[908B64B197]

My observation is that it actually accelerated said brain-gain.

There was a crackdown on fraudulent H1B applications, with more RFEs being issued. That freed a lot of spots for legitimate applicants that were hogged by questionable bodyshops. It also incentivized attorneys to start looking at O-1 (and they are easier than people think for real engineers to get).

Academically, a lot was written (by foreign universities) about how the US was going to lose it's edge have a drop in applicants but the rankings didn't change during the last 4 years. I wouldn't be surprised if more people applied simply because they (erroneously) believed that admission would be a little less competitive with less applicants.

[nos4A2]

Can you cite links that support your assertion that there were fewer fraudulent H1B applications?

[908B64B197]

http://www.immigrationlawgroup.net/h1b-rfes-and-denials-incr...

Not hard to find.

[nos4A2]

This is misleading though, because a majority of H1b applications are renewals (so folks already on an H1b), not new applications. On top of that, most renewals happen to be Indian Nationals because they have no pathway to obtain permanent residency in many cases.

Also how does a higher rejection rate lead to brain gain? I'd imagine it discourages a would be immigrant.

[herbst]

Making it easy to get there is not what makes a place interesting to move to.