We just do not have enough immigrants! The right immigrants, of course, the kind with education and training that add value to society (and boy do we need that right now!) – very much like our forefathers and mothers who came to this country with their old world skills and built the great nation we are today. We have folks coming into this country to get an education, and then we just let them leave, make it exceptionally difficult to stay, so that they can return to their homelands and create values that allow them to compete effectively with us! Do you really believe that a person with at least a bachelor’s degree in just about anything is going to become a welfare drain on America , that they can’t make a serious economic contribution to make us better off? Shouldn’t we offer a green card as a reward to any student graduating with at least a bachelor’s degree from an accredited U.S. university?
Immigration laws and sections of the Patriot Act make even legal entry much more complex and time-consuming, but they make retaining highly educated minds even more difficult. Even overlooking the negative impact on tourism (a 15% reduction since 9/11), we are severely hurting both our short term and long term growth (now that’s a word that in this meltdown seems to be rapidly leaving our common vocabulary!) and diplomacy goals by using terrorism and job preservation as an excuse to close or severely limit entrance across our borders both to potential university students and highly educated immigrants.
The fact that America’s generating only 60,000 to 70,000 PhD’s annually in mathematics, applied sciences and engineering falls drastically short of our internal needs has dire consequences for all Americans. As we have seen above, a new core focus on science and math needs to be a critical focus for our entire educational system, but until we start rolling out the high-end result of that pressure, the number of hard patents filed in the United States (vs. softer, business method patents that have limited underlying value) is dropping every year, while such patent applications are soaring in places like India and China. We risk losing the technology race that we have always led.
Immigration has been profoundly beneficial to our economic growth. If we just pulled the Asian-born immigrants out of this country, our telecommunications system would coast to a stop, our advancements in all levels of computer science and most forms of engineering would grind to crawl; advances in biotech and medicine would glide to a tiny fraction of current achievements. A January 4, 2007 Duke University study examined engineering and technology start-ups in the United States between 1995 and 2005. More than one in four of these companies were founded by immigrants (most from Asia, particularly India ), creating approximately 450,000 jobs and $52 billion in sales in 2005 alone. We wouldn’t be the great nation we are, a technology leader, without them. We need these new jobs right now! So what seems counterintuitive – that immigration actually creates jobs for U.S.-born citizens – is in fact the case.
We need new investment in our economy. If we just based giving temporary resident status to security-cleared people bringing serious levels of investment capital (at least $1 million) into the U.S. (permanent if they leave it in the system for at least five years), think of the jobs we might create. We also need the best brains on earth here in the U.S. Microsoft was forced to create a university in China , empowered to grant PhDs, in order to expand their core research activities; they were simply unable to find enough qualified U.S. employees to fill their needs. These minds will remain in China and eventually serve as the backbone of China ’s competitive edge in the economic war with the U.S. Wouldn’t we be better served if we brought those minds to the United States ? Isn’t this exactly why U.S. companies continue to grow their outsourcing of high-end mathematically sophisticated research?
For years, bringing international students into U.S. universities has served at least two “selfish” purposes: (1) many have stayed to build solid economic values here in this country and (2) for those who have returned to their native countries, they have carried with them a knowledge of the United States and the underlying relationships they made while here. Sure, some have gone on to foster political views antithetical to American policy (just like a number of U.S.-born students have done!), but the vast majority have served as peace-makers and links between cultures that have often served U.S. interests. Presidents of Taiwan , Mexico , Peru and even Pakistan have received educations in the United States .
That just represents the top of international achievement. CEOs of multinationals, based in their home countries, legislators, educators, high level government ministers and even military officers from foreign nations who have been educated in the United States have provided critical values in times of crisis, solving problems that would have escalated out of control without the relationships and knowledge they obtained while in this country. Prestigious universities, like Columbia Business School and Carnegie Mellon, Rice and Cornell, have begun exploring opportunities for overseas campuses in high-growth Asian markets, hoping to preserve the American educational “brand” even when students cannot travel to the States.
Closing our windows and doors or at least making the process so difficult that it deters even valuable immigrants – in the name of terrorism and illusory job preservation – has to be balanced against the absolutely incredible benefits of letting people into this country to learn skills and build relationships as well as bringing their already honed skills to our benefit. Scholarships are often available from the home countries or non-governmental charities that support this international connectivity, placing very little burden on America while bestowing great benefit to us all. Cross-training with our military forces, both at our highest military academies and in specialty training facilities, creates communications between military and civilian officials with men and women who will eventually climb to the top of their respective armies, navies and air forces. In times of crisis, can anyone doubt the extreme value of these connections? Do we want other countries providing the training and claiming the long term benefits of these relationships?
I’m Peter Dekom, and I thought you might want to know.
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