An article in the US press confirmed that the US is no longer a magnet for immigrants.

Net illegal immigration into the US (netted out against those who go home) is now zero.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/16/us/more-us-children-of-immigrants-are-leaving-us.html?pagewanted=all

And now The New York Times reports that children of immigrants are going home:

In growing numbers, experts say, highly educated children of immigrants to the United States are uprooting themselves and moving to their ancestral countries. They are embracing homelands that their parents once spurned but that are now economic powers.

Enterprising Americans have always sought opportunities abroad. But this new wave underscores the evolving nature of global migration, and the challenges to American economic supremacy and competitiveness.

In interviews, many of these Americans said they did not know how long they would live abroad; some said it was possible that they would remain expatriates for many years, if not for the rest of their lives.

Their decisions to leave have, in many cases, troubled their immigrant parents. Yet most said they had been pushed by the dismal hiring climate in the United States or pulled by prospects abroad.

'Markets are opening; people are coming up with ideas every day; there's so much opportunity to mold and create,' said Mr. Kapadia, now a researcher at Gateway House, a new foreign-policy research organization in Mumbai. 'People here are running much faster than the people in Washington.'

For generations, the world's less-developed countries have suffered so-called brain drain ' the flight of many of their best and brightest to the West. That has not stopped, but now a reverse flow has begun, particularly to countries like China and India and, to a lesser extent, Brazil and Russia.

Some scholars and business leaders contend that this emigration does not necessarily bode ill for the United States. They say young entrepreneurs and highly educated professionals sow American knowledge and skills abroad. At the same time, these workers acquire experience overseas and build networks that they can carry back to the United States or elsewhere ' a pattern known as 'brain circulation.'

Officials in India said they had seen a sharp increase in the arrival of people of Indian descent in recent years ' including at least 100,000 in 2010 alone, said Alwyn Didar Singh, a former senior official at the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs.

Many of these Americans have been able to leverage family networks, language skills and cultural knowledge gleaned from growing up in immigrant households.

For many of these ''migr''s, the decision to relocate has confounded ' and even angered ' their immigrant parents.

When Jason Y. Lee, who was born in Taiwan and raised in the United States, told his parents during college that he wanted to visit Hong Kong, his father refused to pay for the plane ticket.

'His mind-set was, 'I worked so hard to bring you to America and now you want to go back to China?' ' recalled Mr. Lee, 29.

Since then, Mr. Lee has started an import-export business between the United States and China; studied in Shanghai; worked for investment banks in New York and Singapore; and created an international job-search Web site in India. He works for an investment firm in Singapore. His father's opposition has softened.

Source: Daily Reckoning.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/16/us/more-us-children-of-immigrants-are-leaving-us.html?pagewanted=all