You are generalizing a bit too much.. R&D jobs wont be outsourced to India/China even though it would be lucrative to do so, because those jobs need people with advanced degrees which majority of Indian Indians or Chinese Chinese lack..
Those who come to the states to pursue higher education will eventually settle down here (which is a good thing) and contribute to American R&D. This trend is not gonna alter, because Chindia can never compete with American infrastructure or funds.
p.s. dont take my initial outburst to heart, I am just a bit irked when people use the bogey of outsourcing to discourage youngsters from taking up science and engg, and moreover research in those fields.
I am not discouraging the best and brightest from entering technical fields. As a teacher of those disciplines at the post-graduate level, I do everything I can to encourage them. We offer fellowships and research appointments and teaching posts, all to try to do something to attract qualified US students to the programs. What I tell students who will listen is that if they find themselves in a position to make a difference, do not to sell out their country or their fellow citizens to the highest bidder in the marketplace. Rather, build, create, make long-term investments, and have the vision to see that often greater benefits are reaped from slow, steady growth rather than get rich quick sell-outs.
My point is that no matter what I do it is swimming against the tide. When the business model in this country is geared towards short-term profit and maximizing the bottom line at the expense of everything else, long-term investment in knowledge, infrastructure, development, and people tends to be neglected. Students are stupid. They see those trends and get make their own judgments. Why spend four or six or eight years getting a degree only to have to train your replacement in Bangalore? The message they are getting from American business is that you're better off to not waste your time with those things. Get a law degree or MBA and then you'll be the ones making your daily bread suing other people or outsourcing their jobs (until they come for yours).
What I see every day in the trenches, in the classes I teach, the same classes that I sat in over thirty years ago as a student, when there was perhaps 70-80% enrollment by U.S. students, is now 70-80% foreign nationals. I just sat on the dissertation committee of one of the best students I ever had in materials science who is getting his degree this summer and going back to India. I had a Japanese student a couple of semesters ago who could eat your lunch in neutron diffusion, and went home to Japan. I had a Romanian student who was absolutely top-drawer in radiation measurement instrumentation get grabbed up by Siemens in Germany.
Conversely, we've had U.S.-sponsored fellowships go begging for lack of qualified American students. The last student we had who took one of those ended up washing out because of poor academic performance and transferred over to the school of education (of all things!).
I have posted often on these threads that this country is in real danger of selling out it's technological and industrial future for the sake of a few pieces of silver. The labor of generations spent in building what we have today may all be lost because of the short-term greed of a few. And we not only lose things, but people. The intellectual capital of how to actually build things and get things done is being eroded. I for one will work against that tide, but so far it has been a losing battle.