[smokefreeskies]

I have a lot of French and Indian friends that we have met in the Bay Area in the last seven years. 7 out of 8 of the French tech workers we met here have gone back to France within 5 years. Out of the 40 or so Indian immigrant tech folks I know, there have been very few recent immigrations, a lot of the flow dropped off about three to four years ago, all preferring to go to Europe or Canada. Of those who did come here before that time period, around 5-6 have gone back to India, as the number of unicorns in Bangalore have increased and salaries in tech giants there are pretty good now. Another 2-3 left for Europe. All of them are elite school grads from India.

The reasons cited are mostly (1) random lottery to move from f1 to h1b, with less than 50% chance of making it, (2) the decades long queues for h1b to green card with lots of process overhead, low certainty, random restrictions on travel and arbitrary changes in immigration laws.

The queues will still be long for years to come, as the old applications clear out... But the trend downward has already started.