Illegal Immigrants Threaten Society
By JOHN NASH
Published: July 9, 2008


No one working with even a minimal amount of intelligence can really believe that allowing perhaps 20 million, largely illiterate, illegal immigrants to remain in this nation is a good thing: In fact, it is so bad that it seriously threatens our political stability, endangers national security and undermines our already wobbly economy.

We easily recognize the adverse impact that poverty-level persons have on our welfare, school, medical and law enforcement systems. We're also able to see that, when those numbers are raised exponentially by hordes of illegal residents, the negative effect on our economy threatens all of us. But there's one facet of that long-standing problem that may not have been obvious to you: A brain drain, wherein graduates of the most important courses taught in our colleges and universities are leaving the United States to apply their vital skills in other nations.

Many thoughtful sociologists and economists appear to agree that the more important workers in any industrialized nation are those who produce things (e.g., shoes, wheat, iron, coal, beef, tractors, ships and trains), rather than those providing services (e.g., consultants, lawyers, psychiatrists, television announcers, beauticians, managers, physical trainers, etc.). And, the most important courses taught in universities are those related to the more needed occupations: especially engineering and science, which includes medicine. But, by some estimates, more than two-thirds of our work force is employed in non-productive services, and less than 12 percent of our college graduates earn degrees in the science and/or engineering fields.

In recent years, another troubling statistic has emerged: Most of those receiving the higher science and engineering degrees from our universities are not U.S. citizens, instead coming from places such as India and Vietnam. One report recently had it that two-thirds of doctoral candidates in science and engineering programs are foreign-born. A related, and troubling, report said that only about a seventh of those highly trained and vitally-needed graduates would be allowed, by our own government, to remain and work in the U.S.; the large majority therefore takes their specialized U.S. educations out of the country, where they help others, rather than us.

We complain vigorously about U.S. businesses moving out of this nation. Many of them do so because they are then free to hire the highly educated scientists and engineers who aren't permitted to stay in the U.S. following graduation. The giant software developer, Microsoft, for example, opened a new facility in Canada, rather than the "Lower 48," for just that reason. Why then don't we act to raise immigration quotas for such as those graduate students?

Almost unbelievably, the answer is found in the pervasive, illegal-immigration problem. Although it's difficult to imagine, illegal immigrants, with the considerable help of ambitious, careless and dangerous politicians, have managed to become a powerful political force, even though they are unable to vote legally. An influential political action committee, representing what are variously, and curiously, referred to as "Latinos" or "Hispanics," has been able to thwart action to raise immigration quotas for legal arrivals, by demanding sweeping, and concurrent, benefits for the hordes of illegals swarming across our insecure southern border with Mexico.

So, illegal residents of the U.S. are causing us to lose more than 60 percent of the more highly trained science and engineering graduates from our universities.

It's bad enough that so few parents today encourage their children to study science and engineering, if and when they go to college, instead of allowing them to opt for the easiest courses, which are of little benefit to the nation. It becomes intolerable when we allow foreigners (illegal immigrants) to force many of the graduates of those vital science and engineering studies to leave the U.S., seeking employment elsewhere.
We have enough problems with our economy without this one. Neither of the current candidates for president appears to be concerned, because they both court that questionable, "Hispanic" vote.

So much for Sen. Barack Obama's highly touted "change," which is just more of the same (or worse), with a new name.


John Nash, a regular columnist for Hernando Today, has been a widely published journalist and photographer for more than 30 years. He welcomes rational comment sent to him at john@have-eye.com.
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