International students are increasingly choosing to return to their home countries to work and start new businesses. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that over 40 percent of non-U.S. doctoral degree recipients intended to leave the U.S.
Even highly educated and skilled immigrants who have worked in the U.S. for years are returning home. In China, these returnees are called hai gui, which means sea turtle, because sea turtles return to their place of birth after having migrated elsewhere.