Give Us Your Engineers, Yearning to Innovate | Daniel Griswold | Cato Institute: Commentary

Give Us Your Engineers, Yearning to Innovate | Daniel Griswold | Cato Institute: Commentary: 'For the government, educated immigrants are pure gravy. Because of their higher salaries and low unemployment rates, they pay more in taxes than they consume in government services from Day One. According to an authoritative study by the National Research Council, each college-educated immigrant and his or her descendants represent a $198,000 fiscal gain (in net present value) for the United States. That means a boost of 50,000 such immigrants in a year would be equivalent to retiring almost $10 billion in government debt.'

'foreign students account for three-fourths of doctorates awarded by U.S. universities in mathematics, computer science and engineering, three-fifths of doctorates in physical sciences, and one-half of doctorates in life sciences. "Today, the difficulty is not in attracting top foreign students to America," Mr. Hanson writes, "but in keeping them here after they graduate."'

'America's immigration system sends the signal to those foreign-born students with valuable skills that we would really prefer that they return to China or India to start companies and file international patents rather than remain here in the United States. And if U.S. companies cannot hire the workers they need here, they eventually will relocate their productive facilities to nations where they can.'