US Technological Dominance Threatened

Professor Reynolds links to Global Advances Challenge U.S. Dominance in Science and quotes:

The United States remains the world leader in scientific and technological innovation, but its dominance is threatened by economic development elsewhere, particularly in Asia, the National Science Board said Tuesday in its biennial report on science and engineering.

The comment "The United States remains the world leader in scientific and technological innovation, but its dominance is threatened by economic development elsewhere, particularly in Asia" strikes me about the same as rich folks complaining that the middle and lower classes are catching up. The United States has been dominant in Science and Engineering since World War II. In the post-war period, Japan and West Germany started to close the gap. If you go back 20 years, to when I was an undergraduate, we saw the beginning of an influx of (mostly Chinese) foreign students. More recently, South Asians and Africans have come to the US for an education. This is far from a problem, the way I figure, the world is better off with more scientists and engineers.

A problem that I have never seen addressed in the media is that of newly minted PhDs wanting to stay in the US but forced out by immigration law. Years ago, I interviewed Masters and PhD students for R&D jobs for a Fortune 500 company. Many of the Chinese, South Asian and African students wanted to stay in the US permanently but had to return home when their student visas expired.