How did high-skilled immigrants from India both support America's 2000s tech boom and spark India's transformation into the world's largest IT exporter? In the 1990s, a surge of Indian workers began acquiring computer science skills in hopes of migrating to the US, creating a massive skilled workforce. However, the cap on US visas blocked many of these workers from obtaining jobs in the US, while others who did find work ultimately returned to India after working in the American tech sector, a phenomenon known as "brain circulation."
The result was a remarkable win-win: Indian immigrants drove innovation, patenting, and productivity gains that lifted the entire US economy, creating American jobs in the process, while investment in computer skills and brain circulation fueled a tech boom in India that made it the global leader in IT services.
