America's Immigrant Brain Drain

As the debate over the role of highly skilled immigrants intensifies in the U.S., we're losing sight of an important fact: America is no longer the only land of opportunity for these foreign-born workers. There's another, increasingly promising, destination: home. New research shows that many immigrants have returned to their native countriesplus or minus—especially India and China—to enjoy what they see as a better quality of life, better career prospects, and the comfort of nearby family and friends.

The trend has accelerated in the past few years, in part because these workers have also lost patience with the U.S. visa backlog. At the end of 2006, more than a million professionals and their families were in line for the yearly allotment of just 120,000 permanent-resident visas. The wait time for some has been longer than 10 years.