[eshvk]

I presume that he means that economic conditions are so bad in India and China that people would go through poverty in American Graduate schools instead of staying back home.

I think there is some truth and some hyperbole to that presumption. Especially in the past five years when both nations have seen strong economic growth. Not all people who come from India are the same. Not all American graduate schools are the same. I did a part of my high school and my undergrad in India and came to America as a part of a EECS PhD program at UT, Austin. All of the people who got accepted in my program from both India and China were either academically incredibly strong (top of their classes at strong undergraduate programs in India/China) or had done relevant research. This was true also for the American undergraduate students in my program. Economically speaking, none of the Indian/Chinese students were going to suffer if they didn't join a PhD program in America. They had very good jobs. (A job at Google India in 2009 was pretty fucking hard to get into what with dozens of interviews and so on.).

Now, this is only part of the story. There were at the same time enough lots of students in India who either found it hard to get a job or wanted to improve on their economic situation who came to (equally shitty) graduate schools in America in order to better their situation. Presumably the same is true for students from China.