A steady flow of talented, industrious immigrants can fuel a booming economy

The Fresno Bee ^ | February 13, 2014 | Thomas J. Donohue, president & CEO, U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

[2ndDivisionVet]

In a global economy, investment follows talent. When we draw top talent to our shores, investment dollars follow because companies want to be near the best workers.

An infusion of capital and economic development will be a tide that lifts all boats, creating jobs and opportunity for all Americans.

But the reverse is also true. If companies can't find talent on U.S. soil, or if it becomes too costly and burdensome, they will move their operations elsewhere. It's in our own best interests to welcome the world's brightest minds and hardest workers into our economy.

Immigrants can help bridge a growing skills gap in science, technology, engineering and math - the so-called STEM fields that are vital to a modern, competitive economy.

More than half of the master's and doctoral students studying the natural sciences and engineering disciplines at U.S. colleges and universities are from foreign countries.

Meanwhile, the number of American students studying STEM disciplines is growing at less than 1 percent per year. By 2018, there will be 230,000 unfilled positions requiring advanced STEM degrees, even if every U.S. STEM grad finds a job.

Many of our fastest-growing industries require advanced skills and higher education beyond a bachelor's degree - 22 percent of new job openings through 2020 will require at least a master's degree.

Among all 25- to 34-year-olds living in the United States, 10.6 percent of those with masters, professional or doctoral degrees are foreign born, compared with 8.5 percent of native-born young people....

[rolling_stone]

.....Under our broken system, those essential contributions to our workforce and our economy are at risk. We're sending foreign-born students educated in the United States back to their home countries, or to competitors, to compete against us. We're sending companies the message that their investments may be better off somewhere else, where workers are available to fill their jobs and serve their customers...

Why then are we using our educational resources to educate these people who will compete against us?

[kabar]

America Has More Trained STEM Graduates than STEM Job Openings

It has become quite clear that America has more high-tech college graduates than needed to fill high-tech jobs now and, importantly, the nation will keep producing many more such graduates than job openings in the future — so why the shrill calls from the industry that there is a shortage?

The table above deals with the future. Meanwhile, the Economic Policy Institute recently released a comprehensive study dealing with the supply and demand of STEM graduates showing similar findings in the immediate past. One of its findings was:

For every two students that U.S. colleges graduate with STEM degrees, only one is hired in a STEM job.

That study was by three experts in the field (Hal Salzman, a Rutgers professor, B. Lindsay Lowell, of Georgetown University, and Daniel Kuehn, who has worked with both the Urban Institute and EPI). It stated that "in computer and information science and in engineering, U.S. colleges graduate 50 percent more students than are hired into those fields each year."

It also found that "the annual inflows of guestworkers amount to one-third to one-half the number of all new IT job holders."

The debate revolves around two sets of initials: STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) graduates and workers and the H-1B temporary worker program that floods our labor markets with low-cost, docile, high-tech nonimmigrant graduates, mostly working in computer-related industries.

Why the demands, as supported by the Senate's Gang of Eight, from industry for huge increases in the number of H-1B workers? Is it a genuine shortage of talent, as the industry claims, or is it because, as the Wall Street Journal1 of all publications, put it, the firms want to continue to staff their operations "with Indian expatriates who earn significantly less than their American counterparts"? I think the Journal has it right.

[faithhopecharity]

I see. Yes, this sounds similar to when Irwin Feerst was campaigning to slow the big corporations from bringing in more and more foreign engineers and scientists, on the grounds that there were thousands and thousands of qualified unemployed American engineers already here.

the more things change, the more they stay the same...

[Lorianne]

Can we have an exchange program?

We get other countries’ talented and industrious citizens and we send them our un-talented an un-industrious citizens.

[tbw2]

What does this image represent?

[2ndDivisionVet]

30 pieces of silver.

[MurrietaMadman]

Regarding your 19:

Some quotes from http://sntp.net/education/obe_explained.htm

...Harvard Professor Anthony Oettinger has said:

The present “traditional” concept of literacy has to do with the ability to read and write. But ... do we really want to teach people to do a lot of sums or write ... when they have a five-doflar hand-held calculator or a word processor? ... Do we really have to have everybody literate-writing and reading in the traditional sense ... ?

...Thomas B. Sticht, president and senior scientist, Applied Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences, Inc., San Diego, California, a member of the U.S. Secretary of Labor’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) says:

Many companies have moved operations to places with cheap, relatively poorly educated labor. What may be crucial, they say, is the dependability of a labor force and how well it can be managed and trained - not its general educational level, although a small cadre of highly educated creative people is essential to innovation and growth.

Ending discrimination and changing values are probably more important than reading and moving low-income families into the middle class (emphasis added).

...The current administration in the White House is in lockstep with Sticht and those of like mind. During the Bush administration, Hillary Clinton was on the board of directors for the National Center on Education and the Economy. This group was established by the Carnegie organization, the engine driving social change through education in this country. In June 1990, this group published a report called “America’s Choice: High skills or low wages.” This report calls for reformers to connect Labor with education. On page two, referring to America’s business community, the report says:

... the system is managed by a small group of educated planners and supervisors who do the thinking for the organization. They plan strategy, implement changes, motivate the workers and solve problems. Extensive administrative procedures allow managers to keep control of a large number of workers.

Most employees under this model need not be educated. It is far more important that they be reliable, steady and willing to follow directions (emphasis added).

The global elite have no intention of ending the invasion until the American culture is dead and buried.

Then it won’t be an invasion anymore. Just masters and slaves.

[dr_lew]

It is stated that 10.6% of that group are foreign born and 8.5% are native-born.

Syntactically it doesn't even say that. According to the syntax two subsets of resident 25-34 year olds are compared. Those with advanced degrees and those that are native born.

Among the first group 10.6 % are foreign born. Among the second group 8.5 % are ... what? By parallel construction, foreign born!

In other words, the paragraph is incoherent.

[Count of Monte Fisto]

If the immigrants who “showed up” between 1890 and 1940 hadn’t “showed up”, you would have been writing that in German or Japanese.

Pretty soon I'll have to write it in Spanish or Chinese.

"At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?-- Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!--All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide." - Abraham Lincoln

[TigersEye]

Among all 25- to 34-year-olds living in the United States, 10.6 percent of those with masters, professional or doctoral degrees are foreign born, compared with 8.5 percent of native-born young people....

Actually I think it's saying that they are only counting 8.5% of the native-born young with no parameters set for what constitutes 'young' and no indication that they have any relation to "those with masters, professional or doctoral degrees" or what the comparison is that is alluded to. The closer you look at it the more incoherent it gets.

Then again, dissecting the syntax of a nonsensical statement might in itself be insane. ;-)

[dr_lew]

Well, it would make perfect sense if you said, for example:

"Among all 25- to 34-year-olds living in the United States, 10.6 percent of those with masters, professional or doctoral degrees are foreign born, compared with 8.5 percent of trade union members ."

Here the parallel construction points in a sensible direction.

[TigersEye]

LOL Well, it’s one of those Progressive statements that has so many open ends in it you can take it and expand it into a statement on virtually any subject under the sun.

[cunning_fish]

So why it is easy for a feral Somalian or an Afghani who has known terrorist ties and almost impossible for a white South African farmer or a Polish engineer?

[BitWielder1]

By Legal Immigrant I mean within existing quotas.
Productive immigrants only adds to the economy, they pay taxes, buy products and services and for every job they take, somewhere up or down the supply line, another job is created.
It's the non-productive freeloaders that are dragging us down, citizens or not.

[RipSawyer]

How can you say something is true when the sentence makes absolutely no sense? Read it and think, it has no known meaning.

[VanShuyten]

So, 8% of native-born have post-grad degrees.
What % of foreign-born have post-grad degrees?
I can assure you that nowhere near that mis-leading 10% do.
So, 90% of all post -grad degrees belong to US-born citizens.
I would wager that the vast majority of the 20 million illegals don’t even have high school diplomas.

Great common core-style Obama math demonstration. No way a loinfo is going to understand through the propaganda.

[staytrue]

I think it is a good idea to poach talent from other countries.

I think bringing Ichiro Suzuki to the USA was really good for Major league baseball, even if it cost a very good job for a USA citizen.

I think having Rupert Murdoch become a USA citizen was good for the USA and a loss for Australia.

I think having Sergei Brin come to the USA was a gain for us and a loss for Russia.

Having Bela Karoli coach the USA women’s gymnastics team to their first gold medal was a huge win for us and a loss for Romania.

Frankly, I want all the talented people in the world becoming citizens of the USA.

Frankly, the other countries should be poaching our talent.

[Intolerant in NJ]

A steady flow of talented, industrious immigrants can fuel a booming economy...this is certainly true - provided they get here legally, thereby demonstrating an elementary sense of respect for the laws which govern this country and the intention to live thereby....

[staytrue]

“Illegal Aliens, and all immigrants, contribute zero unless they bring in their own money and spend it in America. You do not create wealth from nothing

Amazed how folks have aero clue how a national economy works”

Actually, you do create wealth from nothing. Google is worth 400 billion dollars and was created by Russian immigrant Sergei Brin and American Larry Paige.

It helps people find thing on the internet and does it for free by selling advertising.