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The House Science Committee held a hearing on November 6, 2007 completing their series on Globalization of R&D and Innovation. 

Before you go to sleep, some fairly shocking testimony proving there is no worker shortage and some additional shocking facts on how the US debt is affecting job creation as well as how current research grant awards are inversely affecting R&D!

Dr. Harold Salzman, The Urban Institute -

The available data indicate that the United States’ education system produces a supply of qualified STEM graduates in much greater numbers than jobs available.

even further more frightening is the implications that Americans might be displaced in graduate school opportunity:

Although there have been steady increases in the numbers of U.S. citizens and permanent residents pursuing a STEM education at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, the number of graduate students on temporary visas has also grown. It is unknown whether this indicates students on temporary visas are filling a demand for graduate students that U.S. undergraduate colleges cannot meet (serving as a complement to the domestic supply) or whether universities and companies are substituting temporary visa students for academically qualified U.S. students. Most likely, it is some of both.

Most interesting was this observation:

Wall Street now considers firms…

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Yesterday, a very popular amendment that would have funded programs for super smart kids and created college scholarships for Americans was gutted by the Conferees, yes that’s our House representatives and Senators, to the H.R. 3043: Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2008. The amendment would increase fees on H-1B employers by $3,500.  About $3,000 of this fee increase would be targeted to $15,000 scholarships in math, science, engineering, and healthcare.  About $500 of the fee increase would be dedicated to the Jacob Javits Gifted and Talented Program.

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) wrote a letter to the Wall Street Journal’s hit piece, which sums up the attack on this very well intentioned amendment.

I’m startled to learn that The Wall Street Journal seriously believes that an investment in American students will make things worse for U.S. businesses

Ok, so the Corporations claim they need these Visas because they cannot find talent. Yet a simple thing, like funding scholarships for the wiz kids of America is now called a tax on corporations.   You call supporting education a tax?

Clearly the goal of corporate America, by opposing such an obvious worthy goal of investing in the best and the brightest Americans…

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