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...[Jim Albaugh] ticked off a list of broad national problems that transcend Boeing: • Brain drain of talented immigrants:...."Now, the best and brightest come to the United States, get trained, and leave, and go back and compete against us."

This is simply the biggest pile of horse manure that has ever been put in front of the American Public. I'm getting sick and tired of seeing many in the technology sector complaining about brain drain. The only brains that are draining are their own.

We don't need these huge pools of talented immigrants. These companies want cheap labor, plain and simple. They are laying off talented American and hiring cheap pools of immigrants. This is despicable. It's the biggest myth around that we don't have enough American to fill these jobs. Total Garbage. And a huge amount of national security secrets go out the door with these huge pool of immigrant engineers and scientists. The Chinese are the absolute worst at this. You cannot go for a month without reading about a case of Chinese espionage committed by one of these immigrants Albaugh loves so much. This Albaugh fellow is one of a new class of person I now call post-American.

I work for a very large outsourcing company. We just staffed a prominent US company with 100 programmers, tech support in addition to moving the help desk and testing center off shore.

The company doesn’t have to pick up the benefits for 100 + people, it doesn’t have to pay salaries to 100 + people. it minimized it’s risk profile and it’s IT department can now run 24x7 to support development efforts.

It’s not that they can’t find employees. It’s the savings of over $750,000 a year in costs that made it an attractive deal. And they have a responsibility the stockholder and to their customers.

It’s not that good people are hard to find. It’s that good people, facilities to staff them and insure them are expensive.

The bad side of obamacare might save jobs and that is by companies dropping insurance, it becomes cheaper to hire people. Employees would have to find their own health care. I am not endorsing it, just giving an observation. Question is, how do you make that insurance cheap enough for individuals to buy? I pay 20% of what I would pay if I had to buy it own my own. And that is with less benefits at higher deductibles.

This Albaugh fellow is one of a new class of person I now call post-American.

Far more accurate than you might realize. Jim Albaugh couldn't care less about what happens to the US military industrial base, nor I suspect the long-term technological superiority of the US, as long as he gets his cut of the action along the way. His sole focus is to move into the big chair in Chicago once the board sends McNerny packing.
Further, JFA is now in charge of the commercial aircraft business at Boeing. If he's so worried about the Chinese, one has to wonder why he has now accelerated the aircraft manufacturing technology-sharing partnership with the Chinese gov't that Alan Mullaly fought against for so long??

While I agree that some of what he says is BS - like no defense company building a new airplane. Ever heard of X craft? Lockheed, Northrup, etc are both also working on X craft projects.

However - being in the technology sector my whole life and living in Silicon Valley I can say with certainty that cutting off immigration for access to our University’s is cutting off our own heads.

Here are some empirical facts for you.

1) In Silicon Valley, roughly 80% of all engineers are foreign born.
2) The percentage of American graduating seniors entering STEM majors is alarmingly low. Of those that do - likely the majority are first generation Americans whose parents immigrated here!

With these two points in mind - why does it make sense to shut down the only really solid source of brain power we’ve got in this country.

This isn’t to say I support H1B programs - that is a DIFFERENT discussion. However, not supporting foreign student access to our universities would sign our own death warrants. It would deny our own engineering companies access to the best and brightest ALONG with starving our universities of funds supplied by these students.

What we NEED is a vibrant economy to keep those graduating STEM majors in this country. If opportunities look better at home than here, then naturally they are going to migrate back to where the jobs are.