Bye-Bye Brain Drain, Bye-Bye technological leadership.

The trend started during and around WWII, with such great names as Herbert Von Braun and Albert Einstein and it has helped the United States lead the world in the domain of technologies.

Imagine a United States which would have lost the cold war, never put a man on the moon (his name would have been Neil, but Igor, Sergei or Boris), never would have led the way into the silicon age.

What would the Silicon Valley be like with only half of its engineers? Would there have even been a NASA and a JPL?

I am a software engineer myself and out of the 14 of use in my division, 6 are foreign born: 1 Frenchman (me), 1 Indian, 3 Russians and 1 Canadian. It's not that we are cheap and slave-like: we are paid just the same! It's just that this country does not train enough engineers (or should I say GOOD engineers -but that is another debate).

As the fight for healthcare reform in the US is now international news, foreign engineering and science majors who would be likely to migrate to the United States are now realizing that this country has a sub-par healthcare system and make think twice about doing it.

Without the Brain Drain, this country will lose its technological leadership, plain and simple.

But you know it as well as I do: the Republicans will tell you "Good, less immigrants!".

Except that we, the trained foreign workers come to the US with our knowledge, enthusiast and drive, as well as our belief in the American Dream and that we are also part of it.

We are the "fresh blood" and we contribute in making this country unique.

As I'm sure you are well aware, the schools here are terrible. We are at the bottom in terms of funding per student and 1/3 of our high school students do not graduate. One of the big companies in our state is Intel, whose former CEO Craig Barrett and current CEO Paul Otellini frequently bemoan the sad state of education in our country. Yet back in 2005 Intel demanded, and received, a tax break that effectively reduced its AZ tax rate by 95%. It was called Single Sales Factor Reform - look it up. The estimated cost to our state is $100 million. Think we couldn't use that money right about now in the current budget crisis? So our schools will decline even further while drastic cuts to basic services are made by the RW lunatics in the AZ lege. Meanwhile Craig and Paul and Bill Gates wring their hands about the sad state of American education. While demanding more tax cuts. And more visas for foreign workers. Meanwhile people like you sit there and tell us how America produces too few engineers and the ones we do produce suck.

But I'm sure there's no connection between any of those things.

Let these foreign "socialist" countries train our engineers, that way we don't have to do it here.

I don't want to criticize my coworkers but the level of some of our ASU-trained recruits boggles my mind.

But then again, I started in the 80s as a kid, when it was a hobby and you had no other thing to do with a computer than code.

Nowadays they have the Internet, Facebook, online games, etc...

But still, I am surprised at their lack of knowledge. Like no idea what hexadecimal is and why we use it, "when the decimal system is so much better and simpler".

You approve of the tax cuts corporations have gotten in Arizona?

Because I noticed you haven't addressed that point in my post. You just took advantage of the opportunity to trash Americans.

They use the system. "Let's not fund education properly, let's import foreign workers basically plug the holes."

I should have used apostrophies.

Your experience with your division does not apply universally. Skilled worker visa programs are fraught with abuse and fraud.

My current company is pretty sharp, but in general it only took a week of living in Tucson to start asking "Are most people stupid here?" The bad education system is really truly telling.

Edited to add: "living in Tucson"

While giving them more visas for foreign workers!

Oh and we can make some of the money back by selling public property and filling up the streets with speeding cameras and traffic cops. Let the poor foot the bill. Brilliant!

Bill Gates has been demanding tax cuts. I know that his father, along with Warren Buffet, is in favor of the very wealthy paying their fair share, so I imagine that Bill shares that viewpoint.

Not to mention anti-trust protection in the courts.

Your "technological golden age" was really string after string of war abroad and the ascendance of the monied class at home.

The United States has always depended on importing its scientific and engineering talent or getting them from the first generation born in the US, but in ethnic enclaves that preserved the values of their homeland cultures.

The success of America has depended on the rapid exploitation of abundant natural resources, the importation of vast amounts of skilled labor, and geographic isolation that allowed us to prosper by selling arms to the winning side in two World Wars without losing our industrial base.

The entire world economy has been driven by it as well.

The United States has always depended on importing its scientific and engineering talent or getting them from the first generation born in the US, but in ethnic enclaves that preserved the values of their homeland cultures.

Ah, nothing like that good old "positive" ethnic stereotyping.

From the Civil War to World War I, the robber barons couldn't import workers fast enough to exploit all the opportunities.

The railroads got every other section of land on each side of the right of way, and had to get immigrant farmers to settle the land and grow crops for them to carry.

The timber barons needed Scandinavian workers to cut the northern forests down.

The steel interests needed to import miners from the Carpathians and Balkans to mine the newly discovered iron ore in Minnesota.

As for the ethnic stereotyping, much of the supply of new engineers is are first generation Chinese-Americans, Indian-Americans, Iranian-Americans, Arab-Americans, etc. who often achieve at a high standard even though they are not in the best schools. Its a family and cultural thing.

Formerly, the source was Jewish, German, and other European groups, but these have become too assimilated to American culture. The other source was rural and small-town America (from which many of the astronauts came) but these too are dwindling.

We glorify it. Real Americans can't do math, understand even simple physics, and have no clue about chemistry or biology. Probably 25% think that man walked with dinosaurs... that the Flintstones was really just like the Jetsons, both fantasy cartoons based in either historical fact or projections of the future.

For the college kids, many of them white, middle/upper class, they were told that working on things was for suckers, where the money careers were was Business Administration and finance. We celebrated the gamblers, the scammers. Get rich quick, do whatever you have to. Lie cheat and steal.

And that is what we have produced now for 25+ years. A generation of people who don't know much, can't do much, and yet expect it all handed to them on a silver platter.

And, to their great disgust, when they find out that the race to the bottom that they are all counting on making them rich because we could outsource everything... they find out that it was only temporary, that our world leadership is GONE, the easy days of making money off of Indian or Chinese slave labor no longer work... they are ANGRY about it. That's why they go to these town halls and demand "their country back". Except they are even too stupid to figure out that it's NOT Obama, it's NOT the Democrats in Washington, it's not even Washington or the federal government that "took their country away" (meaning a suburban house, a new car every 4 years, country club membership, lifelong employment with health care, and an easy retirement). It was their own greed. And stupidity.

They are not dumber or cleverer than foreigners. But the fact that this economy is so dynamic and foreign economies have been lagging, has meant that there was a need to "import" foreign help.

"...this economy is so dynamic"

Then why do we have one of the lowest class mobility of any major industrialized nation? On the contrary, our economy is ossified and consolidated under the control of fewer and fewer entities each day...

I'm interested to know, because in most statistical analyses I've seen of class mobility, it is correlated to population size, with smaller European countries like Denmark having the highest rankings, and heavily populated European countries (and the US) having much lower rankings.

Where are science, tecnology, engineering and math graduates and practicing scientists most welcome?

Where are the employment opportunities the best?

Where is a rational, realistic cultural attitude most welcome, and irrationality and superstition least?

Where are the educational opportunities for children the best?

We may very well see new destinations for STEM graduates as you call them.

Western Europe, for a start.

The metro areas in the US have been Boston, the Bay Area, LA, Chicago, New York City. There is also Research Triangle, Austin, and Richardson, but they are surrounded by fairly hostile areas.

I think that Montreal, Toroto and Vancouver would all score pretty well.

I'm less familiar with European cities. I wonder if Sophia Antipolis would be sort of like Research Triangle, or whether the surrounding area is more supportive?

But I'm sure you've picked that up if you've been on DU for a while. :)

Thanks for your contribution.

I mean, right? I guess I can assume you approve of what Nick said.

By what stretch of imagination did you read this in my OP?

And just to humor you, let's say the engineers that the American education system is producing ARE substandard. Shouldn't we be doing something to address that FIRST, instead of focusing on importing engineers from other countries? Shouldn't we maybe stop giving so many tax cuts to Craig Barrett and Bill Gates and use the money to improve our schools instead?

And to make this clear: do you drive a domestic or a foreign car?

The plan is to import 2 million high skilled foreign workers over a period of 10 years. 10 years. It's one thing for corporate America to say we need X number of visas right now and in the near future but they're projecting out that far because they don't give a shit about the kids here and aren't interested in educating them.

"It's just that this country does not train enough engineers (or should I say GOOD engineers -but that is another debate)."

I think you are playing coy. :hi:

Not enough good engineers are trained and it takes money to train good ones. You need very well paid teachers too, and with what they a teacher over here, not one experienced engineer in his right mind would even think about teaching, unless of course he has enough money to retire and he wants to do this as a hobby (I know of one).

What I say is based on experience. This is not meant to be an insult. And you know what? All of my American-born coworkers agree.

We are constantly looking for new engineers and we refuse about 3/4 to 4/5 of the candidates, most of them locally trained.

Now, in New England, there is probably better trained engineers (with the MIT in the area), but I have to tell you that in the Silicon Desert almost half of the hires are immigrants.

...if they can be undercut with cheap foreign labor at any moment. If you don't understand this, then you are not the dizzying intellect that you represent yourself to be. If you do understand this, (as I imagine you do,) then you are doing a poor job of being an internet provocateur.

So which is it? :hi:

I mean, really, who told them that insulting people is a way to win them over? "You Americans are stupid lazy elitists and you don't deserve jobs. Oh yeah, and you're a bunch of racists too!"

It's wrong for the US to say anything.

It's wrong for US citizens to speak up because someone else will scream "Racist!!!".

It's wrong for the US to even think "protectionism".

Meanwhile, other countries engage in protectionism and racism and every other damn ism available.




I am so GODDAMN TIRED of these BULLSHIT DOUBLE STANDARDS and FALSE CLAIMS.


Hell, US companies offshore jobs to other countries claiming none of our own are able to count or read. Maybe that's true; not many are able to say "Oh yeah? How come these imported goods have such shit poor documentation or are skewed so the two struts don't line up and CANNOT BE ASSEMBLED or why so many products are toxic..." Gee, seems the pesky uneducated problem transcends America too...

He is being a poor internet provocateur. :)

American universities are training shit engineers. My dad works in rail transit planning, has for 30 years, and he's seen the result of US universities engineering programs. Most of them are diploma mills in traffic engineering, not training people for what his field needs at all, so that they NEED to hire from outside of the country to get people who actually know what the fuck they are doing. My dad has worked all over the world, so he's seen the caliber of engineers from all corners of the globe first hand.

Maybe you'll find a receptive sucker on this one.

We are going to fall behind eventually.

We used to lead in attracting students world wide, too - the restrictions since 911 have hurt that.

Meanwhile Canada is jumping on it.

Thanks for the insult. Last January, my company laid off many intelligent Americans to replace them with cheaper foreign workers.

Azlady here had to train 4 H-1B's at 4 different companies to fill her job. Why do you ask? They were a lot cheaper.

It's all about who will do the job for the cheapest.

This is the third time you repeat your misinterpretation of my OP and the third time I explain that what I meant was that this country has such a bad education system, that it does not train enough good engineers.

I have been here 11 years, I am a naturalized citizen and this statement did not come from a foreigner but from an American.

Now, do whatever you want to do with it and move on.

3 times were enough.

I responded to you ONCE. Learn to COUNT.

...but lack basic math skills.

We could all use more of the enthusiast.

They ought to take business classes... if they're so bright at everything else, which I doubt thanks to ambient and prevailing circumstances...

I'm surprised that some people have made it this far in life. :banghead:

Perhaps we should stop hiring them as well.

:shrug:

...provided they weren't fuckwits. They just didn't make great wages, and they didn't necessarily get their #1 choice for what they wanted to do.

The majority of those claim to want significant amounts of experience.

Not all.

Most.

I'm always willing to concede the issue isn't black and white. I do, however, keep note of the people who act as if it is, and which side they are on. Or is that profiling? (Which it isn't, because idiots who are incapable of thought are pretty much everywhere and are of every creed.)

Furthermore, I find it insanely hypocritical that someone who has an Apple logo as their avatar is complaining about H-1B hires. Hell, a friend of mine just got hired as an H-1B for Apple not three weeks ago.

Furthermore +1, if this country of 300+ million people is not able to absorb 65,000 skilled immigrants per year (and this year it's more like 45,000 since we're not even *close* to our H-1B quota) then we have problems way, way bigger than skilled immigration.

And now I'm done with you and your idiocy.

Bye-bye to you, too. :hi:

so would other technological advances. People really should work on getting past this evil sickness of nationalism.

I know where you can shove your own evil too, might I add.

See my other posts for more; I have one that damningly takes the "Americans are uneducated" shtick and shoves that where it belongs too.

Hell, read some of our posts. You can be one-sided all you want, but there ARE double standards and you are wrong for wanting to enforce them.

And if you want nationalism, people like you will only encourage it.

People like him need to check their own racist, elitist attitudes before pointing the finger at us.

The Brain Drain occurs when citizens of a country, who hold university degrees, have to move out of country due to a lack of opportunity in their profession.

...is that we had pretty much decimated the entire manufacturing infrastructure of Germany, and much of eastern Europe during WWII, and Germany had pretty much decimated the industrial / manufacturing base of much of the rest of Europe before that. By the time WWII was over, the US, which had a fully functional, and undamaged industrial base built up, was poised to take over the technological arena while the rest of the world rebuilt, and we did; becoming pretty much the entire worlds factory while the rest of the world rebuilt themselves in the following decades.

There was no Superior intellect that made that happen. We just got lucky that the deepest the second world war penetrated to our shores was Hawaii, and we were able to take full advantage of that.

I work at a place that has a lot of imported talent too...and I like it. I like the diversity, I like the different cultures and viewpoints about things, and I like the people themselves and the way that a fresh viewpoint on things actually does wonders for engineering side of things.

wright brothers would have never been developed here

oh wait, i guess that was before WWII

never mind

and i don't know what your immigration status is, but if need be, and you had something serious- could you still go to france and be covered?

One could think that you're a bit arrogant about foreign engineers versus American born (I'm a very successful American born engineer)

Fresh blood? I thought that's what I was when I graduated from college.

I suspect that this is another hit and run post, so I'll wait to see if you return. Suffice to say for now that you wouldn't even have a job if it weren't for American talent and innovation. While I do not hold you or any H-1(b) worker personally responsible, you are here for one purpose and one purpose only, to suppress our wages.

America has an abundance of world-class talent but we are unemployable to the parasites you work for.

the USA has produced a surplus of science and engineering grads for decades. the national science foundation (NSF, just like a bum check) has seen to it

and by the way, it's Wernher von Braun, not HERBERT!

To be fair, this dumbassery could probably be found on almost any campus in the U.S. ...

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-may-12-2009/arizona-state-snubs-obama