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Iran's Migration of Skilled Labor to the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Hossein Askari ,
John T. Cummings  and
Mehmet Izbudak
Hossein Askari
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Austin
John T. Cummings
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Austin
Mehmet Izbudak
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Austin
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Extract

The growth of Iran's economy, like that of any developing country, is dependent not only on how its natural resources are used, but also its human resources. The two together can lead to increases in both the quantity and quality of physical capital. This process does not require absolutely synchronous improvements in the way both natural and human resources are employed, but certainly changes must be parallel.

If, on the other hand, exploitation of natural resources moves forward much more rapidly, considerable physical capital can be acquired in a short time. But without ample supplies of skilled labor, capital goods may then be used inefficiently or even stand idle. This problem can be partly overcome in the short run if it is possible to hire foreigners to supplement the domestic labor in sufficient amounts and with the proper skills. On the other hand, if a nation's growing educational system turns out skilled people at rates faster than the growth in available jobs, then employment, underemployment, or migration are the immediate choices facing many workers and their families.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 1-2 , Spring Winter 1977 , pp. 3 - 35
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1977

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Footnotes

He gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the George Kozmetsky Fellowship Program for the present project.

References

Notes

1. For a discussion of this situation across the Middle East, see Askari, Hossein G. and Cummings, John Thomas “The Middle East and the United States: A Problem of ‘Brain Drain,’” International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 8 (January 1977).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. For example, in 1955/56, about 816.5 thousand Iranian students were enrolled in about 6700 primary and intermediate schools, with 140.6 thousand in about 740 secondary schools. By 1972/73, there were nearly 3.45 million students in about 28,350 primary and intermediate schools and almost 1.73 million students in about 3280 secondary schools.

3. This second category might be subdivided to group together those who, having lived abroad for many years, return home, but shortly leave again, this time as predetermined immigrants. Such people include those who have studied abroad and obtained credentials, but return home to be disappointed in the opportunities offered them to exercise their talents.

4. U.S. law requires that all aliens living in the country on the first of January to register their addresses by mail. Registrants are then classified by the permanence of their visas.

5. Foreign students generally enter the U.S. as temporary residents.

6. Former Iranians represented less than 0.5 percent of all U.S. naturalizations in 1975. In another country which admits large numbers of immigrants, Australia, naturalizations of Iranian-born residents rose sharply in the late 1960s, then levelled off at about 50 per year in the early 1970s. Given the relative population sizes of the U.S. and Australia, the numbers of new Iranian-Australians are comparable to those of Iranian-Americans. However, former Iranians accounted for only a bit more than 0.1 percent of Australian naturalizations in the early 1970s.

7. Given the limited size of most western European university systems, it seems likely that the U.S. will take an even larger share of the Iranian students in foreign schools in the late 1970s. However, European institutions of higher learning outside the university systems, such as the instituts de Technologie of France and the technical colleges of Britain, have been playing a growing role as an alternate route to higher education for Iranians wishing to study in Europe.

8. In addition, instruction in many faculties of Turkish institutions of higher learning is in English, proficiency in which seems to grow astronomically in esteem throughout the Middle East.

9. The data shown in Tables 8 and 9 are drawn from a different source than that in Tables 6 and 7. The Institute of International Education (IIE) annually surveys American universities; since returns are voluntary, they are necessarily less than complete. Another well-known organization interested in Middle Eastern students enrolled in U.S. colleges, the America-Mideast Educational and Training SErvices (AMIDEAST) estimated that in 1972/73 there were about 13,500 Iranians in U.S. Schools, about 3900 more than IIE counted the same year. AMIDEAST also pointed out a sharp rise in the early 1970s of the number of Iranian government-sponsored students going abroad. IIE annual questionnaires to U.S. schools request information as to the sponsorship of foreign students. However, in recent years, this question has drawn no answer in about two-thirds of the cases for both foreign students in general and Iranian students in particular. Thus, in 1975, when IIE radically revised its census procedures, this question was eliminated. The new IIE methods also made allowances for accounting for under-counting. In the case of Iran, this meant an upward adjustment of about 25 percent. Their actual count for the 1974/75 academic year was 11,068 Iranian students and their estimate was 13,780 students. This procedure closes much of the gap of about 40 percent that separated IIE and AMIDEAST estimates in 1972/73. Since IIE counts only nonimmigrant students, while AMIDEAST estimates the number of all Iranians who come to the United States and then enroll in college, it may well be that much of the remaining discrepancy between IIE and AMIDEAST estimates can be accounted for by Iranians who enter the U.S. as immigrants and become college students.

10. It is not possible to estimate how many students who come to the United States eventually switch to permanent resident status. About half the status-adjusters have already been in the U.S. two to three years and came as students (Table 12); about a sixth were here six or more years. In the early 1970s, from 600 to 1000 students became permanent residents annually. This can be roughly compared with from 1000 to 2200 Iranian students entering the U.S. for the first time each year in the late 1960s--i.e., two to eight years earlier. Perhaps a guess of 25 percent would be reasonable for the number of Iranian students who adjusted their residential status to permanent during this period. When the justifications for such adjustment (Table 11) are considered, we see about half do so for family reasons--that is, marrying or siring U.S. citizens. This seems to be a clear danger signal to Iran, given the rapid increase since 1973 in the numbers of Iranian students coining to the U.S. and other Western countries and despite the improvements in Iranian economy. With so many thousands of Iranians spending what we might call their “courtship” years in North America or Europe, especially since Iranian students going abroad are still overwhelmingly undergraduates (that is, 18 or 19 years old and leaving home unmarried), as can be seen from Table 8, the fact that so many also marry, while students, spouses they meet as students is hardly surprising. Thus, if the Iranian government wishes to attract students home after completion of their matriculation, the task often becomes one of converting a foreign wife or husband to acceptance of the potential benefits of a lifetime commitment to Iran.

11. Which does not mean that the spouses have no special skills. Immigration visas will be admitted to a family one of whose members has a skill in demand in the United States. For example, consider two hypothetical Iranian families who wish to migrate to the U.S. In the first, the husband is a mechanical engineer, the wife a commercial artist; in the second, the husband is a college professor in the humanities, the wife a registered nurse and hospital administrator. The chances of the first family getting their visas probably hinge on the job prospects of the husband, those of the second family on those of the wife. In neither case would immigration statistics necessarily record the skills of the spouse who might have to look a bit harder for employment after arriving in the U.S.

12. National Science Foundation, Immigrant Scientists and Engineers in the United States: A Study of Characteristics and Attitudes (Washington, 1973).Google Scholar

13. The sample was not selected randomly; it focused on immigrants who settled in the northeastern states and in northern California.

14. Of course, it is well known that people interviewed in the course of a survey may tend to give the answer they think is expected or is somehow perceived as more desirable. For example, in the context of the survey cited here, more emphasis might be placed on idealistic motives, such as political freedom, and less on those of an economic nature.

15. In fact, Italy has recently (June 1977) put a twoyear moratorium on the inflow of new foreign students.