Foreign Engineers – the Brain Drain

We in the US have always been aware of foreign talent.  We had over two centuries welcoming foreign talent to the US. The brilliance of our Founders attests to the fact that our colonial immigrants were the parents of these Founders.  

World Wars I and II prompted Albert Einstein and other brilliant leaders to settle in the US. After a while, we called it the “Brain Drain” and it was a good idea.

During my early years in Personnel, the first BSEE I ever hired was Shantilal Jain at Kearney National. I was tasked at Monsanto Headquarters to take care of foreign Personnel Managers’ orientation and later I was always the one foreign visitors saw when they visited Washington University. I knew first-hand about the “Brain Drain”.

A True Story

Firearms Training Systems, Inc. was founded by Jody Scheckter, a Formula-One race car champion from South Africa. He hired engineers to develop his prototype for his weapons simulator and move to Atlanta GA in 1986 to start the company. He needed excellent design engineers to develop the hardware and software for his PC-based system and found them in US Universities. They had BS degrees in EE and ballistics from Chinese Universities. They were selected to design China’s space program that never got off the ground. They were getting their MSEE degrees in the US. They were very smart, self-reliant and hard-working and they were Chinese from the Peoples’ Republic of China. They were not allowed to do “Classified” work, but Jody’s simulator was not “Classified”.  It gave them the technical challenge they had trained for. Many of them are still there.

The H1b needs of US technology companies is real, but the corruption of the H1b, being used for lesser talent must be rooted out.  The H1b should be granted to the best of the MSEEs in our Universities without interference by the State Department.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader