StopBrainDrain..docVIP

Stop Brain Drain (Stop Brain Drain) A bill now before Congress would give preferential treatment to foreign students with advanced degrees in science and engineering who want to work in the United States. To those of us who are immigrants, the bill seems simply to sanction a policy secretly implemented by U.S. industry for nearly four decades — namely, stealing brains from the third world. In general, the 21st Century Technology Resources and Commercial Leadership Act, which Sen. John McCain brought to the Senate in late 1999, is designed to keep the U.S. high-tech industry on top by filling the need for skilled technology workers. One provision of the bill states that, among non-immigrant visa applicants, the state should give preference to foreign nationals with secondary degrees in math, science, engineering or technology. Such a provision would provide temporary skilled personnel in those fields. During the 1960s and 1970s, politicians in my native country, India, used to wave the slogan Stop the Brain Drain — a reference to the fact that the cream of India was leaving for the lucrative shores of England and America. In that post-independence era, when everything foreign was considered contaminated by colonialism, we talked of cottage industries and economic imperialism. We threw Coca-Cola out and invented Thumbs Up Cola;. But it was also the era of Sputnik, of nuclear power and the green revolution. Every year, on Independence Day, our Prime Minister Nehru spoke of the benefits of science and technology. Our institutes of technology, built with European and American aid, offered students free room and board, even salary. Indian taxpayers footed the bill in the hope that one day the graduates would help reconstruct the nation. I was one such student. But studying my textbooks late at night in the library of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), I would dream, not of India, but of America, the land of opportunity. Many students like me, indeed, left du