Nah. What Friedman misses there is that their feet may no longer come to the US, but globalization insures that their brains will. It's precisely because skilled workers can contribute to the American economy without pulling up roots that makes globalization attractive.
Exactly. In fact last year I read an article where EU "governments" were complaining about the brain drain from Europe to the US. Of course the conclusion of the article per the European scientists who came to the US is that they migrate to American because they get payed much better and they get allocated much more money in much faster fashion to do their R & D than in Europe.
Friedman may have missed that because he paints it as a negative for us Americans. Freidman's recent book should be subtitled "I still am for globalization but I am afraid America is becoming less competative when I thought we would be ahead of the pack".
very interesting point -- by the same token, i've always assumed that at some stage, as these countries begin to develop, their own internal needs will mean they will have fewer resources available to "outsource" and things will gradually balance out... until the next cycle of the game
of course (one might imagine in twenty or thirty years South African helpdesks outsourcing the US, Chinese and Indian markets)