.....And what will be the ramifications for the U.S.?

A three-part study by researchers at Duke University and University of California at Berkeley offers some interesting clues. The study showed that from 1995 to 2005, 26 percent of all the U.S. technology and engineering companies started by immigrants had Indian founders.

Will the source of this entrepreneurship disappear? Not so soon. Standard of living isn't the only, or even the biggest, motivator for an undergraduate engineer in India planning a career. The lure of graduate education in the U.S. is still very powerful.

However, even here there's a problem.

Thanks to a multiyear wait for permanent-residency status in the U.S., there is the potential for a ``reverse brain-drain'' of skilled workers, say the Duke-Berkeley researchers.

U.S. education and immigration policy makers must pay close attention to the changing destination of IIT graduates. The surplus that India will export will dwindle even as the U.S. works harder to retain the talent that eventually comes its way.

By Pankaj Ghemawat
Oct. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Six years ago, Thomas Friedman published “The World Is Flat,” which has sold about 4 million copies and set the pace for global blockbusters. The book continues to have a strong grip on people’s imaginations.

A Harvard Business Review blog posting from this spring provides evidence: I conducted a mini-survey asking which of three quotes about globalization came closest to reflecting readers’ views. Of 642 respondents, more than three in five picked the following pronouncement from Friedman over two more moderate alternatives:

“The world got flat … [creating] a global, Web-enabled playing field that allows for … collaboration on research and work in real time, without regard to geography [or] distance.”

Belief that this flat world is upon us, or is imminent, is one of few points that unite pro-globalization and anti- globalization forces.....