Keywords

Foreigners

Education, Info Tech, Labor, The Economy

A few weeks ago I asked, in regards to US concerns about the offshoring of high-tech jobs, just how many American’s were doing these jobs to begin with?

Well, today I found an answer of sorts:

Noting that roughly 50 percent of all engineering, math and science degrees awarded by U.S. universities now go to foreign nationals, AeA researchers also called on the federal government to give green cards to all foreign nationals upon their graduation with master’s and Ph.D. degrees, in an effort to keep these people — and their skills — in the United States.

This doesn’t tell us how long the percentage of foreign nationals has been this high, or how many of them have stayed in the U.S. to work (indeed, the report expresses concern over our ability to keep them here), but 50% is a lot. Isn’t it cheaper to go to the countries where these high-skilled workers are coming from, rather than pay to bring them here?

Companies aren’t outsourcing only in order to obtain cheap labor; they are also looking for skilled technology workers that they increasingly can’t find in the U.S.,” said Matthew Kazmierczak, senior manager of research at AeA, and one of the authors of the report.

Meanwhile, less American’s are pursuing careers in the Computer Sciences.

(via slashdot).

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