Visa Problems prevent U.S. Indian Grads from nurturing their Dreams

The immigration laws in the U.S. are chasing away talented foreign students, who are forced to leave the country despite their highly skilled profiles, reports IANS.

Recently, Anurag Bajpayee and Prakash Narayan Govindan, two Indian post-doctoral mechanical engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) came up with an innovative system, which disposes contaminated water from oil and natural gas hydraulic fracturing, in a cheaper and cleaner way.

According to reports by the Washington Post It "just might be a breakthrough that creates wealth and jobs in the United States and transforms the white-hot industry. That is, as long as the foreign-born inventors aren't forced to leave the country."

 The system developed by these young minds is termed as one of the top 10 "world-changing ideas" of 2012, by the Scientific American magazine.

But both of them will have to leave the U.S. soon since their student visas are about to expire. They will have to set up their company in India or somewhere else.

Indians and students of other countries studying in U.S. universities usually gets funding from U.S. taxpayers. Leon Sandler, executive director of MIT's Deshpande Centre for Technical Innovation says that to educate a single PhD student it costs around $250,000 and around 80 percent is paid by the government for the graduate research.

"Essentially we are funding their research, spending a quarter-million dollars in taxpayer money; then we make it hard for these people to stay here," Sandler was quoted as saying.

The Post reports that Bajpayee and Narayan doesn’t want to move to some other country such as Israel or Singapore, where the opportunities are less when compared to the U.S. If they don’t get the opportunity to nurture their dream in this country, then the next choice would be their own country.

Narayan also adds, "If it doesn't happen in the U.S., we will make it happen somewhere else."

If Obama's new immigration bill, which would create a ‘Lawful Prospective Immigrant’ visa for 11 million illegal immigrants living in America, is passed, it will prove to be a great relief to the foreigners settled here.