Encouraging bright minds to stay in the United States after graduation, grow businesses and create jobs is critical to secure our country’s position as a high-tech hub and global leader in innovation. It’s also important to our national security.
…Many of the tools we need to keep our country safe are born of the minds of tech innovators. But political leaders appear to have given little thought to the national security ramifications of inaction on this issue. It’s time for our politicians to drop their protectionist rhetoric and allow those who come to the United States to study and earn graduate degrees in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields to stay, grow businesses and create.
Our nation’s defense capabilities are increasingly dependent on the latest advances in science and technology. Too often we take for granted that the United States has the world’s most sophisticated communications, weaponry and aerospace technology and equipment. When we lose STEM students, we lose access to their future innovations. Sending top STEM talent away based on outdated immigration laws may actually be putting us in danger.
Needless to say, the blessings of diversity seem not to have touched the higher ranks of the Consumer Electronics Association. The Executive Board has five white men and two white women. (The two women are the Treasurer and Secretary.) And if there is one place where “protectionism” should have a place, it is in discussions of national security.
Shapiro also made claims that simply aren’t true. For example, he said:
… [L]ast June the Senate passed comprehensive immigration reform legislation by a vote of 68-32. The legislation included provisions allowing immigrants with advanced STEM degrees to become U.S. citizens. Yet the legislation now languishes in the House. Republicans are concerned about leaving enforcement of overall immigration legislation to a president they feel selectively enforces laws. More, they fear Tea Party retribution if they act to solve one of the nation’s biggest problems. Perhaps the stalemate would end if both parties considered how continued deportation of STEM graduate students will cripple our national security?
(Emphasis added). Of course, STEM graduates are not being “deported.” An alien admitted to the United States as a non-immigrant in whatever classification, including an F-1 student visa, is simply required to depart the United States, not deported. Furthermore, foreign students who graduate with a STEM degree, Bachelors, Masters, or Ph.D., are eligible for over two years of employment through the Optional Practical Training Program. The H1-B visa is also an option.
Shapiro was also wrong about what both Republicans and Democrats supported. Both parties offered legal permanent residency, e.g. green cards, to STEM graduates, not U.S. citizenship. [Bill would make it easier for STEM grads, PhD’s to get green cards, by Kristen Domonell, University Business, August 2013] Like most Amnesty proponents, Shapiro doesn’t know what either current law or proposed legislation actually says — he just supports anything that will replace Americans as quickly as possible.
Shapiro also claimed that the defense industry only hires Americans.
International defense contractor BAE’s outgoing U.S. CEO Linda Hudson recently spoke about immigration reform and the defense industry’s hiring problem. “For the most part, in defense we are not permitted to hire foreign nationals,” she said. “I cannot help but wonder if hobbling our ability to hire top scientists, mathematicians, programmers, and engineers who happen to have been born on foreign soil doesn’t carry national security risks of its own.” Hudson has been an outspoken proponent of the benefits of immigration reform, arguing for a path to citizenship for foreign students who want to stay and work in the United States.
When Bill Clinton was president, wages for American IT workers were climbing and American students were clamoring to become computer scientists. Fifteen years later, average real IT wages are no higher. It is no coincidence that high-tech industries are now using guest workers to fill two-thirds of new IT jobs …
Our analysis of the data finds that high-skill guest worker programs supply the preponderance of all new hires for the IT industry. The inflow of guest workers is equal to half of all IT hires each year and fully two-thirds of annual hires of workers younger than 30.
Can it be a coincidence that wages in IT jobs have been stagnant for over a decade? The chart below shows trends for programmer and system analyst jobs; wages for other IT occupations follow similar trends.
At the same time, U.S. colleges are graduating more than twice as many science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) graduates than the number of STEM openings generated by our economy each year. In short, there is little justification to support the escalating numbers of new guest workers called for in the Senate’s S744 legislation. Why then did it pass?
“Why then did it pass?” Because even legislators who have nominal responsibility for the safety of America have no sense of attachment to it. America is a market, her citizens are suckers to be exploited, and national defense is simply an opportunity to make money.
Of course, the whole point of national security is to ensure the welfare of American citizens as opposed to the rest of the world. But instead, defense contractors seem to regard American STEM graduates and the historic American nation as the enemies to be destroyed. This of course raises the question of why we bother paying for such a massive defense establishment in the first place.
If national security is to be transformed into just another handout for foreigners and another market for the Slave Power, it might be best not to save it. Instead of trying to preserve the integrity of a defense industry that regards Americans as the enemy, better to abolish it altogether.
After all, if our parasitic elite is determined to outsource what was once the finest military in the world, let’s can the hypocrisy and let Beijing pick up the tab.
The bloggerFederale is a 4th generation Californian and a veteran of federal law enforcement, including service in the legacy Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Department of Homeland Security, and other federal law enforcement agencies.
Federale’s opinions do not represent those of the Department of Homeland Security or the federal government, and are an exercise of rights protected by the 1st Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
