Indian immigrants in the US boost technological innovation
by Mary Jones - July 20, 2010
United States, 20th July: Indian and Chinese immigrants in America give a big boost to technological innovation in the nation.
This was claimed by a recent report by a Harvard Business School published in the Journal of Labor Economics.
The study states that there has been a significant increase in the number of applications filed by people of Indian and Chinese origin for US patents in firms and cities relying on US work visa holders.
The study is focused on areas issuing large number of US H-1B visas to live and work in the US. The US business firms issue such US work visas for hiring skilled overseas workers having specialist skills in the areas including engineering, technology and IT sector.
India happens to be the largest supplier of students in engineering and science in the US followed by China. According to the National Science Foundation, a total of 67,800 Indian students moved to the US while those hailing from China were 53,470. In the year 2009, India and China together accounted for almost half(47 percent) of the total overseas Science and Engineering students in the US, the National Science Foundation added.
The report by William Lincoln, University of Michigan, and William Kerr, Harvard Business School also brought home the fact that there had not been any decrease in the number of patents filed by US born workers especially in the areas using high number of US H1B visas.
This fact made it quite clear that there has not been any displacement of workers who are US natives even though the US H1B work visa holders hailing from China and India made noteworthy contributions towards technological advancements in the US, claimed the authors of the report.
For the data, the study looked at figures from the year 1995 to 2008 because the patent applications in the US do not show nationalities of inventors. So, the authors of the study made use of an algorithm to know the likely nationalities of the inventors by seeing their names.
After this, a comparison was made between these figures and the total number of US H1B visas approved in a specific year.
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