Last year, the US issued 445 O-1 visas to Russians. This is how “talent visas” are classified. The growth is the third in a row: 135 such visas were issued in 2020, in 2021 – 247. In the UK there is a similar scheme: the Global Talent Visa gives the right to work in the country for up to five years, after which such people, as a rule, no longer leave. In 2020, 34 such visas were issued to Russians, in 2021 – 72, and in 2022 – 397. Someone will say that this is nonsense, in the last year more than a thousand visas were issued for everything. However, we do not know how many of these people will make a discovery or achieve other outstanding achievements in science, culture, education and all these fields of human activity, which, among other things, determine the competitiveness and progressive development of the country. . After all, the account here is not in the millions. All the stars are out. It should also be noted that last year severe restrictive measures were taken by the West against Russians, which, among other things, made it difficult for them to move around the world, made it impossible for them to use bank cards issued in Russia abroad. , and transfer money abroad. Also, the United States has not been issuing visas to Russian citizens in Russia for several years. And yet, hundreds of people with families who could make Russian science and technology famous are advancing fast.
The world is currently facing fierce competition among leading countries to attract talent. While such programs have long existed in the West, China has entered this competition relatively recently. Under the guidance of Comrade Xi Jinping’s instruction that “competition in today’s world is primarily a competition of human talent and education.”
Until recently, China suffered terribly from the outflow of talent: tens of thousands of students after studying abroad, mainly in the United States, tried to catch up, so as not to return to their homeland. However, PRC authorities began to invest large sums of money to return to China, above all those who had studied abroad in disciplines identified by the abbreviation STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). Today, Chinese research institutes offer an American or other Western PhD holder three (!) times what they can get at any, even top US university. Other incentives (primarily material ones) are also being created for the Chinese to return home. The UK is also not happy with the current situation and has adopted a separate program to attract the world’s top 100 young researchers in artificial intelligence, following a recent decision by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. In 2019 the UK abolished quotas for highly skilled workers in principle, with an increased flow of workers into the country since then. First of all, from third world countries.
In Canada, the Express Entry program was adopted in 2015, which allows highly qualified foreign citizens to obtain permanent residency status in just one year. Among the first beneficiaries of this program were Indian nationals with a master’s degree in STEM. In the first three years of this Canadian program alone, the number of Indian citizens enrolled in doctoral programs in the country nearly doubled. It is noteworthy that the number of Indian students studying in the same specialties in the United States during the same period decreased by more than a third. From where? But because America still imposes very strict visa requirements for highly qualified specialists, as many in the United States already believe. There are traditional fears that some IT professionals will enter on tourist visas and continue to work as illegal immigrants.
By the way, precisely for this reason, Russians who have the relevant qualifications and are trying to obtain an American visa not in Russia, but in other countries are issued a tourist visa for no more than a year, followed by a difficult administrative check (if any, usually in the Russian Federation). citizens are granted a three-year U.S. visa). The percentage of rejection for such Russians is much higher than for anyone else. Someone will say – Russophobia. Others will pay attention to the “spy spree”: Americans fear that Russian hackers and spies will infiltrate them under the guise of peaceful IT workers. For exactly the same reason, they tightened up the requirements for Chinese who want to come to America as students, alongside the same Chinese specialists a few years ago.
By the way, after the start of the military conflict in Ukraine, President Biden took the initiative to provide Russians with highly qualified professions (engineers, IT specialists, etc., all the same STEM field) and easier and even visa-free entry into Russia. United States. However, this initiative was categorically interrupted by the American Congress.
Now many sane people in America are calling definitively for a radical easing of visa requirements for highly qualified foreign specialists. Above all, they see it as a chance to gain a competitive advantage against the main geopolitical competitor, China. After all, thanks to the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to restore their national talent and attract foreigners over the past few decades, Chinese experts, mostly graduates of Western doctoral studies, have created start-ups worth at least $100. Billions within their own country.
Eric Schmidt, founder and CEO of Google, recently called for liberalization of US visa requirements. He is alarmed by the fact that in 5-7 years, American high-tech companies, primarily chip manufacturers, will face a shortage of skilled labor of at least 300,000 people. It is not possible to train such national personnel. Instead of diligently studying textbooks in mathematics, engineering and other difficult sciences, modern youth prefer the humanities and even a kind of long-term creative research. This totally applies to our country. Also, another complicating factor is the ongoing deterioration of Russian technical education.
Currently, international students make up over 70% (!) of all graduate students studying computer science in the United States. After graduation, they are eligible to apply for an H-1B visa. However, this type of visa is not awarded according to the candidate’s ability, these visas are distributed by lottery – just like in the green card lottery. Since the number of applications far exceeds the allocated quota, the probability of success in such a draw is around 10%. China does not bother with such discrimination, so it manages to attract not only its own citizens who have studied in the United States, but also teaching and scientific personnel from all over the world.
According to the annual ranking of the most attractive countries for foreign talent, the top five this year among the member states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, Russia is not) are: New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, Australia, Norway.
According to the country’s attractiveness criterion for foreign entrepreneurs to relocate, the top five look slightly different: Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, Norway and New Zealand. However, the USA ranks first in the ranking according to the foreign student attractiveness criterion, followed by Germany, England, Norway and Australia. According to many experts, if the United States had implemented a more humane visa policy towards foreign experts, it would have ranked first in all three ratings. If we encounter a similar problem, this should be taken into account by our authorities. Highly gifted minds love ease of movement.
The increasing large-scale flow of labor from one side to the other, including highly skilled workers, is the hallmark of the modern world economy. At the start of the epidemic (later figures are not yet available), the total number of migrants worldwide reached 272 million, corresponding to 3.5% of the world’s population. For comparison, this number was 173 million at the beginning of this century, compared to 222 million in 2010.
The main prey for other people’s brains is now emerging in the field of artificial intelligence. The number of jobs in this field has increased by several dozen over the past decade. And even leading countries are experiencing an increasingly serious shortage of such specialists. And if in the US there are hundreds of thousands, then according to the estimates of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China, there are several million jobs open in China.
The Russian government recently announced that it will update the program for the return of Russians from abroad. It is also planned to focus on benefits to attract highly qualified specialists in various sectors. This is an absolutely correct statement of the question. More precisely, they will transfer the control of this program from the Ministry of Interior to the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Ministry of Labor. Indeed, the Ministry of Interior is not about progress and STEM of any kind. Ministry of Interior in terms of security.
The citizen resettlement program has been operating in Russia for more than 15 years. More than 800,000 people came. However, it was not designed to attract highly qualified specialists. We see the consequences of this in the current labor market, where guest workers are abundantly represented in unskilled and unmechanized jobs. The question of why there are so many here remains rhetorical. This is a clear example of dumping the labor market and discouraging any mechanization and introduction of advanced technologies.
If we are talking about attracting real talent, we should talk about qualitatively different measures to encourage their displacement. Here you can not avoid paying a modest allowance for up to six months (in the absence of sources of income) and paying for relocation. More money is needed. We also need some fundamental political decisions. For example, when one of the leaders of an influential law enforcement agency says that new Russian citizens should be sent to the front in Ukraine, it is unlikely that this will facilitate the resettlement of not only unskilled, but also more skilled workers. In addition, most likely, we should abandon the ethnic principle of encouraging immigrants, move to a point system, where the factor of belonging to the “Russian world” in the broad sense will be only one of the factors, but not decisive. and certainly not alone. In the experiences of other countries, the factor of high qualification outweighs nationality and other things like that. For this reason, the Chinese also settle in America and Canada, and half a million citizens of EU countries work in the United States to develop American technologies. Between 30 and 50% of trained professionals from third world countries go to OECD countries. Russia should not neglect this resource either. Maybe he is the only one for us. A highly qualified specialist from Kenya, India or Bangladesh is no worse than the same specialist from Uzbekistan or Armenia. The main thing is the level of education and training.
Of course, now is probably not the best time to imagine that highly qualified specialists from foreign countries will flow into Russia, given the military-political situation. However, if we still try to look into the future, then we will have to solve the problems of the technological backwardness of our country (in addition to a significant improvement in the education system as a whole) using precisely these methods. And also try to minimize the output of national minds.
This policy is by no means limited to monetary matters and the size of the corresponding allowances, as is commonly accepted in the bureaucracy. It is about making the whole Russian society attractive so that citizens of other countries, necessary for the further development of the country, strive to join it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like that in its current form. What should be admitted to ourselves and the compilers of the new program, among other things, to attract compatriots and everyone else? And make suitable offers after confession.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editors’ position.