Should We Have More Visas for US Trained Foreign Scientists?

    Andrea Widener has a longer article in the November 5 issue of Chemical and Engineering News concerning immigration of scientifically trained persons to the US.
    US companies looking for highly skilled workers claim that more visas and green cards are needed for foreign nationals to fill open positions and keep the companies competitive internationally. Congress is apparently listening.
    However, this appears to the writer to be a rather strange problem. Most of the people that these companies apparently desire have been trained at US universities under the financial benefits of government grants from US taxpayers. That trained group of scientists includes US citizens and noncitizens.
    From previous articles in C&E News concerning employment of newly produced graduates with Masters and PhD degrees, there seems to be a steady moaning concerning lack of job opportunities. Most of these complaints seem to come from Americans rather than foreigners. Does this mean that the American graduates are less trained than the foreign graduates at the same universities? I doubt it.
    Why then the steady drumming of companies claiming an insufficient supply of qualified scientists? The answer is simple. Companies like to keep their payroll expenses as low as possible. They can hire foreign graduates from US universities at lower salaries, and the greater the supply of US trained foreign graduates, the more talent they can obtain for the buck.
    I am not especially sympathetic to the plight of recently US trained American scientists concerning job opportunities, and therefore, would not oppose an increase in the visa and green cards for US trained foreign scientists. It is certainly better to allow US trained foreign scientists to remain in the country in a productive capacity, as opposed to the societal cost of administering to untrained illegal immigrants, who sneak across the border.
    However, I have said in a separate writing that I am strongly opposed to US trained foreign scientists working on confidentially sensitive research and development at the US Department of Defense.