05/01/10 Stockholm, Sweden – While the new Arizona illegal immigration law has sparked so much controversy on moral and racial grounds, there’s also an economic impact. Last week, Ben Wildavsky, a senior fellow at the Kauffmann Foundation, released a book that describes the US’ historical success at attracting bright students from all over the world. However, while American universities are educating much of the world’s best talent, US immigration laws may the pushing the freshly-trained minds outside of the nation’s borders.
From RealClearMarkets:
“America can attract the best global minds as students, but to keep them here and reap the benefits of our investment in their education and productivity, we need to reform our immigration law. It can be difficult for a bright person overseas to get a U.S. visa, even after being accepted by a first-rank university and given a scholarship. Many more obstacles need to be overcome for newly-graduated women and men who want to stay here.
“While at U.S. News, Wildavsky oversaw the magazine’s closely watched, if controversial, annual U.S. college and university rankings, and his new book places American higher education in its larger international context. The Great Brain Race shows ‘the importance of the free-flow of ideas and people to universities and businesses,’ as Wildavsky told me in a telephone conversation this week.
“Wildavsky visited universities all over the world in the course of his research, and reports on the fierce competition among them for the best students. He writes that ‘National borders are simply less relevant than they once were. Student and faculty mobility has exploded. Cross-national research collaboration is more common than ever.’”
Clever young talent drawn to the US receives education, time, energy, and scholarships that are often supported in part by the US taxpayer. Then, just when students graduate and are ready to give back to the society that supported their development, they often get pushed out. It hardly seems like the best way to build the America Inc. of tomorrow in a more globally-integrated economy. Bright, entrepreneurial people with degrees from top USÂ universities are often the kind that are likely to create new business, jobs, and additional wealth for the nation.
You can read more on the topic in RealClearMarkets coverage of immigration and the great race for brains.
Best,
Rocky Vega,
The Daily Reckoning
Rocky Vega
Rocky Vega is publisher of The Daily Reckoning. Previously, he was founding publisher of UrbanTurf and RFID Update, which he operated from Brazil, Chile, and Puerto Rico, and associate publisher of FierceFinance. He specialized in direct marketing at MBI, facilitated MIT Sloan School of Management programs, and has been featured on CBS. Vega graduated with honors from Harvard University, where he was on the board of Let’s Go Publications and directed business programs involving McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, and Harvard Business School faculty. He is also enrolled at the Stockholm School of Economics.
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Rocky
Maybe if we try real hard we can fill our universities, businesses, military and government with very bright immigrants.
What do you suggest doing with the apparently retarded nationals?
Probably the same thing these very bright immigrants will do once in control.
And how are their home countries to compete in the future when all of their talent has moved to the US?
If we are willing to assume that intellectual talent is spread approximately evenly around the world, why have a competition?
Has Japan suffered from the lack of immigration?
I think Germany turns out as much technology as anyone and I think they could do it without immigration.
Our immigration system is completely broken. Look at poor Arizona. There is absolutely no mechanism to ever check if someone is here legally so they tried to find an acceptable one, and they are getting a boycott for trying to enforce federal law. If you don’t like the way they are doing it, what is a better option?
I think the biggest problem with our immigration is no-one ever asks the people what they want. Just like emissions from cars, abortion policy, and car safety. Some bureaucrat makes the decision and we just take it.
The answer is simple. We enlarge the universities to handle both the smart americans and smart foreigners.
It’s completely insane, isn’t it? We let in millions of illegals to do gardening and house-cleaning for starvation wages, while we make it extremely difficult for researchers and entrepreneurs to get a green card.
A rational immigration policy would be to admit only those with money or graduate degrees, people who will invest, start innovative businesses, do research and invent things.
Hmm yea Aus has an amazing amount of Indians studying in the Aus unis – something to do with cash cow for permanent residency. Of course there is not a ‘slum dog’ amongst them because the poor have their chance to be ‘brilliant’ in the next life……give us break Rocky all we do is support nepotism at the expense of real social change in these developing countries.
The real smart kids don’t even get a chance its always been the same……its exchange rate that’s it boys and girls.
Although I take the point about merit immigration. But the intuitive thing with technology and intellect is to produce more with less. This has been the mainstay of natural selection…..wealth is not natural selection….if India went socialist (communistic revolution) there would be real social advancement, but India, China, etc need to reduce their population…..otherwise let’s just all populate and perish….to do more with less becomes a rescue mission for that rare oddity of genius and brilliance that can advance mankind.
I think the future of this matter is already being written.
The brains will be heading east…..
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8567737.stm
The countries who can retain and attract talent will definitely prosper. There is no free lunch. Remember American was made America by people who came from outside. So we being so protective now?
How about making this world a global village where the talent / people can move easily, workers can go where they want to, companies can set up their operations where they want to, etc. etc. In a free world, initially world will grow in pockets, but gradually the benefits will disperse to other places.
A world without boundaries!! Sounds so utopian, No? But who will bell the cat?
I don’t think the recent immigration laws are meant to keep out the “clever young talent”. That’s a reach, Rocky.
Cutting grass and deboning chickens is not very clever.
The solution to all of this is STATES RIGHTS.
If California wants to be a bleeding heart and let anyone come in and live on welfare, let them.
If Arizona wants to enforce it’s laws, let them.
We are supposed to be the United STATES of America, not a Washington dictatorship.
World Corporation Canada is being populated with people from China, which is very good. They are intelligent and have a work ethic that is amazing. We have a lot of very capable and productive people from all over the world. They demand good wages and get them. Multiculturalism is great.
I think we can all agree that immigration to the US in the early part of the 20th century was a good thing.
What we have forgotten is that it was a controlled and orderly event, not this grab all your belongings and run for the country with the largest entitlement programs.
Utopia?,,, I’d say closer to dystopia from the looks of things at right now.
Rocky is a buffoon.
I had a piece published on the immigration reform website VDARE.com. I spelled out the facts about all the seminal advances made in computers and information technology over the last 80 years. Almost all of them, from the transistor to the integrated circuit to PCs, were created by native born Americans.
Does Mr. Vega have a clue as to what he is talking about?
Or is he simply parroting the lines of the elites when they say “we need” (translation: I want) more immigration?
“Clever young talent drawn to the US receives education, time, energy, and scholarships that are often supported in part by the US taxpayer. Then, just when students graduate and are ready to give back to the society that supported their development, they often get pushed out.”
How smart can these people be? Even the lowest moron on the 3rd world totem pole knows all you have to do is walk across the Mexican border. Problem solved!
Does “It’sfreakingover” know what he is talking about? This idiot is comparing Master’s / PhDs with illegal immigrants. Dude, have you yourself been to highschool to know what the article is talking about, Or you just got lucky that your grandparents just decided to sail across the Atlantic (Oh yea, that was heroic.)
multiculturalism is a weird social invention because it is does not exemplify diversity of the best of humanism in all ways….we need to keep to the natural order to target improvement for mankind so that the 3rd world brilliance stays put to help their own kind…..but we certainly don’t want to dumb down the 1st world with 3rd world eco refugees who are better served as the foot soldiers for change in their own country….English peasants had to force change from the monarchy they did not up and leave and many died in the cause of democratic nation building.