I guess I've been surprised this issue hasn't seen a lot more discussion. It takes nothing more than to look at the names of the people doing PhDs and postdocs in any technical field to figure out that a lot of them are at least of Chinese, Indian, Arab, Iranian, Russian, etc., ancestry. And only a little more time to find out that a lot of them are not citizens, and have a lot of hassles with respect to living and working here. What do you suppose happens to the US lead in high-tech, when we *stop* drawing in some large fraction of the smartest, hardest-working thousandth of a percent of mankind?
in '94 there was report (possibly sjmn?) that said at least half of all cal. univ. tech. PHDs were awarded to foreign born. during some of the tech green card discussions in the late '90s ... it was pointed out that the internet boom (bubble) was heavily dependent on all these foreign born .... since there was hardly enuf born in the usa to meet the demand.
in the late 90s there were some reports that many of these graduates had their education paid by their gov. with directions to enter an us company in strategic high tech areas for 4-8 years .... and then return home as tech transfer effort. i was told in the late 90s about one optical computing group in a high tech operation .... where all members of the group fell into this category (foreign born with obligation to return home after some period).
another complicating factor competing for resources during the late 90s high-tech, internet boom (bubble?) period was the significant resource requirement for y2k remediation efforts.
nsf had recent study on part of this
http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/infbrief/ib.htm
graduate enrollment in science and engineering fields reaches new peak; 1st time enrollment of foreign students drops
http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/infbrief/nsf04326/start.htm
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Anne & Lynn Wheeler http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
