student visas within the next five years.
> Maybe China is playing it dirty and forces these scientists to come back.
Or maybe 'China provides many opportunities for its citizens to study abroad and expand their horizons' and their citizens want to help their own country in turn?
> Sure, "freedom" and "human rights" are something but frankly
Nobody immigrates for 'freedom' and 'human rights'? Everyone immigrates for 'better life' - money. And what freedom and human rights do the chinese lack?
> You get treated like second class human beings and are forced to fight and prove you deserve something others were simply born with.
Good. Why should non-citizens be treated the same as citizens? Every country should treat their citizens better than non-citizens.
> There must be an incentive for these people to endure that kind of process.
'Freedom' and 'human rights'. Funny isn't it? It's sounds so stupid when you say it out loud and yet the dumb masses believe it.
> And for many Chinese whose homeland in every way a direct competitor to the US, there aren't enough reasons.
Good. It means china is advancing and providing opportunities for their own people. These chinese scientists should go home and help create china's harvard, mit, etc. And hopefully india, south america, africa and rest of the world follows china's example. The blueprint is there and if china is able to develop then so can the rest of the world.
>The United States is home to the highest number of immigrants in the world. An estimated 50.6 million people in the United States—a bit more than 15% of the total population of 331.4 million—were born in a foreign country. The number of immigrants in the U.S. has increased by at least 400% since 1965.
By the way, the USA takes more immigrants every year than any other country in the world. I myself went through the process and was treated with complete respect and it wasn't easy but well worth it to become an American and be welcomed into the Land of Milk and Honey.
The US was a lot of things. It still is on some fronts, but others have seen decline.
Your experience was certainly true. It is why so many are trying to come here. But things have changed and the experience is not what it used to be. If you think it was difficult before, think about how it has to be now for people to choose to go back instead of persevering. The trend is clear. Things changed. The US can either fix it and remain competitive by hoarding talents. Or it will continue to deteriorate.
There are always warning signs. Immigration laws has been called antiquated and desperately in need of reform for a long time. Your sentiment of "it was good in my time" is how hegemons like Britain fell.
Maybe they have the highest number of immigrants, but as a percentage of the population other nations are higher and USA is very far down. Canada, Norway, Sweden are all higher... USA isn't even in the top 50 when looking at total % of the population.
This is true, but not exclusive to China and the Chinese people. I've immigrated to the US from Europe about 13 years ago and it was a very legally and financially painful process. I've since acquired a B.S.,M.S.,and a Ph.D. in a highly desirable specialization and haven't been able to find a job in the US. This country has left me poor, in debt and hopeless. My wife and I are packing our bags and moving back to Europe. I don't see any opportunity for myself or my children in this declining, chaotic, money hungry country.
Is it just simply because there were 5 folds more Chinese people study in US from a decade ago?
I don’t like the word “send”. AFAIK China was not paying for their tuitions.
This is surprising to hear, is there any hard data on this? My naive assumption would be that US benefits from brain drain in vast majority of situations.
On the flip side; what exactly does US society provide to Chinese (and to a lesser extent, Indians) ?
They're constantly demonized by the media. They're treated as essentially 'devil-worshipping' orientals ('Communism' for China; 'Hinduism' for Indians). They have to deal with 60s-era racially-motivated immigration laws that limit the same number of Green-Cards for Norway/Sweden (and other tiny 5-million large countries) as that for each of China/India.
On some level the Americans (and Westerners) can't come to terms with their own glaring hypocrisy. They are intense ethno-nationalists but will pretend to be anything but, and claim their own culture is universal and anyone who doesn't subscribe to it is the devil's pawn. (To wit, the LGBTQ flag is now a more obvious fixture in front of US embassies).
Asians are too, but they aren't obsessed with it, nor do they over do it due to not having a 'religion' hang over them culturally (other than ofc. when they're 'saved' by some occidental import; Buddhism etc. are not 'religions').
Indians atleast have to contend with essentially a vestigial-colonial state that is essentially a kleptocracy which just happens to be run by people who're 'liked' by the 'global elite' because they're, very much like zealous RW Xtian nuts, destroying India's historical 'pagan' culture and language (India's constitution for instance denies Hindus religious rights, unlike that for Xtians/Muslims; and imposes English on a large population that barely understands it).
China (like imperial Japan) too was 'liked' when they were destroying their own culture/traditions for 'secular Xtianity'. Not anymore I guess.
I half agree. What pisses me off though is that a lot of Chinese people who immigrate to the US still can’t say anything bad about their own country and just shove any criticism under the idea that western media just hates China. I’d pick US nationalism over Chinese nationalism.
how is it "a demeaning and torturous process", above and beyond dealing with any faceless bureaucracy (i.e. dealing with the DMV, IRS, or even airline lost baggage departments, or your local cable company)?
"you get treated like second class human beings and are forced to fight and prove you deserve something others were simply born with." isn't this effectively the situation with immigrating to any desirable country (and even some undesirable ones)?
Well, for starters, there are many points of the process where your entire future is down to the mood of the immigration officer at the airport. Making it so that the safest way to not have to potentially uproot your entire life in hours is to just keep your head down and be a good little indentured servant until you get lucky in a lottery.
Happened to travel internationally, either to see family for a week or for a conference in the 3 years between finishing your education and getting a chance at an H1B? Maybe they'll let you back in, maybe they won't, no one can say.
Happened to study and work here for over a decade, slaved away for an employer to convince them to sponsor your residency?, Employer screws up your green card application after pushing it off till the H1B limit, you get screwed and have to leave with zero recourse.
It's no wonder illegal immigration is such a big issue here, especially with sanctuary cities, you come and stay illegally and governments will bend over backwards to help you stay, you come here, get an advanced education and work hard to remain in legal status for a significant chunk of your life, supporting yourself financially and giving back to the country and you get kicked out for something that wasn't even your fault.
In comparison DMVs and even the IRS aren't renowned for being in the habit of completely wrecking someone's life's plans over the mood of one random person. There are pretty blatantly wrong things people have to do (and keep doing) for the DMV or IRS to have a similar impact on their lives.
The irony is in how the US claims to be all about equality and opportunity. But then it treats one of the most productive classes of its residents as second class who do not deserve some basic legal protections.
Still, to answer your question, the difference is in the number of dealings an immigrant has to go through and the consequences if any of these goes badly. If you mess up your DMV meeting every 5 years, no big deal. You failed to update your address in your annual license renewal as an immigrant? That is a potential black mark that can get your green card denied and your life ruined.
Maybe it is the case for every country to treat immigrants like that. But when the US is built by immigrants, it should have an incentive to do better than that. Otherwise, why would people immigrate here instead of all the other "desirable" countries, or maybe just come back home? In such situations, sure, the US hasn't done wrong. It simply had done worse than it used to. And that can be a subjective sign of decline depending on how you look at it.
The immigration system has a duty to the citizens, not to the immigrants - except as far as it preserves human rights and serves the citizens.
You’re not entitled to citizenship. We didn’t get it by birth alone, we got it because our lineage dedicated their life to building this country into what it is and passed it on to their children.
That you have this entitlement towards US citizenship means you don’t deserve it at all.
That is false. Check the 14th amendment on jus soli. Your own constitution, written by the founders of your country disagrees with you.
By standards of the US citizenship test. You do not qualify for citizenship.
See how arbitrary it is? Also statistically, per person, immigrants contribute to the US more than its own citizens. Your attempt of using "lineage" is so ridiculous I don't know what to say. If you truly believe that, then we should have kings and queens again because their "lineages" sure are prestigious and contribute a lot to the country.
But of course, the US founders were vehemently against it, as written in the constitution and the declaration of independence. So I guess you again proved you failed the citizenship test.
> Among the scientists of Chinese descent who left the US in 2010, 48% moved to China, and 52% relocated to other countries.
Given the half/half split, this is less about China and more about the US (also discussed in the article, but to clarify as some comments seem to assume the contrary)
continuing, article claim is that 5 years of US counter-intelligence investigation of chinese nationals has resulted in many unjust dismissed investigations and chinese scientists fear being accused.
A clearly biased view that ignores the unusually high number of Chinese exchange students and researchers that were caught performing military surveillance. One could just as easily blame China for creating a hostile environment rather than US immigration policy, which is among the most lenient of any country. Let's not ignore the fact that the US takes in more legal immigrants per capita than any other country. And that's aside from illegal immigrants, which are estimated to also number more per capita than any other country.
If the goal is to gain research, appealing to countries other than China, may simply be a safer bet. That is unless the US assumes Chinese immigrants are somehow better than other countries of origin. And if they did, it would be just as discriminatory.
Considering the way the US was mistreating researchers of Chinese descent, charging them criminally for forgetting to list an offhand meeting with a single person of the many they might have met in China, in one of many grant requests they submitted.
Punishing the many for the crimes of a handful of people was obviously gonna result in something like this.
That being said, it will be interesting to see if this trend has continued. The data here is only till 2021 and since then the US has ended the more blatantly racist persecution, China’s growth story has stalled, and Xi Jinping has gone into full arbitrary authoritarian mode.
1. The FBI has been ruthlessly persecuting Chinese people with absolutely absurd charges. For example, "In a grant application you didn't list that you had met for coffee with X other student from your alma mater when you visited China for Lunar New Year. This constitutes fraud and possibly espionage." A grant application is not an SSBI application! These are genuinely absurd standards to be applying to people. The fact that the FBI has been overwhelmingly losing these racially motivated cases is cold comfort - having extremely powerful secretive police harassing you and your family is extremely distressing even if their case against you is ultimately unsuccessful, and the fact that they know they're losing and keep doing it suggests their intent is to try and discourage you from talking to any of your friends or family back in China, or leave the country. Careful what you wish for.
2. Declared academic collaboration between academic institutions in the US and China is being cracked down on as well. People and their families are being investigated with no evidence given as to why, the federal government is contacting US universities and convincing them to end collaborative programs, etc. The reasons given, if any, are that the Chinese are stealing American technology through these academic collaborations. Thinking for two seconds about what, exactly, an academic collaboration is intended to accomplish should show how absurd the "stealing" idea is.
3. A lot of the most valuable work in academia is collaborative, and a lot of the specific career value in being a Chinese national or having Chinese family ties in US academia is that you can function as an expert go-between for the two largest and most important countries for scientific research. When the US is not just devaluing but actively stigmatising some of your skills, it can force people to choose. The US is richer per capita, has more freedoms in many respects, etc, but the persecution by police is going to impact your assessment of where you'd rather live, especially when the PRC has open arms, lots of grant money, and scientists have a good position in society there too.
4. Hate crimes against Chinese people have been increasing dramatically for years. Chinese communities know this and also see very clearly that it's not a priority for either political party to do anything about it. Not much to say about this, it's obvious why you wouldn't want to live somewhere where there are enough people in the population committing hate crimes against you that most people are in community with a victim, and then there's no political will to do anything about it.
4. There's genuine concern about the possibility of war. If you know anyone in the American military, you know that war with China is on everyone's mind. Different dates get floated, from 2030 to 2027 to 2025, but it's essentially received wisdom in the US military that there is going to be a war in the westpac theatre at some point. This view ("We should be prepared") is also essentially bipartisan in the political realm, and American media are doing their part too. Chinese people notice, they can see the current (illegal, racist) persecution by the government, and most of them have enough historical knowledge to understand that the dynamics that lead to the Japanese internment camps haven't fundamentally changed - the camps themselves weren't even ruled to be illegal until 2018, only 5 years ago! If you were Chinese, would you want to stay in America and take the risk that you might end up confined to a camp, or wearing an ankle bracelet with a microphone everywhere just so the government can say that they didn't put a particular ethnic minority in literal camps? Genuinely, would you take that risk, with what you know about America? If the American government goes to war with China, and they decided on this sort of large scale persecution of Chinese people, do you think that any significant quantity of Americans with any political power would stand up for the Chinese people in America, or would it be like 9/11 where the government persecuted Muslims en masse and there was zero political will to stop them for years?
> The team also conducted a survey in 2021–2022 of nearly 1400 Chinese Americans in tenured or tenure-track positions at US universities that revealed that 35% of them feel unwelcome, and 72% do not feel safe.
> Furthermore, 42% are fearful of conducting research in the US, 65% are worried about pursuing collaborations with China and 86% perceive that it is harder to recruit top international students now compared with five years ago. Of the survey respondents who have obtained US federal grants 45% say that they will avoid applying for such awards for fear of making mistakes in the application process that could lead to them being investigated.
So...what % of white American scientists would leave a European country in which they did probably not feel safe, perhaps felt unwelcome, etc., etc.?
But my point was that Chinese-descent scientists in America might be rational human beings, making decision about where to live and work based on their perceptions of the risks, costs & benefits. Not some "tired, poor, huddled masses, yearning to breathe free" out of a simplistic American Patriotism story.
Anecdotal, so take it with a grain of salt: but similar things have been and are happening with scientists from other countries.
From the family grapevine, I've heard that other Ukranians, Russians, and others from former Soviet states at places like Fermilab with impressive degrees are leaving the country after 25+ years. Some of them have left because they could never really get a foothold in the country, and others because they feel they are just tired of it after so long. Compared to how things were after the collapse of the Union, it has improved, it's more tempting to go back now than to stay. QoL has never been as good as it is now, unless of course you're a military aged male))
Readit News
Maybe China is playing it dirty and forces these scientists to come back. Or maybe it is simply that the US immigration is so hostile they don't see a future here. One of the main reasons people tried to go here is because of a chance of a better life. But when the naturalization process is so grueling and drawn out, they just don't bother anymore. Especially when China in big cities is providing pretty high standards of living to its citizens. Sure, "freedom" and "human rights" are something but frankly, those concerns are not relevant when we are talking about the upper class Han people. Stereotypes of rich Asian international students exist for a reason and that is because many of them come from rich and influential families. To these people, as long as you don't stir things up politically, they will feel safer and enjoy more rights in China than in the US.
Lots of US citizens do not understand the pain of immigration. It is in every way a demeaning and torturous process. You get treated like second class human beings and are forced to fight and prove you deserve something others were simply born with. There must be an incentive for these people to endure that kind of process. And for many Chinese whose homeland in every way a direct competitor to the US, there aren't enough reasons.
If you want to see America in decline, you'll see it everywhere you look.
The US had it very good in the past. And that helped it retain its top spot. But it also means once you are at the top, if you don't keep going up at the same rate as others, you are going down. And trends of losing steam can sometimes get swept under the rug because of "we are number one" sentiment.
It feels quite dispiriting. I'm not sure I'd go to china as my first choice, especially as I don't speak mandarin or cantonese, but I'd _love_ to leave the USA. There's many great options I'd consider. Maybe in a year or two, I'll be hailing from outside the USA!
Immigration is no small feat and when the US govt throws suspicions at immigrants and makes their life difficult, it becomes an easy choice to call it quit, admit defeat and just go back to a known quantity where you'll be treated better.
I bet you if the US attitude was opposite, the vast majority of these folks wouldn't go back.
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Especially if they're of Chinese or Russian origin, it's many years of fighting to prove you deserve to be here with increased scrutiny whenever it's politically favorable for whoever is in charge.
Even with India, immigration is such a grueling process, with just another decade or so of development to create more opportunities and we'll probably be seeing a similar process with Indians. India even has a slightly lower barrier in that compared to Russia and China there's less totalitarianism to make people prefer the US.
Did you have a very bad experience with US immigration? I've been dealing with it for a couple of decades, from non immigrant visas to GC and while its definitely a pain in the ass, it hasn't been anything like that^.
There's a lot of waiting, and a lot of uncertainty and anxiety but it was never personal for me or anyone I know.
That being said I’ve heard my country (France) isn’t that much better when it comes to handling immigration.
I believe immigration policy has had a major change around seven years ago for the worse. This is anecdotal, but one of my uni friends is a from an allied country (S Korea) and he had a terrible experience. I don’t remember all the details, but the process seems years longer now and they treated him like he was an enemy spy even though he’s been here for decades prior, has published several papers, and likely has no connections with anything sketchy. Most people would have just said fuck it and went back home. Thankfully, he endured and is now tenured as a CompE prof.
Imo the US is likely no longer reaping the benefits from the brain drain due to the new draconian policies for legal immigration. It is a dumb (or even racist) overreaction when you lump in even people from allied countries in light of the chip war
May I ask what is your birth country? From what I know, it depends a lot on where you come from.
Our immigration lawyers' first advice was to rescind the offer as it wasn't worth the work unless the new hire was truly exceptional. This was at a time when RFE success rates where at an all time low (our lawyers told us to expect a 90% chance of failure). We believed she was worth it, so we decided to move forward. The lawyers also told us that we only get one shot - there is no second chance or appeal. So you must provide overwhelming evidence.
It consumed my time for weeks, making all kinds of other things fall behind, all with no guarantee of paying off. And she was riddled with stress throughout the process. The lawyers gave me a laundry list of tasks to do. I ended up producing ~100 pages of documentation about what the team did, what she would do in a typical day, examples of what her work product would be, how it was connected to the company's business, and why it required a graduate degree in mathematics. Some of that was difficult as our lawyers said I couldn't reveal the nature of our proprietary algorithms because these documents are treated as private. On top of demonstrating that it required a graduate degree, we had to demonstrate why a US citizen with nothing more than a high school education could not do the job (and evidence that a PhD in math was needed was not enough according to our lawyers).
Part of it involved me spending two hours being interviewed by a math prof from a top US university. The first hour was convincing him that I knew enough math to know what I was talking about (kind of like my first math final in 30 years). Then explaining enough about the systems the team worked on to convince him that it required an advanced math degree. Luckily he was fascinated by our problems/solutions and every idea he brought up about approaches to try were things we had already incorporated or ruled out. Helping him understand why they did / did not work ended up being pretty convincing.
After we supplied our RFE response, we waited for another month or two. Luckily her transfer was approved. She started a week later and I'm glad we put in the work - she was amazing.
To tie it back to the article, two years later she left to move back to China because she wanted to have kids and she didn't want them exposed to the overt racism that she faced in the US (especially the horrific behavior she faced in the weeks leading up to lockdown). And going back was no easy task. She applied for jobs at ~20 companies there. She received two offers and took one of them in Beijing. When she got there, she learned that they had over 1,000 applicants with PhDs for the single position she filled. It's hard to imagine that level of competition. We wouldn't have had to go through the RFE pain if so much talent were available in the US. But she was happy to face that competition to raise her kids in China.
US is or our colleges are?
> Maybe China is playing it dirty and forces these scientists to come back.
Or maybe 'China provides many opportunities for its citizens to study abroad and expand their horizons' and their citizens want to help their own country in turn?
> Sure, "freedom" and "human rights" are something but frankly
Nobody immigrates for 'freedom' and 'human rights'? Everyone immigrates for 'better life' - money. And what freedom and human rights do the chinese lack?
> You get treated like second class human beings and are forced to fight and prove you deserve something others were simply born with.
Good. Why should non-citizens be treated the same as citizens? Every country should treat their citizens better than non-citizens.
> There must be an incentive for these people to endure that kind of process.
'Freedom' and 'human rights'. Funny isn't it? It's sounds so stupid when you say it out loud and yet the dumb masses believe it.
> And for many Chinese whose homeland in every way a direct competitor to the US, there aren't enough reasons.
Good. It means china is advancing and providing opportunities for their own people. These chinese scientists should go home and help create china's harvard, mit, etc. And hopefully india, south america, africa and rest of the world follows china's example. The blueprint is there and if china is able to develop then so can the rest of the world.
>The United States is home to the highest number of immigrants in the world. An estimated 50.6 million people in the United States—a bit more than 15% of the total population of 331.4 million—were born in a foreign country. The number of immigrants in the U.S. has increased by at least 400% since 1965.
By the way, the USA takes more immigrants every year than any other country in the world. I myself went through the process and was treated with complete respect and it wasn't easy but well worth it to become an American and be welcomed into the Land of Milk and Honey.
Your experience was certainly true. It is why so many are trying to come here. But things have changed and the experience is not what it used to be. If you think it was difficult before, think about how it has to be now for people to choose to go back instead of persevering. The trend is clear. Things changed. The US can either fix it and remain competitive by hoarding talents. Or it will continue to deteriorate.
There are always warning signs. Immigration laws has been called antiquated and desperately in need of reform for a long time. Your sentiment of "it was good in my time" is how hegemons like Britain fell.
They're constantly demonized by the media. They're treated as essentially 'devil-worshipping' orientals ('Communism' for China; 'Hinduism' for Indians). They have to deal with 60s-era racially-motivated immigration laws that limit the same number of Green-Cards for Norway/Sweden (and other tiny 5-million large countries) as that for each of China/India.
On some level the Americans (and Westerners) can't come to terms with their own glaring hypocrisy. They are intense ethno-nationalists but will pretend to be anything but, and claim their own culture is universal and anyone who doesn't subscribe to it is the devil's pawn. (To wit, the LGBTQ flag is now a more obvious fixture in front of US embassies).
Asians are too, but they aren't obsessed with it, nor do they over do it due to not having a 'religion' hang over them culturally (other than ofc. when they're 'saved' by some occidental import; Buddhism etc. are not 'religions').
Indians atleast have to contend with essentially a vestigial-colonial state that is essentially a kleptocracy which just happens to be run by people who're 'liked' by the 'global elite' because they're, very much like zealous RW Xtian nuts, destroying India's historical 'pagan' culture and language (India's constitution for instance denies Hindus religious rights, unlike that for Xtians/Muslims; and imposes English on a large population that barely understands it).
China (like imperial Japan) too was 'liked' when they were destroying their own culture/traditions for 'secular Xtianity'. Not anymore I guess.
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"you get treated like second class human beings and are forced to fight and prove you deserve something others were simply born with." isn't this effectively the situation with immigrating to any desirable country (and even some undesirable ones)?
Happened to travel internationally, either to see family for a week or for a conference in the 3 years between finishing your education and getting a chance at an H1B? Maybe they'll let you back in, maybe they won't, no one can say.
Happened to study and work here for over a decade, slaved away for an employer to convince them to sponsor your residency?, Employer screws up your green card application after pushing it off till the H1B limit, you get screwed and have to leave with zero recourse.
It's no wonder illegal immigration is such a big issue here, especially with sanctuary cities, you come and stay illegally and governments will bend over backwards to help you stay, you come here, get an advanced education and work hard to remain in legal status for a significant chunk of your life, supporting yourself financially and giving back to the country and you get kicked out for something that wasn't even your fault.
In comparison DMVs and even the IRS aren't renowned for being in the habit of completely wrecking someone's life's plans over the mood of one random person. There are pretty blatantly wrong things people have to do (and keep doing) for the DMV or IRS to have a similar impact on their lives.
Still, to answer your question, the difference is in the number of dealings an immigrant has to go through and the consequences if any of these goes badly. If you mess up your DMV meeting every 5 years, no big deal. You failed to update your address in your annual license renewal as an immigrant? That is a potential black mark that can get your green card denied and your life ruined.
Maybe it is the case for every country to treat immigrants like that. But when the US is built by immigrants, it should have an incentive to do better than that. Otherwise, why would people immigrate here instead of all the other "desirable" countries, or maybe just come back home? In such situations, sure, the US hasn't done wrong. It simply had done worse than it used to. And that can be a subjective sign of decline depending on how you look at it.
You’re not entitled to citizenship. We didn’t get it by birth alone, we got it because our lineage dedicated their life to building this country into what it is and passed it on to their children.
That you have this entitlement towards US citizenship means you don’t deserve it at all.
That is false. Check the 14th amendment on jus soli. Your own constitution, written by the founders of your country disagrees with you.
By standards of the US citizenship test. You do not qualify for citizenship.
See how arbitrary it is? Also statistically, per person, immigrants contribute to the US more than its own citizens. Your attempt of using "lineage" is so ridiculous I don't know what to say. If you truly believe that, then we should have kings and queens again because their "lineages" sure are prestigious and contribute a lot to the country.
But of course, the US founders were vehemently against it, as written in the constitution and the declaration of independence. So I guess you again proved you failed the citizenship test.
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Given the half/half split, this is less about China and more about the US (also discussed in the article, but to clarify as some comments seem to assume the contrary)
Punishing the many for the crimes of a handful of people was obviously gonna result in something like this.
That being said, it will be interesting to see if this trend has continued. The data here is only till 2021 and since then the US has ended the more blatantly racist persecution, China’s growth story has stalled, and Xi Jinping has gone into full arbitrary authoritarian mode.
2. Declared academic collaboration between academic institutions in the US and China is being cracked down on as well. People and their families are being investigated with no evidence given as to why, the federal government is contacting US universities and convincing them to end collaborative programs, etc. The reasons given, if any, are that the Chinese are stealing American technology through these academic collaborations. Thinking for two seconds about what, exactly, an academic collaboration is intended to accomplish should show how absurd the "stealing" idea is.
3. A lot of the most valuable work in academia is collaborative, and a lot of the specific career value in being a Chinese national or having Chinese family ties in US academia is that you can function as an expert go-between for the two largest and most important countries for scientific research. When the US is not just devaluing but actively stigmatising some of your skills, it can force people to choose. The US is richer per capita, has more freedoms in many respects, etc, but the persecution by police is going to impact your assessment of where you'd rather live, especially when the PRC has open arms, lots of grant money, and scientists have a good position in society there too.
4. Hate crimes against Chinese people have been increasing dramatically for years. Chinese communities know this and also see very clearly that it's not a priority for either political party to do anything about it. Not much to say about this, it's obvious why you wouldn't want to live somewhere where there are enough people in the population committing hate crimes against you that most people are in community with a victim, and then there's no political will to do anything about it.
4. There's genuine concern about the possibility of war. If you know anyone in the American military, you know that war with China is on everyone's mind. Different dates get floated, from 2030 to 2027 to 2025, but it's essentially received wisdom in the US military that there is going to be a war in the westpac theatre at some point. This view ("We should be prepared") is also essentially bipartisan in the political realm, and American media are doing their part too. Chinese people notice, they can see the current (illegal, racist) persecution by the government, and most of them have enough historical knowledge to understand that the dynamics that lead to the Japanese internment camps haven't fundamentally changed - the camps themselves weren't even ruled to be illegal until 2018, only 5 years ago! If you were Chinese, would you want to stay in America and take the risk that you might end up confined to a camp, or wearing an ankle bracelet with a microphone everywhere just so the government can say that they didn't put a particular ethnic minority in literal camps? Genuinely, would you take that risk, with what you know about America? If the American government goes to war with China, and they decided on this sort of large scale persecution of Chinese people, do you think that any significant quantity of Americans with any political power would stand up for the Chinese people in America, or would it be like 9/11 where the government persecuted Muslims en masse and there was zero political will to stop them for years?
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"I haven't experienced any hate crimes and I'm asian". That's a very naive way to look at this.
> Furthermore, 42% are fearful of conducting research in the US, 65% are worried about pursuing collaborations with China and 86% perceive that it is harder to recruit top international students now compared with five years ago. Of the survey respondents who have obtained US federal grants 45% say that they will avoid applying for such awards for fear of making mistakes in the application process that could lead to them being investigated.
So...what % of white American scientists would leave a European country in which they did probably not feel safe, perhaps felt unwelcome, etc., etc.?
But my point was that Chinese-descent scientists in America might be rational human beings, making decision about where to live and work based on their perceptions of the risks, costs & benefits. Not some "tired, poor, huddled masses, yearning to breathe free" out of a simplistic American Patriotism story.
From the family grapevine, I've heard that other Ukranians, Russians, and others from former Soviet states at places like Fermilab with impressive degrees are leaving the country after 25+ years. Some of them have left because they could never really get a foothold in the country, and others because they feel they are just tired of it after so long. Compared to how things were after the collapse of the Union, it has improved, it's more tempting to go back now than to stay. QoL has never been as good as it is now, unless of course you're a military aged male))
Nobody feels the dream anymore.
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