Posted on 06/26/2008 10:40:12 AM PDT by The_Republican
PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Fifty years ago, Jack Kilby, who grew up in Great Bend, Kan., took the electrical engineering knowledge he acquired as an undergraduate at the University of Illinois and a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin to Dallas, to Texas Instruments, where he helped invent the modern world as we routinely experience and manipulate it. Working with improvised equipment, he created the first electronic circuit in which all the components fit on a single piece of semiconductor material half the size of a paper clip.
On Sept. 12, 1958, he demonstrated this microchip, which was enormous, not micro, by today's standards. Whereas one transistor was put in a silicon chip 50 years ago, today a billion transistors can occupy the same "silicon real estate." In 1982, Kilby was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, where he is properly honored with the likes of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison.
If you seek his monument, come to Silicon Valley, an incubator of the semiconductor industry.
If you seek (redundant) evidence of the federal government's refusal to do the creative minimum -- to get out of the way of wealth creation -- come here and hear the talk about the perverse national policy of expelling talented people.
Modernity means the multiplication of dependencies on things utterly mysterious to those who are dependent -- things such as semiconductors, which control the functioning of almost everything, from cell phones to computers to cars. "The semiconductor," says a wit who manufactures them, "is the OPEC of functionality, except it has no cartel power." Semiconductors are, like oil, indispensable to the functioning of many things that are indispensable. Regarding oil imports, Americans agonize about a dependence they cannot immediately reduce.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
However, its foolish to block talent.
Because of these retarded policies, London has now become the biggest Financial Center in the world. They took advantage of our policies post-9/11 and opened the door for foreign TALENT and CAPITAL. They are reaping the rewards now.
I’ve seen this happen. Brilliant people who get graduate degrees here, and then we send them back to China, or other places.
I have a better idea:
Auction U.S. citizenship annually, to people who pass background checks. Apply proceeds as tax rebates based on amounts paid.
We’ll only get the best, brightest, and richest!
I find it difficult to believe that if we are accepting the 140,000 most talented applicants each year, this this number is insufficient for American industry's need for foreign "brainiacs". I suspect the reality is that the majority of these 140,000 slots do not go to the objectively most talented. Why? Because employers game the system and because our government is not equipped to identify the most talented.
The problems with H1B’s are numerous.
First, start with the fact that H1B people are, in fact, indentured servants of their “sponsors.”
Then let’s talk about the absurdities of the student visas, many of which are handed out like chicklets to students from terrorist-sponsoring nations, while we limit student visas to friendly countries.
The problem here is that Will is shilling for corporations who want cheap, servile labor. That’s what the H1B program is, and what it delivers.
What we need is an immigration system like NZ or Australia’s - a point system where you get more points for having a degree in a useful field, more points for being self-sufficient, yet more points for being a businessman or someone with capital, etc.
Why wouldn’t we want the 14,000,000, or more if at all possible, of the world’s smartest people to immigrate to US? At least then we are counter-balancing some of the world’s poorest and most dependent who come here illegally?
“{I’ve seen this happen. Brilliant people who get graduate degrees here, and then we send them back to China, or other places.”
So, are you proposing that any foreigner who comes here and gets a graduate degree automatically be offered citizenship?
Rather than ruing what you see, give us a policy proposal of how you think things should work.
Back in the days of unlimited immigration before WWI, a person could not have a job waiting for him when he arrived in the US. The idea is that people might be conned into agreeing to slave-like conditions if they signed a contract in Europe when they didn’t understand the conditions in America.
“Why wouldn’t we want the 14,000,000, or more if at all possible, of the world’s smartest people to immigrate to US? At least then we are counter-balancing some of the world’s poorest and most dependent who come here illegally?”
Heck, why wouldn’t we want 50,000,000? 75,000,000? Scour the world and reel in all the smart people we can find and offer the citizenship.
Here, here.
EXACTLY. The H-1B benefits nobody but the employer willing to bend the law to get technical labor for lower wages (and don’t kid yourself, the “prevailing wage” section of the law is easily bypassed). American workers get priced out of the jobs, and the immigrant here on the visa is no more than an indentured servant, here at the whim of the employer or the contract company that places him at a jobsite. Don’t work the long hours they want you to for crap wages? You’re back on the plane to Hyderabad.
If the government would quit screwing up the educational system so we could produce more engineers and computer scientists domestically, we wouldn’t NEED the H-1B and similar visa programs. I understand why we have visas like the H-1B and L-1, and wish that they could be replaced with something that gives the immigrant more flexiblity. But I certainly don’t think those visa programs need to be expanded, especially in their present form.
}:-)4
“Here, here?”
Like most things related to immigration, what happens must eventually be expressed in terms of a specific policy, or one must simply be for open borders, come one, come all.
So, it’s either open to all, or there is some numerical limit, or limit related to qualifications, or something. It’s not just an emotional expression of some pro immigration feeling.
And, what about the nations who foot the bill for their students to study here and have some expectation that those students return home and benefit their home nation?
And paid for how? At our expense? [Yes. In many if not all cases. Particularly U.S. land grant schools]
And do the advocates for H1B DeFacto Amnesty for all of them realize that they are displacing U.S.-loyal U.S.-citizen talent...crowding them out in the schools, in the entry-level positions necessary to climb-the-ladder for skills and company positions?
This is not really debatable. The Defense Science Board has already concluded we have a real problem with this. From Strategic Strike Skills...which is not widely acknoweldged...to the more noticeable software infiltration
However, its foolish to block talent
I would agree with that statement, but not your position. The policies of unrestricted foreign technical invasion of our universities, and preferred hiring of the Cheaper H-1Bs... has "crowded out" our own students. So it is indeed "foolish" to continue this blocking of our OWN talent.
It is good when talent comes here.
It is also good when talent spreads across the globe creating vibrant economies and democracies that are able to handle their own problems and become mutually beneficial trade partners and allies.
The real question is why we are not educating our own children instead of the children from foreign nations?
Our own kids can’t afford to attend these universities. Only kids from well to do families and the rich kids from other nations can. And so they come here to get the best eduction our kids can’t buy. What’s up with that? Why are there limited seats for our kids, but plenty for foreign nationals that want to come?
Our lower education system is in a shambles. We keep turning loose the Department of Education on it, allowing it to install the mindset of UNESCO programs, so social engineering can dominate.
I don’t like sending tellented people home any more than the rest of you. I don’t like telling our kids from moderate income families to stay home even more.
The US can’t get out of our own way.
We make it difficult for qualified, intelligent LEGAL immigrants, but refuse to deal with the hordes of uneducated, illegal immigrants who invade our borders.
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