The Department of Homeland Security has had gigantic signs posted off both coasts of the U.S.. The gigantic signs read "NO TRESPASSING!" There is a sub-text that reads, "illegal immigrators will be shot on sight!" There is a larger sub-text at the very bottom of the sign that reads, "sign courtesy of James Sensenbrenner and Diane Feinstein."
America must seem a very ugly place at the present to anyone desiring a visit or permanent residence.

Anti-immigration policies are killing foreign student enrollment in American Universities as the Australians seize the new opportunity. Do we want these PhDs to start their companies in America or Asia? Do we want them to hire American workers in America? or Asian workers in Asia? Do we want American coporations to hire the best talent, have them live and work in America, or do we want American corporations to outsource to foreing countries? Over half the Silicon Valley startups are by Asians.

Immigration is NOT the problem for the US the Republicans make it to be. This is why none of their solutions is embraced by the American public. The big problem is low wages and large corporations externalizing their labor costs by paying less than living wage and forcing the American taxpayer to pick up the health care, education and other social costs. Why is there no talk of raising the minimum wage? or having employers pay taxes to support the health care and education needs of the familes of the workers they are importing?

Employment for American PhDs is lagging because the US government has for decades underinvested in our infrastructure in a penny-wise pound foolish strategy. Investing in the needed work to convert our economy to alternative fuels, more fuel efficient transportation systems and the products of tomorrow would create the good opportunities that our graduates find lacking. It is time to reject the failed "Tax cuts are the solution to everything." ideology and get on with the work of rebuilding our infrastructure and training our workforce.

It was a good article in the NYTimes today. I agree completely, and I'm happy you had such a public forum in which to make your case. I hope you will be able to contribute to the debate.

Those of us who have long believed that the US immigration policy was topsy-turvy (emphasizing family reunification at the expense of high talent skills?) continue to be perplexed by resistence to changing a policy that seems self-defeating.

I try to figure out why. It seems an unholy alliance.

On the one hand, it seems to me that liberals hate the idea that some people are more intelligent than others--that some people learn quicker, learn more, take more initiative, can do more complex work, solve problems better and so on. It is all about social justice, not ability. So liberals resist policies that seem to faovr the elite from other nations.

And on the conservative side, corporate employers love the immigrant low-wage worker and America's elite enjoy the high wages they can command through lack of competition.

An uncomfortable possibility that I haven't seen mentioned yet is that our native-born low-skill workers are often untrainable (eg, the US army won't recruit people with IQs of less than 80). The Latino immigrants are not only willing to work for less money, but they are almost certainly smarter, better employees as well.

Thanks for pointing this out, Steve. Most of us don't have the time or energy to follow complex bills in the necessary detail to find nuggets of bad policy like this

Setting up barriers to academic talent who want to study here is a horrible idea. In the natural sciences, it is hard enough to recruit talented American citizens-- more (and easier, less training required) money is found in other fields. Setting up barriers for immigrants who want graduate training is a recipe for becoming a scientific backwater.

DiFi should know better, but I guess she has a protectionist streak. Doubling fees is stupid-- how are you going to get money from a college student from the PRC? The fees will just come out of US gov't grants to the students' guiding professors, cutting down the numbers of foreign students, while still denying those funds to natives. Dumb, dumb, and dumb.

There is one significant aspect of the importation of intellectual capital that you should consider. That is the workers are indeed free to leave the jobs here and, unlike your implicit assumption, do not necessarily go to another US company. In one instance with which I am personally familiar an engineer involved with state-of-the-art hybrid vehicle technology simply left to return to China. While this singular event is not catastrophic it's difficult to believe that the long-term effects to the country will be positive.

JS in CA is right. This opinion piece is predicated upon a weak assumption. Given the history of immigrant successes in this country, I'm banking on the second and subsequent generations of the laborer immigrant. These are the descendants of one of the most advanced Pre-Columbian civilizations in the world, after all. Let's improve educational opportunities and stop being so afraid of bilingualism, and simply grow our own.

Thank you Steve for bringing up the "hidden" immigration problems. As a foreign-born scientist myself, I can't agree more about the plight of foreign students and scholars being overlooked in this immigration discussion. I was shuffled from one temporary visa to another for almost 10 years before I got my green card, simply because I was highly-trained scientist playing by the rule. I am a bleeding heart liberal myself, but I cannot accept an immigration "reform" that puts illegal low-skilled workers ahead of highly-trained workforce.

In the NYT article Steve and Lind write:

Even if a skill-based immigration system did reduce incomes for the elite, that would not be the end of the world. For a generation, college-educated Americans have enjoyed a seller's market in professional services and a buyer's market in the labor of landscapers and nannies. If skilled immigration were increased while unskilled immigration were reduced, the wages of janitors would go up while the salaries and fees of professionals would fall, creating a broader middle class and a more equal society.

I'm a member of the Elite? Who knew?

The article makes some good points, which were,
sadly, balanced out by bad ones. The article does
mention that H1-B visa engineers and scientists
can't move between jobs and so are at the mercy
of their employers. I have personally seen these
people paid less than they should be. This pool
of labor does, in fact, drive down engineering
salaries and allows bad behavior in the market,
like age discrimination.

Labeling working engineers, in high cost of living
states like California, "Elite" is pretty off the
mark as far as I'm concerned. The only way that
I'm "Elite" is in my knowledge of computer science
and software engineering. But when it comes to
salary and job security, my elite status is true
only compared to someone working at Wal-Mart or
picking fruit. Stack me up against a plumber or
many skilled trades people and I'm not so elite.

Which brings us to the question of why someone
should study difficult topics like engineering
and science in school when all they can expect
is stagnant wages and little in the way of
job security. Is it any surprise that that the
US engineering and science infrastructure is going
the way of the steel and auto industries?

Even Paul Krugman, who has been a die hard free
trader, is finally starting to notice that the
US middle class is hurting and that offshoring and
globalization are a big factor in this.

Workers who have invested heavily in their education
and continuing job skills are not "Elite", they
are the middle and upper-middle class of the
United States. We are the backbone of the economy
and we are hurting. I know at least one very
talented engineer who left the field and became
a CPA after he went bankrupt because he lost his
job. Nothing like the soft life in the Elite,
right Steve? Or is this just that retraining
we always hear about?

Ian

First, thanks, Steve, for focussing on this largely under-reported area of the great immigration debate.
Ian mentioned that engineers are not "elite", and that skilled immigration hurts native graduates.
He are right in the sense that visa engineers are some times underpaid since they cannot switch employers. However, this points to the fundamental problem Steve mentioned, that the current immigration policies do not favor the skilled foreign employee and provide them the freedom to switch jobs, thus letting the market set the price for talent. It is this distortion of the market which is the problem. As for the term "elite", how many people, in any country, graduate with a masters in engineering/mathematics?
If lifelong job security is the criteria for determining who is, or is not elite, then even CEO's with their multi-million dollar pay packages cannot be considered elite. By this criteria, perhaps France is the model for those who hold this view.
22 % unemplyment and street riots anyone?

On the one hand, it seems to me that liberals hate the idea that some people are more intelligent than others--that some people learn quicker, learn more, take more initiative, can do more complex work, solve problems better and so on. It is all about social justice, not ability. So liberals resist policies that seem to faovr the elite from other nations.

This is garbage. I don't consider myself liberal, but from what I take, liberals care most about opportunity for all. I grew up in a lower middle class neighborhood where most of my neighbors and childhood friends had fully subsidized lunches (do the income math). Some of the kids I grew up with were just as smart and talented as my current friends in graduate school--some probably more talented. Some of these people did poorly in school because, when a younger sibling got sick, they had to skip school. Some had deadbeat parents and had to work full time during high school. How fair is that?

It's fine to criticize liberals for certain excesses, but don't crowd the debate with nonsense.

Good arguements.

Foreign students are desireable....especially if they are from lesser economies and return to their homeland and use their education to advance education and business in their own homeland. In fact I think we should have a special program to bring in and educate "third world" students and even hook them up with start-up business enities in our foreign aid programs.

But I am tired of hearing it implied from politicans that somehow "foreign" students" or "foreigners" are smarter or more capable of "high" skill professions. Is this saying that Americans aren't teaching their children to have any ambition or work ethic? Have American families fallen down on the job when it comes to inspiring their children or what? Or is this mantra about dumb americans just another political spin?

Importing low skill workers, importing high skill professionals.....huummmm....only one of two things are possible here...# either americans are lazy and won't take low skill, low wage jobs and are dumb and unmovitated to become highly educated porofessionals...or....the politicans and those on both sides of the arguements are justifying their own goals with these arguements.

I am a physician scientist from India, in US since 11 years. My application for green card is languishing with Department of Labor for 5 years and it will take another 4-5 years before I get my green card. And one has to complete 5 years after getting green card to become eligible for US citizenship. This is a typical 20 year path to citizenship for any legal immigrant in the current era of multi year backlogs at each and every stage of getting a green card.
Needless to say, to the delight of DiFi, many of us moving back to the our home countries. There is a estimated shortage of 200,000 physicians in next 10 years. And yet USCIS and people like DiFi would rather kick all the highly trained (at US tax payers expense) physicians out of the country. I cannot understand how does this benefit US? Unless US comes up with a less humiliating immigration policies, retaining someone like me in US is going to be challenge. Only time will tell whether this "brain drain" from US will adversely affect US economy in the long term. But thanks to totally bizarre current US immigration policies, a prospective study to that effect has already started.

Great article, Steve and Michael. One of the best way to counter the horrid impression of the US that the Bush Administration is making to the rest of the world is to engage in personal diplomacy with intelligent, and potentially influencial, people within our institutions of learning.

Importing foreign students and PhDs suppresses the wages of US citizens in those fields and also designates those fields as "for immigrants". US citizens then go to work as lawyers, entrepreneurs, journalists, etc., instead of as physicists, biologists, engineers.

This might not be so bad except that US and European scientists and engineers have led the world from the enlightenment right up to the present week. (Note who wins Nobel prizes, computer innovations, math prizes, etc.) Don't ask me why, it is just the case. Asian values?? So the result of this policy will be not only to give up US leadership, but also to lower the world's creativity in science and engineering.

The loss of our leadership will lead to our decline in standard of living.

The US surged even further ahead of the rest of the world after Sputnik when the US supported US citizens in US universities. That is the policy to which we must return. Professors are hooked on immigrants because US citizens this very day look on science and engineering as "immigrant" professions.

Feinstein seems to have the right idea. Probably not for these reasons.

Not an easy issue to tackle.

But ex. no 6374646628219100328374646382929

On why you should have zero faith in elected leaders.

That said, Im sick to death of hearing about how we need these immigrants or else our economy would stop or that no American wants to work these jobs.

Its a fallacy. Our economy would continue, although prices and costs would rise with fair wages being paid to American workers. The biggest load of BS is the hiding of the wage suppression factor. I would happily mow lawns, but not for 25-40 dollars a day which is what most immigrant laborers in that area earns. Immigrants arent necessarily stealing jobs from Americans, theyre suppressing wages, because the government has been unable to enforce wage and labor laws.

This encounters the exploitation of the immigrant worker, and the inability for him/her to obtain worker status or temporary rights.

This is a huge mess right now, but the whole concept of America being an immigrant nation is correct, except that it was made up of immigrants. This isnt 1894 at Ellis Island. The structure and status of America and its economic order do not accomodate or call for the sustained immigration. I welcome anyone who wants to live here, but the costs are immense either way you look at it. Deportation is not the answer, but assimilation is a rough road, and very costly to assume, especially because many of these workers would be low income and would become eligible for social services, thus likely sapping out a disproportionate amount of govt money and social services than theyd be contributing in taxes and labor, at least in the short to medium range run.

Integration is a key issue in this case, and language plays a bigger role than people think. Multilingual societies do not work well, ask those in Quebec or even in Belgium, I encourage bilingualism, but we have to infer the learning of the English language, or else immigrants from other countries will simply partition themselves into protectorates in large urban areas.

This story quotes Colin Powell agreeing with Steve. Well, the same idea Steve's expressing, I mean.

In above link, read last paragraph.

IQ follows a normal distribution. Historically, the top 25% of the population succeeds with college format instruction, and as a general rule, that 25% includes the majority of people are the symbolic analysts, the thinkers, the inventors, the technical innovators, the entrepreneurs who create wealth and high status jobs for others.

Why would Americans want to encourage high talent people to immigrate to the US? Consider the implications of the following, keeping in mind that the bigger a nation's population, the more odds of finding that a brilliant, one in a million innovator.

Total US population = .3 billion people. Top 25% = 77 Million people. Number of one-in-a-million innovators = 300
Population of China = 1.2 billion people. Top 25% = .3 billion people. Number of one-in-a-million innovators = 1200.
Population of India = 1 billion. Top 25% = .25 billion. Number of one-in-a-million innovators = 1000.

Because Mexico & Central America are third world countries where fewer people have opportunities to go college, we can assume that the unskilled workers migrating across our borders have a range of abilities--we can assume that some will be in the top 25%, only their talent is undeveloped. We don't know.

The children and grandchildren of these unskilled immigrants, given the rich opportunities of the USA, may well prove to be brilliant entrepreneurs and innovators.

But I am waiting for someone to explain why we would choose to wait 25-60 years in the hope/expectation that high talent will emerge rather than recruiting talented, trained people who can make contributions now. US immigration policy as charity?

On a different matter, Robert Hume wonders if "Importing foreign students and PhDs suppresses the wages of US citizens in [science and engineering] and also designates those fields as "for immigrants". US citizens then go to work as lawyers, entrepreneurs, journalists, etc., instead of as physicists, biologists, engineers.

I have seen no stigma attached to studying occupations like engineering that attract a high proportion of immigrants. On the contrary, the Americans that I know in these fields are deeply impressed with the skills and contributions of their colleagues and enjoy working in a multi-national workforce. The reason Americans are less likely to study science and engineering anymore has less to do with immigration and more to do with 1) how the market rewards talent in law, medicine, finance and business and 2) a general disdain in American culture for science and math.

The bottom line is that we don't have enough home-grown talent to sustain the kind of high-tech economy we have created.

Multilingual societies do not work well, ask those in Quebec or even in Belgium....Posted by JS at April 10, 2006 06:36 PM

http://www.kcshop.com/imagegallery/Switzerland.htm

the link above shows you a picture of a bill worth 20 Swiss Francs. you'll notice that the issuer (Swiss National Bank) and the denomination are described in 4 different languages. the same is true of federal legal documents, at least the ones i've had to fill out when i was transfered there for a couple of years some time ago. there does not seem to be much of an adverse effect, as this newly released data conveys.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L07720244.htm

on the first URL i posted, you'll have to click on the "Select a Note" drop-down window and select the bottom entry.(P-68b)

I completely agree with Steve's op-ed piece. As a highly educated legal immigrant from India, I have had to prove via the Department of Labor that I bring unique skills to the table that no American is able to replicate. But I have a 5-10 year wait ahead of me to get my green card. In the meantime, I am a slave to my employer. I can't change jobs, I can't be promoted, can't buy a house or go to school. Maybe I should go back to my home country or Canada/Australia/UK where my skills will be better appreciated.

Robert Hume,
"This might not be so bad except that US and European scientists and engineers have led the world from the enlightenment right up to the present week. (Note who wins Nobel prizes, computer innovations, math prizes, etc.) Don't ask me why, it is just the case. Asian values?? So the result of this policy will be not only to give up US leadership, but also to lower the world's creativity in science and engineering."

If I read you right, this implies:
1. Europeans who come to the U.S are not "immigrants".

2. Asians will never be able to innovate and do as good science as Europeans or Americans.

I don't really see how you can justify either of these statements. Large parts of Asia were colonies until about 50 years ago, while Europeans were busy getting rich and establishing a scientific culture. The one Asian country that was not a de-facto colony is a scientific powerhouse with a goodly number of Nobel Laureates and innovators. Your statements seem based more on prejudice than fact.

"Importing foreign students and PhDs suppresses the wages of US citizens in those fields and also designates those fields as "for immigrants". US citizens then go to work as lawyers, entrepreneurs, journalists, etc., instead of as physicists, biologists, engineers"

Really? I wonder how you would justify this. I am not sure you have been in a university graduate school. American born students prefer to go to law or medical school because these professions are extremely lucrative. Relative to these professions, neither engineering nor science are as financially rewarding. This has been true for a lot longer than the immigrant influx into these professions. It is really a case of importing immigrant students to do what Americans are not really interested in.

Of course European immigrants would be immigrants; I am married to one. (And I got a BS from Caltech and a PhD from MIT.) Europeans don't immigrate to the US anymore, in part because they have no recent relatives here and hence do not benefit from family unification ... a chicken and egg problem. And they don't immigrate because life at home is OK. So the US can't tap that well of innovation.

As to whether Asians can innovate: I am strictly an empiricist. There is no good evidence that they can. They are outstanding at academics, but not very good at innovation.

I don't know whether your "one nation" is China or Japan, but neither is at all prominent in the Nobel prize lists.

Scientists are not, generally, much interested in money; but they want a solid middle-class life and a steady job environment. A flood of immigrant scientists will undercut that.

I have attended numerous science fairs and have heard, from students wandering through the exhibits that "only Asians understand this stuff." That's not true but that's how they think.

Robert Hume,
If the USA were to use potential to win a Nobel Prize as a criteria for immigration, we should establish immigration by the world's 6,000,000 Jews, especially Ashkenazi Jews, as our #1 priority. Jews make up only .25% of the world's population, but have earned ~28% of Nobel prizes in physics, chemistry, medicine and economics. Of US Nobel Prize winners, 40% were Jewish (though Jews make up only 2% of the population.)

Talented scientists also immigrate to the US because we have research opportunites that are better funded than in their home nations. Most of the European immigrants I have meet are here by choice, not driven by necessity. So--if we wanted to encourage talent to immigrate--the US government would restore funding to innovative, cutting-edge science. We all know how well THAT has gone in the past five years.

If we want to develop the talent of our native born children, we would structure our entire curriculum differently--from grade school up. I agree with you that this would be a good thing to do. But we would have to deal with outrage from some proportion of the 59% of Americans who reject evolution as an explanation for the development of life.

As for Asians being innovative--how would you account for what has happened in the Chinese, Indian and Korean economies recently? That looks to me like entrepreneurship run amok. Perhaps I don't understand what you mean by innovative?

The big exception I took to the piece was the unnecessarily nasty tone it took toward unskilled workers. Was it really necessary to pit skilled and unskilled workers against each other?

The whole piece could have been three paragraphs long and more effective if all the nonsense had been left out. It also would have spared us the constant over-simplification of the challenges of dealing with immigration today.

This was particularly nasty and misleading:

Congress seems to believe that while the United States must be protected from an invasion of educated, bright and ambitious foreign college students, scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs, we can never have too many low-wage fruit-pickers and dishwashers.

Right, because every unskilled person that is allowed to come to the USA or sneaks over the border takes a job away from a foreign molecular biology major looking for work.

Did you think it was funny to compare over and over again these bright, ambitious, educated students, scientists and engineers to the tomato harvesters, dishwashers, restaurant workers and bedpan emptiers? And do you really believe that it doesn't take any ambition or brains to leave your homeland to find work and survive in a largely hostile environment? God knows, I suppose, if you pick fruit, clean an office at night, wash dishes or care for the intimate needs of the sick then you're such a hopeless moron that you couldn't possibly start your own business or otherwise be of value to the country.

I know a woman who was an ER nurse in China. She cleans my kids' school here. It's a good thing I didn't write her off as a "floor cleaner" and never bother to get to know her or I would not have found that out. I also found out that she has three children, who are all in college. I guess they'll be getting their degrees in floor cleaning or maybe they'll branch out into fruit picking or bedpan emptying. I really hope if you're ever in a position to need a bedpan emptied, you treat the person in charge of that task with more respect than you did in this column or you'll find out exactly what kind of skills s/he has and how s/he can choose to use them.

If skilled immigration were increased while unskilled immigration were reduced, the wages of janitors would go up while the salaries and fees of professionals would fall, creating a broader middle class and a more equal society.

I saw that graph in my Econ 101 book so I knew it must be right. But then I turned nineteen and found out what a load of baloney it was. Wages will go up with an active union movement to drag them up. Faced with the nightmare of treaties like NAFTA and very effective and entrenched anti-union government policies, right now more immigrants mean a stronger union movement and higher wages.

The United States can always use another Albert Einstein or Alexander Graham Bell. But with the vast pool of poorly paid, ill-educated laborers already within our borders, we do not need a third of a million new ones a year.

Is this about making it easier for valuable brainiacs from other countries to immigrate here or about riling up some good old fashioned immigrant hate? By this point in the column it's impossible to tell.

Your point about not discouraging skilled immigrants to come to the USA isn't a bad one. In fact, it's such a good one that you could have done it without beating up on unskilled workers while you made it. And I think you knew that or else you wouldn't mentioned in this post the suspicion that the op-ed will stir up some controversy. I'm guessing you either needed to fill the space or you wanted to be mean to tap into all the anti-immigrant emotion out there right now or you were just too lazy to think of another, more honest way to make your case.

It's too bad the NYT didn't ask a grad student from India to do the job. She probably could have figured out a more graceful and effective way to get the job done.

It was good to see the post by eRobin. I, too, am really discouraged to see so many mean-spirited jabs thrown within this debate. Whatever your position concerning immigration, try to understand this: we are all human beings, and no one can claim superiority in any capacity, when all things are equal. If you don't believe me, then do some studying of the histories of other cultures. Each one is an impressive testimony to the ability and talent of humankind. In this light, there should be no disposable people, and fairness should be established for all.

I have the impression that DiFi's proposed legislation is a venal, probably counter-productive political sop which actual effects would be largely unintended consequences.

But who can say? For all the talk about immigration, we are precious short on hard statisitics:

How are foreign students affecting College admission rolls? How are foreign, domestic colleged engineers and the like affecting the domestic job market? We need a series of numbers, and a logical evaluation of them.
Otherwise we are working in the dark.

The very same is true about the lower end immigration issue. The media has agreed to estimate the number of illegals at 12 million, but estimates vary widely, and I am far more comfortable estimating 20 million. But who knows?
And every piece of proposed legislation that comes down the pike seems designed to skirt any hard numbers. How can we begin to make cogent assessments in the intellectual class with out any good information on such a vital topic? How can we begin to change minds and unearth dug in heels without firm pieces with which to negotiate?

Long story short: immigration reform collapsed for one major reason- every piece of proposed legislation the Senate put forth was based on the ONE THING that a bi-partisan super majority of the electorate, to say nothing of the anti-immigration firebrand lobbying groups, all oppose: A blanket amnesty. Tsk tsk.

I got a good smirk reading the op/ed writer's reference to "...elites..." I guess he got tired of being referred to as the elite media. The term he is searching for is 'professional.'

It goes to show the writers mindset. I was raised to believe that someone who went to college, hit the books, and came out with an engineering degree was a heroic figure, like a Horatio Alger. The writer is obviously suspect of creating arguments around a vacuous philosophic premise, not to say being purposefully disingenuous. How else to explain someone with a college degree all of a sudden becoming an elite, with the implication being that they are too privileged.

This suspicion is quickly borne out. For the writer further speculates that if the elite engineers take a pay cut, there will be more to pay janitors and the like, so maybe its not such a bad thing, because there will be more wage equity.

Where to begin? Conditions which impose wage losses in one sector are unlikely to achieve any other wage equity goal than making everyone a littler poorer, and the affected wage earner alot poorer.

Engineering labor market and janitorial labor market are virtually unconnected in wage levels. The actual connection is that for every engineer our economy loses, x janitorial jobs will be lost. The engineering labor pool trickles money down to the janitorial labor pool.

That the NY Times of all newspapers would publish such an inane economic proposition as that lower engineering wages might raise janitorial wages somehow, is absurd. And the premise that if the possibility exists, it would be all to the good, is downright offensive. But it is textbook classical socialist claptrap.

Unless the writer has investigated HIS wages in relation to those of janitors at the NY Times, and with an eye toward kicking down a bit more of his earnings to the janitors, his empty minded prescriptions arent just non-sense, they are outrageously hypocritical.

Ive noticed on Air America that other such absurd socialist claptrap, which went the way of the Soviet Union, has been popping up recently again on Air America. This to the effect that the War on Terror is just like the Cold War, all bullshit. Excuse me? The War on Terror is all bullshit, but the Cold War was anything but.

Finally, we should consider the plight of poor young American crackers who are astute and interested enough to read the NY Times and listen to Air America. Drivel such as Ive cited above destroyed the economies of many nations and the prospects of many millions. Why would we feed it to our own kids?

Yes, no doubt we should encourage immigration by Jews, if they will come. They generally have no problem coming now because they can often find a US relative. But you will note that only 25% of the Nobel prizes were won by Jews. The remaining 75% are generally won by others of Christian European descent. We make a big mistake if we discourage them from majoring in the sciences and engineering. Jews also are turning from science, I believe, and going into business and law because of a decline in the financial rewards of going into science.

Manufacturing technology in Asia is indeed excellent. But they are triumphs of business and (Denning (US)) statistical methods and entrepreneurship. That is one of the fields into which Americans will go, instead of science, if we import low-wage scientists. And then we will lose the edge that our science gives our entrepreneurs.