Redstate

Posted at 6:18pm on Jun. 26, 2008 No Talent Need Apply

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

George Will has a habit of getting to the nub of an issue. He displays that habit anew when discussing American policy that essentially sanctions and encourages a brain drain from the United States:

Modernity means the multiplication of dependencies on things utterly mysterious to those who are dependent -- things such as semiconductors, which control the functioning of almost everything from cellphones to computers to cars. "The semiconductor," says a wit who manufactures them, "is the OPEC of functionality, except it has no cartel power." Semiconductors are, like oil, indispensable to the functioning of many things that are indispensable. Regarding oil imports, Americans agonize about a dependence they cannot immediately reduce. Yet their nation's policy is the compulsory expulsion or exclusion of talents crucial to the creativity of the semiconductor industry that powers the thriving portion of our bifurcated economy. While much of the economy sputters, exports are surging, and the semiconductor industry is America's second-largest exporter, close behind the auto industry in total exports and the civilian aircraft industry in net exports.

The semiconductor industry's problem is entangled with a subject about which the loquacious presidential candidates are reluctant to talk -- immigration, specifically that of highly educated people. Concerning whom, U.S. policy should be: A nation cannot have too many such people, so send us your PhDs yearning to be free.

Instead, U.S. policy is: As soon as U.S. institutions of higher education have awarded you a PhD, equipping you to add vast value to the economy, get out. Go home. Or to Europe, which is responding to America's folly with "blue cards" to expedite acceptance of the immigrants America is spurning.

Two-thirds of doctoral candidates in science and engineering in U.S. universities are foreign-born. But only 140,000 employment-based green cards are available annually, and 1 million educated professionals are waiting -- often five or more years -- for cards. Congress could quickly add a zero to the number available, thereby boosting the U.S. economy and complicating matters for America's competitors.

Don Boudreaux performs the valuable service of giving us some of the historical and theoretical arguments underpinning Will's column. And as Will makes clear, neither Barack Obama nor John McCain have distinguished themselves by talking about this issue and by seeking to do something about this parlous state of policy. McCain will want to remedy that situation quickly and show himself to be more technologically forward-thinking than Obama. He could do worse than to take Will's column and Professor Boudreaux's post and use it as a constant talking point on the campaign trail.

There are some issues that are important enough to be inserted into a stump speech and indeed, to become stump speech mainstays. This is such an issue.

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