Part of his argument is that the US has lost sight of the most important component in any STEM immigration policy: the immigrants themselves. "When countries have tried to imitate Silicon Valley, it has often been about buildings, and capital, and infrastructure: 'We'll put this technology zone here and it will work'," says Wadhwa. "But it's all about people; finding a very small number of people who can move into entrepreneurship at the right time."


He draws a stark contrast between smart people that the US largely recruits though the H-1B visa scheme and how that scheme militates against them becoming greater contributors to society.


Structural problems with H-1B include its limited duration (three years, renewable for another three), the increasingly lengthy gap between receiving the visa and then moving to a Green card and ultimately US citizenship (often more than a decade), and a quota system that restricts holders from any one country to just 7 per cent of the annual allocation (preventing the US from fully pulling on the rapidly expanding engineering populations in China and India). Wadhwa's main objection though is how these issues combine to cramp entrepreneurship.


"As soon as your H-1B expires or your job ends while you are still on one you have to leave the country. You cannot seek employment with another company or start one on the same visa," Wadhwa says. "If your H-1B is through a university, and you want to participate in a start-up here, probably one that comes out of the research you've just completed, it's frighteningly difficult."


A postgraduate moving to the commercial world has to jump hurdles like putting together a US board which can provide guarantees that the company will provide long-term


employment for the non-citizen. Intrinsically, it is fair to ask how just about any start-up can demonstrate that.


"Compare that to, say, Canada," Wadhwa notes. "If you can provide a business plan that they consider viable, even if you don't have backing, then there is a path to a visa. But the other important thing is that those entrepreneurs ultimately represent a very small number; you can't waste these people."


This inherent time-lag in the H-1B has also caught the attention of the IEEE-USA, the domestic lobbying arm of the IET's North American sister society. Making highly-skilled immigrants linger before they can fully participate in US commercial life effectively keeps them out of the start-up market, according to Russell Harrison, its senior legislative representative.


"There is a really small window in terms of entrepreneurship. Generally, really smart young guys start companies in the first few years after they come out of the academic world. The ideas are new. They've got the energy," he says. "You leave it a while and you get married, you have kids... Well, you might have been likely to start a business, but now you don't feel you can take the risk.


"So, for people from outside the US, saying to them, 'Give it five years and we'll give you a Green card, and then another five and we'll make you a citizen', it just doesn't do it."


Going Home


In the past, the US didn't just have technological pre-eminence; it was effectively unchallenged. Europe had opportunities, but the US's other benefits and economic scale gave it an apparently unassailable lead. Today's graduates have broader horizons.


"The Chinese are really working the


system," says Wadwha. "They will approach Chinese citizens in the US system and offer them salaries, facilities, housing to come home and develop their businesses in China. The pitch is very personal.'"


The IEEE's Harrison has seen much the same thing happening, and while China is leading the charge, it is by no means alone.


"In May 2011, there was a briefing to Congress. A really smart guy, Taiwanese, gave evidence and his message was, 'I have a choice'," Harrison recalls. "He'd invented an implant that treats glaucoma. And it worked. It was already at or close to FDA [Food and Drug Administration] approval. But from a US point of view, he was 'in the queue'.


"However, he had had the Taiwanese, the [South] Korean and Singaporean governments all actively coming to him and saying, 'Look, what do you need? Come and set up your company in our country.'"


The Chinese 'sea turtle' – a pun on the word 'returnee' in Mandarin – is the main challenge the US now faces, particularly since, along with their Indian counterparts, Chinese immigrants to the US are more likely to be entrepreneurs.


"Here," says Harrison, "one good example concerned a super-bright Chinese kid in semiconductors out of Stanford. One of the big US companies wanted to recruit him. Their pitch was, 'We'll get you a [H1-B] visa, sponsor you for a Green card. Then when you get that in five years, you can go for citizenship. And then five years after that, here are all these exciting things we can do.'


"The Chinese put him on a private plane, picked him up in a limo, and said, 'Here's your office, here's what we'll pay you, here's your house, your car, a visa so your partner can work. Come home and start now.'"


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