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Group hopes to stem Mexican tech brain drain
Nearly a third of all Mexicans with advanced degrees leave the country
 | Oscar Rossbach, chief executive officer of Industrias Rossbach, is among those in Mexico that are boosting the reputation of Mexican high-tech workers outside the country while culling their contacts and expertise to create employment at home. |
Gregory Bull / AP file |
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MEXICO CITY - Armed with a cybernetics engineering and computer systems degree, Mexico City native Angel Camacho arrived for his first day on the job as an engineer in California’s Silicon Valley and was immediately given an assignment by another engineer: Take out the trash.
“I said to him, ’Hey, did you see my badge?’ “ Camacho said. “And he said ’Oh, sorry.’ I think I was the first Mexican he ever saw in a professional capacity.”
South of the border, Mexican engineers face other problems. There are so few challenging high-tech jobs, and so many well-trained professionals, that a typical starting Mexican salary for an engineering graduate from the nation’s top university is just $15,000 a year — far less than many Silicon Valley janitors.
The Mexican Talent Network is trying change all this by boosting the reputation of Mexican technology professionals at home and abroad while building on their contacts and expertise to create employment at home. The group received initial funding from the Mexican government and is filing legal paperwork this month for U.S. nonprofit organization status.
Mexico hopes its nascent high-tech sector can create good jobs and help diversify the economy at a time when rising wages for low-skill labor are driving textile and assembly factories to poorer nations in Asia and Central America.
Despite skimpy investment in research and development, Mexico has seen a boom in students seeking high-tech degrees, even as Mexico’s economy fails to provide many high-paying high-tech jobs.
Mexico’s National Association of Universities and Institutions of Higher Education says about 650,000 students are enrolled in full-time undergraduate degree programs in engineering here — almost twice the 366,000 students pursuing similar degrees in the United States, according to The American Society for Engineering Education.
The problem is creating local jobs for the graduates. A recent analysis by Mexican and U.S. immigration experts found that nearly a third of all Mexicans with advanced degrees leave Mexico for the U.S.
“Immigration has become a way to make up for the lack of opportunities in Mexico’s job market,” said the executive director of the government-run Institute for Mexicans Abroad, Carlos Gonzalez.
These professionals are often overlooked in the vast flood of Mexican migration. Of the estimated 11 million Mexican immigrants living in the United States, less than 5 percent have at least a bachelor’s degree, feeding a stereotype among Americans that Mexicans don’t do high-tech work.
“When they want a good-looking yard or well-paved road, they hire a Mexican,” Camacho said. “But it’s not the same with their IT servers. If they want them to run properly, they usually hire Indian or Chinese immigrants.”
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