Academics locked out by tight visa controls

Anne & Lynn Wheeler lynn at garlic.com
Mon Sep 20 18:07:55 EDT 2004


At 08:03 AM 9/20/2004, John Kelsey wrote:
>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

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler    http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/ 

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