WASHINGTON— U.S. companies are struggling to find electrical engineers with post-graduate training because of an American brain drain, said panelists on immigration policy this week.
That’s because the majority of post-graduate degrees awarded in the U.S. in this field are going to international students—55 percent of Masters degrees and 63 percent of Ph.D.s.
Although the unemployment rate remains high nationally at 9.1 percent, the unemployment rate for electrical engineers is comparatively low at 3.7 percent.
“Most of the students to whom we make offers have other job offers, often from our competitors,” said Darla Whitaker on behalf of the Semiconductor Industry Association.
Between 2008 and 2018 the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts 190,000 annual science and engineering job openings.
But international students in the higher tiers of science, technology, engineering and mathematics don’t want to stay, said entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa. “They often have better opportunities in their home countries than they have in the U.S,” he said.
They’re scared off by application wait times that could be up to 70 years for Indian nationals applying for an employment-based visa, according to the National Foundation for American Policy.
Innovators and entrepreneurs take their American education back overseas where they compete with U.S. institutions, said Wadhwa.
One solution is to change the immigration system to fast-track the applications of workers in scientific fields, but the panelists cautioned against caveats that would allow immigrants to game the system.
The definition of the sciences can be broadly defined to include positions that are not in high demand, said Barmak Nassirian of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.
“I’m worried a purely credentialed visa will be abused,” said demographer Lindsay Lowell.
Lowell pointed to H-1B visas, which allow temporary employment to foreign nationals with specialty training, as an example of a program that causes some concern. “Who is qualified to qualify the credentials?” Lowell asked.
If Congress changes nothing, Whitaker, vice president of Texas Instruments, says her company doesn’t have a plan. “We could reconsider relocating overseas,” she said. “You go where you have to go to get that talent.”