How does this benefit Americans?

The travel-ban casualty the White House is ignoring

President Trump’s travel ban is creating turmoil in U.S. laboratories. It is discouraging foreign scientists from coming to the United States, and it is creating a climate of insecurity and fear among many of those who are already here. It is threatening collaborative research projects involving U.S. and foreign scientists. And it is disrupting the flow of international students to U.S. universities. 

As reported in the journal Nature, foreign-born scientists are reconsidering their plans to work or study in the United States because of Trump’s actions on immigration. Meanwhile, administrators at Harvard University have cautioned foreign students and faculty about potential problems of reentry after traveling outside the United States. Such fears could have serious consequences for research and education in this country. Although the administration limited the scope of its 90-day travel ban to six majority-Muslim nations, the president’s heated rhetoric has raised fears and created a climate of uncertainty about his administration’s longer-term plans and intentions. 

We have already seen a precipitous drop in applications to some U.S. engineering schools from international students, who are vital to science, technology, engineering and math graduate programs at universities. According to data from the National Science Foundation, foreign nationals represent more than 70 percent of full-time graduate students in electrical engineering, 63 percent in computer science and about half of all engineering faculty members. But the latest figures from many universities are worrisome. International applications for Dartmouth College’s master’s in engineering management are down 30 percent; at Vanderbilt University, engineering graduate applications from international students have declined 18 percent. The timing and application deadlines suggest that these drops may be due to Trump’s campaign rhetoric rather than the recent travel bans. 

The United States has long benefited from the contributions of foreign-born scientists and engineers. Examples abound: Nearly a third of all science Nobel laureates who won their prizes while working in the United States were foreign born. Approximately 40 percent of Fortune 500 firms — including such tech-based giants as Google, Intel, eBay, and Apple — were started by immigrants or children of immigrants. More than five out of six patents in information technology in the United States in 2010 listed a foreign national among the inventors. In view of such contributions, the government should be doing more to attract foreign talent, not driving it away.

So the major take away we should get out of this is that there simply are not enough gifted American born students to fill out or college campuses?  That there is not enough American born adults with the necessary skill to perform technical jobs like engineering and computer technology?

Because that appears to be the argument, and the solution certainly isn't to fix our ailing public school system, or provide American born children with the means to make expanded educational choices. The solution seems to be a matter of us conceding that our country no longer can produce top prospects and therefore we should subsequently make it easier for companies like Amazon and Microsoft to hire foreign workers via work Visas.

Of course, this benefits who exactly?

For starters it benefits companies like Amazon and Microsoft. Many visa workers make pennies to the dollar versus their American peers. The more visa workers they have. The less they pay in salaries. The higher the profits. Isn't it convenient that there just isn't enough bright and hard working native born Americans that they otherwise might hire?

It also benefits the public schools and the unions that represent them. They are free to turn out students who do not meet the same major core educational standards that either previous generations of American students do or that foreign born students do. American schools drop out of the top three, top ten, top fifteen... and nobody seems to be alarmed. At least we are in the top twenty, and we have plenty of foreign students who can come here and take the jobs we are not preparing our own children to perform.

Who doesn't benefit? Those who are born and raised here in the United States who may someday want one of these high paying engineer or technical jobs, or may want their children to grow up and garner the same. Why should a naturalized American encourage American Companies and the American Government to politically collude in order to provide education and jobs for foreigners that could otherwise benefit our own?

Somebody please answer that question in a logical, reasonable fashion that does not simply involve calling me a racist?