The 2010 report declared 2007 was the year China caught up to the US in the number of researchers and doctoral degrees it handed out in natural sciences and engineering. The US awarded 22,500 doctorates in natural sciences and engineering in 2007, but more than half of them were awarded to foreign nationals from countries like India, China and Russia.

Past experience suggests that most new Ph.D.s will stay in the US. Despite the long wait to get a Greencard, sluggish US economy and hype about reverse brain drain, the report shows that 60 per cent of temporary visa holders who earned doctorates in science in engineering in 1997 were still working in the US — and had no intention of leaving.

“While the US is the largest R&D performing nation — representing one-third of total world investment — Asia has narrowed the gap due to the sustained annual increases by China,” said Jose-Marie Griffiths, a member of the National Science Board.

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The driver of economic growth in the modern world is knowledge. Scientific discoveries spill over into related fields to fuel further discoveries. Scientists working in research teams can quickly share insights with each other, allowing greater output. Scientists and engineers working closely together increase the speed and scope of their research. When this brain power is geographically concentrated, it boosts economic growth and technological development.
America’s immigration laws artificially limit our capacity for technological advancement. The engineers and Ph.D.s driving much of the technological innovation in Silicon Valley are overwhelmingly Indian. A growing number of them are here illegally. According to the Department of Homeland Security, Office of Immigration Statistics, there are almost 300,000 illegal Indian immigrants in the United States. Many of them arrived here on H-1B or student visas and overstayed their legal residency in the hope of getting a greencard.
Indian immigrant workers are generally highly skilled and enjoy high incomes. Average Indian-American households have an income 62 percent greater than average. The skills, work ethic, and entrepreneurial spirit that make Indian immigrants such a successful group are remarkably constant throughout the community, regardless of legal status. Instead of making them jump through bureaucratic hoops, we should encourage them to live here peacefully and contribute to society.
Foreign graduate students also contribute to America’s ongoing technological success. A 2005 World Bank study found that foreign graduate student working in the United States file an enormous number of patents. Additionally, a quarter of international patents filed from the United States in 2006 named a non-U.S. citizen working in the United States as the inventor or co-inventor. Many of those immigrants whom our immigration bureaucracy refuses to recognize are responsible for the rapid technological advancement of recent decades.
Highly skilled immigration benefits the American economy. Counting just the value of patents, scientific discoveries, and firms started by immigrants, it is clear that their arrival has paid off handsomely for the United States. And rather than take jobs away from Americans, more people with wider skills and greater experience increase employment opportunities. The non-partisan National Foundation for American Policy reports that for every H-1B visa issued, U.S. technology firms increase their employment by five workers. Every day that almost 300,000 Indian immigrants spend in legal limbo represents a gargantuan waste of creativity.
And that doesn’t even count the millions of highly skilled individuals from China, Europe and elsewhere who would come seeking greater opportunity if the law would only let them. The five immigrant Nobel Prize winners came from Britain, Canada, Australia, China, and India.
The number of potential Nobel Prize winners who have lost their opportunity to do research in this country is unknown. What is known is that the U.S. government has kept out millions of the most inventive, brilliant and entrepreneurial people in the world for no good reason.
Alex Nowrasteh is a policy analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., and a contributor to OpenMarket.org.

[Source: Det News ]