**NEG—Foreign Students—Case**

AT: Solvency

Alt causes

Chinese stock market is an alt cause to decline international applications—means the plan doesn’t solveHines ’15 [07/08/15 Arielle Hines, contributing writer for USA Today College, “MSU officials expect fewer international students,” http://michiganradio.org/post/msu-officials-expect-fewer-international-students#stream/0 DA July 21, 15]

Michigan State University officials are expecting fewer international students this fall after years of growth. ∂ Jim Cotter, MSU's director of admissions, says applications for international students are down by 4.5%. ∂ He says that fewer Chinese students sent in applications this year, which contributes greatly to the overall reduction. ∂ "China is our greatest international feeder, so when that number declined, it made a more significant impact," Cotter said. ∂ In the fall of 2014, 4,733 Chinese students were enrolled at MSU, about 62 percent

of the total number of international students. ∂ He says that a variety of factors could be affecting the decline in international applications, including the drops in the Chinese stock market .

US is no longer the top priority for higher education--Taiwan proved. The China Post ’14 [05/10/14 The China Post, “Taiwanese studying in US decrease nearly 22 percent over a decade,” http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/national/national-news/2014/05/10/407376/Taiwanese-studying.htm DA July 21, 15]

TAIPEI--Two separate U.S. reports on the international students studying in the United States show that the number of Taiwanese studying in the U.S. has dropped markedly in recent years. ∂ The number of Taiwanese students in the U.S. amounted to 21,867 in the 2012-2013 school year, down 6,150, or approximately 22 percent , from 28,017 people in the 2002-2003 school year , according to Ministry of Education (MOE) statistics, which were compiled based on data from the U.S.'s Institute of International Education.∂ The MOE has attributed the decline to the facts that more and more university graduates have been pursuing master's or doctoral degrees at local academic institutes rather than overseas, while there has also been a decline in the number of U.S. scholarships available for Taiwanese students, the United Evening News reported.∂ The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, however, believes the drop is because the U.S. is no longer the top priority for Taiwanese students seeking higher education, according to the newspaper report. ∂ Over the past several years, many Taiwanese people have preferred to go to Europe or Japan for their education, the ministry said.∂

H-1B Visas

Plan doesn’t solve—H-1B visa policies make it difficult for foreign students to stay in the USHan 15 (Xueying Han, Postdoctoral Scholar at University of California, Santa Barbara, “STEMming reverse brain drain: what would make foreign students stay in the US?”, March 31st, 2015, the conversation, http://theconversation.com/stemming-reverse-brain-drain-what-would-make-foreign-students-stay-in-the-us-39148, JAS)Science, technology, engineering and math ( STEM) disciplines in the US have come to heavily rely on international students , who constitute about a third of all STEM graduate students in the US. So what makes these individuals stay in the US upon graduation? This has come to be an important question considering that for science and engineering, 40% of US doctorates awarded today are to people from abroad . Understanding why international students may or may not want to leave the US and where they choose to work after they graduate is crucial for future immigration policies. As a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at the University of California, Santa Barbara, I am part of an interdisciplinary research group headed by Richard Appelbaum that investigated international students' career choices and found that those interested in becoming entrepreneurs were most inclined to stay after graduation. US still a magnet for the entrepreneurial Among multiple factors, the choice of career plays a key role in students deciding to stay or leave the US upon graduation. Our study found those who wanted to work with business groups, or start their own business, or work for a non-governmental organization had a 90% likelihood of wanting to stay in the US. This suggests to us that the US continues to be viewed as a hub for innovation and research. However, for those wanting a career in academia or a governmental agency, the choice is more complicated and depends on a combination of social, professional and personal reasons . They come but they are going back in higher numbers Perceived as a

global leader in STEM innovation, the US remains the most popular destination in the world for international students. International students are also more likely to earn a doctorate in a STEM related field than their American counterparts. From 2001 to 2011, 84% of doctorate degrees earned by international students were in STEM compared to only 63% by US citizens and permanent residents. STEM areas are offering exciting possibilities of research. Scientist image via www.shutterstock.com However, given the importance of STEM research, increasingly many countries have come up with policies and programs to encourage individuals who studied abroad to return to their home countries. From technological advancements in fully autonomous vehicles to medical breakthroughs in targeted drug delivery, STEM disciplines offer exciting possibilities of research with significant economic and global impact. A 2011 study focusing only on foreign STEM doctoral recipients in the US has found that the percentage of individuals who stay long-term after graduation has steadily decreased. At the same time, studies by Brookings, Harvard, NAFSA: Association of International Educators, and the Institute of International Education have highlighted that international students are important contributors to the US economy and are integral to the future economic success of the country. Immigration policies deter many from staying on Our study also looked at current immigration policies and whether they acted as a possible barrier in retaining the best talent. An Optional Practical Training (OPT) period allows individuals to stay and work in the US in a job related to their field of study

for 12 months following graduation. Qualified STEM degree holders are then eligible to apply for an additional 17-month OPT extension. But to stay past their OPT period, international students must find a business willing to sponsor them for an H-1B visa. Respondents in our study were forthright on how frustrating they found the H-1B visa process. Students say visa issues are a major deterrent For instance, a graduate student in electrical and computer engineering said: “The H-1B visa makes you get a sponsor for five years or so and you are bound to that employer and that is not very attractive . If the US wants to retain talent, people need freedom to pursue what they want to research .” Another graduate student in mechanical engineering voiced a similar

sentiment: “The fact that you don’t have a green card at the end of your PhD – it’s a nightmare. For international students, not having a green card - it impacts the job search…everything . ” For policymakers in the US, such a large pool of STEM students raises crucial questions about the direction of future policies. Do we want to retain international STEM graduates? And if so, how do we go about

easing immigration policies restrictions so as to encourage those most likely to contribute to the American economy?

AT: EDU ADD-ON

Turn—hurts edu

Turn—foreign students hurt US education—they become professors at US universities but speak English poorlyGeorge J. Borjas, July 2002, he is a Professor of Economics and Social Policy, “An Evaluation of the Foreign Student Program,” RWP02-026, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Faculty Research Working Papers Series Finally, one could plausibly argue that foreign students have lowered the quality of undergraduate education. Undergraduates often charge that t he lack of English language proficiency among many foreign-born teaching assistants obstructs their understanding of the material . And a few studies provide some e vidence that foreign born teaching assistants do indeed have an adverse effect on the academic achievement of U.S.-born undergraduates, as measured by the grade that students receive in the class or other test scores. Foreign students surely influence many aspects of American economic and social life, and the fact that some impacts cannot be easily measured does not mean that such impacts do not exist. It could be the case, for example, that the foreign student program has indeed speeded up the rate of scientific discovery by allowing full-staffed labs to run efficiently for long periods of time. But one should be highly skeptical of arguments that typically depend on these undocumented effects to mobilize support for a large-scale foreign student program, particularly when those arguments are made by groups that have a financial stake in the outcome. And it is worth remembering that hard-to-measure impacts often come in two flavors; some are beneficial for the United

States and some are not.

AT: ECON

Turn

Turn—US economy suffers when foreign students get their education in the US but then they leave because they can’t get a green card or a H-1B visaMalone 14, Michael S. Malone writes often for the Journal about technology., “The self-inflicted US Brain Drain,” Wall Street Journal, Oct 15, 2014, , http://www.wsj.com/articles/michael-s-malone-the-self-inflicted-u-s-brain-drain-1413414239The process of bringing skilled immigrants to the U.S. via H-1B visas and putting them on the path to eventual citizenship has been a political football for at least a decade. It has long been bad news for those immigrants

trapped in this callous process. Now the U.S. economy is beginning to suffer, too . Every year, tens of thousands of disappointed tech workers and other professionals give up while waiting for a resident visa or green card, and go home—having learned enough to start companies that compete with their former U.S. employers. The recent historic success of China’s Alibaba IPO is a reminder that a new breed of companies is being founded, and important innovation taking place, in other parts of the world. More than a quarter of all patents filed today in the U.S. bear the name of at least one foreign national residing here. The U.S. no longer has a monopoly on great startups. In the past, the best and brightest people would come to the U.S., but now they are staying home. In Silicon Valley, according to a 2012 survey by Duke and Stanford Universities and the University of California at Berkeley, the percentage of new companies started by foreign-born entrepreneurs has begun to slide for the first time—down to 43.9% during 2006-12, from 52.4% during 1995-2005. The brain drain from this dysfunctional skilled-immigrant policy has begun. Some of the most thoughtful alarms have been raised by Vivek Wadhwa, the author of “The Immigrant Exodus: Why America Is Losing the Global Race to Capture Entrepreneurial Talent” (Wharton, 2012). Mr. Wadhwa, who teaches at Duke and Stanford, is particularly worried about the so-called STEM disciplines—science, technology, engineering and mathematics. “Companies like Alibaba and Tencent are a warning signal that it is almost too late,” he tells me. “Either we get back to picking off the best and brightest STEM talent in the world, or someone else will.” The first step in solving the skilled-immigrant crisis is to be honest about the real problem—and the motives of the players

involved. First, the difficulty is not about raising H-1B quota numbers. Surprised? That is all you hear about in the news: American business wants more H-1B immigrants. In fact, while H-1B visas have been stuck at about 65,000 a year (plus 20,000 students), that number can be changed with relatively simple moves by the president or Congress. A decade ago the cap stood at 195,000. Mr. Wadhwa says the real problem is what he estimates are up to 1.5 million skilled immigrants and their families who—thanks to visa quotas, bureaucratic sloth and other roadblocks—are trapped in the limbo between H-1B and the green card that earns them permanent residency and a chance for citizenship. At current green-card approval rates, Mr. Wadhwa tells his students here from India, it will take 70 years for them to gain permanent resident status. Most will eventually leave. They’ll add to a growing brain drain—100,000 skilled immigrants a year from China, India and other nations, Mr. Wadhwa and his team estimate .

Alt causes

Alt causes—language barriers and psychological alienationToutant 09 Dr. Ligia Toutant received her Ph.D. in Social Sciences and Comparative Education from UCLA in 2009. She has an eclectic background in economics, human communication, sociology, and sustainability. As an active member of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES), in 2010 Dr. Toutant created a special interest group, Education for Sustainable Development, that functions under the auspices of this society. “International Graduate Students, the F-l Visa Process, and the Dark Side of Globalization in Post 9/11 American Society”, ProQuest Database, //akIn addition to the articles summarized above, I read many others just to get a feeling of what has been published about international students, and I agree with

Szelenyi's and Rhoads' statement. Indeed, there are many studies on how international students encounter challenges due to the language barriers and psychological alienation. Szelenyi and Rhoads argue that despite efforts to expedite visas for international students, many problems continue to exist. They assert, "The policies of visa restriction and 24 continued surveillance of international students via SEVIS and Visa Mantis

present serious difficulties" (45). Among the problems Szelenyi and Rhoads mention are that some basic rights of international students are restricted, and they have feelings of being unwanted.

US econ fine now

US economy is fine now—five reasons proveFox Business 15, Business network stablished bureaus in such key markets as Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco (Silicon Valley), Washington, D.C. and London.”Why US Economy will be Fine in 2015 even though Growth Slowed in Fourth Quarter,” Fox Business, 2/27/15, http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2015/02/27/why-us-economy-will-be-fine-in-2015-even-though-growth-slowed-in-fourth-quarter/WASHINGTON – The U.S. economy grew at a modest annual rate of 2.2 percent in the fourth quarter, less than half the third quarter's torrid 5 percent rate and weaker than the government first reported. While the sharp slowdown seems troubling on the surface, economists say it's actually nothing to worry about . They remain optimistic that the country is finally emerging from years of sub-par activity and is on course this year for the strongest growth in a decade. Here are five reasons why Friday's gross domestic product report showed that the economy is doing just fine: — REALISTIC GROWTH The sizzling growth rate in the July-September quarter was never going to last. One-time factors, such as a 16 percent surge in federal defense spending, fueled the strongest acceleration in almost a dozen years. The third quarter growth followed a 4.6 percent jump in the second quarter, which was also misleading. That was credited to a robust rebound after harsh winter weather sent the economy into reverse in the first quarter. After such big swings, it's natural that economic growth would settle into a more sustainable pace. — CONSUMER STILL KING The centerpiece of the fourth quarter's growth was consumer spending, which expanded at a 4.2 percent rat e. That was the strongest quarterly growth since early 2006. Consumers benefited from falling gas prices, which gave them more to spend on other items. Consumer spending accounts for 70 percent of economic activity, and economists said the solid performance in the final three months of the year was an encouraging sign going into 2015. — BUSINESS SPENDING Another promising sign emerged from companies. Friday's report revealed that they increased investment spending to expand and modernize their facilities at a solid 4.8 percent rate in the fourth quarter. While

that was down from the pace over the previous six months, it was a marked improvement over the government's first estimate that business investment had only risen at a 1.9 percent pace during the three-month period. The robust upward revision eased concerns that businesses might cut back sharply on investment in the face of global economic weakness and a rising dollar, which hurts export sales. Moreover, one area of weakness in the government's report Friday — a slowdown in business stockpiling — may turn out to be a good thing for future growth. Slower inventory building in the fourth quarter will mean that businesses will spend more in the coming months as they respond to rising demand. That should then lead to stronger factory production and ultimately, economic growth. — JOB GROWTH While GDP growth slowed in the fourth quarter, the job market was on a roll. The surge continued into January , giving the country the strongest pace of job creation in 17 years — job gains of 423,00 in November, 329,000 in December and 257,000 in January. Hopes for a solid 2015 stem from the

theory that strong job growth and falling unemployment will force employers to start boosting salaries to attract workers. The combination of more jobs and rising salaries will, forecasters believe, fuel strong consumer spending in 2015 and lift overall growth. —

No impact—us-sino war

US-China war unlikely—economic inter-dependency checksRudd 15 (Kevin Rudd, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, “U.S.-China 21 The Future of U.S.-China Relations Under Xi Jinping,” Harvard Kennedy School, April 2015, http://asiasociety.org/files/USChina21_English.pdfXi Jinping is a nationalist. And China, both the U.S. and China’s neighbors have concluded, is displaying newfound assertiveness in pursuing its hard security interests in the region. But there is , nonetheless, a very low risk of any form of direct conflict involving the armed forces of China and the U.S. over the next decade . It is not in the national interests of either country for any such conflict to occur; and it would be disastrous for both, not to mention for the rest of the world. Despite the deep difficulties in the relationship, no Cold War standoff between them yet exists, only a strategic chill. In fact, there is a high level of economic inter-dependency in the relationship, which some international relations scholars think puts a fundamental brake on the possibility of any open hostilities . Although it should be noted the U.S. is no longer as important to the Chinese economy as it once was.

No US-Sino armed conflict—against China’s own benefits, so that means deterrence will prevailRudd 15 (Kevin Rudd, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, “U.S.-China 21 The Future of U.S.-China Relations Under Xi Jinping,” Harvard Kennedy School, April 2015, http://asiasociety.org/files/USChina21_English.pdfOf course, Xi Jinping has no interest in triggering armed conflict with the U.S., a nightmare scenario that would fundamentally undermine China’s economic rise. Furthermore, there are few, if any, credible military scenarios in the immediate period ahead in which China could militarily prevail in a direct conflict with the U.S. This explains Xi’s determination to oversee the professionalization and modernization of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) into a credible, war-fighting and war-winning machine. Xi Jinping is an intelligent consumer of strategic literature and would have concluded that risking any premature military engagement with the U.S. would be foolish. Traditional Chinese strategic thinking is unequivocal in its advice not to engage an enemy unless you are in a position of overwhelming strength. Under Xi, the ultimate purpose of China’s military expansion and modernization is not to inflict defeat on the U.S., but to deter the U.S. Navy from intervening in China’s immediate periphery by creating sufficient doubt in the minds of American strategists as to their ability to prevail.

Turn

Companies chose foreign STEM workers over domestic STEM workers for cheaper wages--- that leads to unemployment.Harkinson ’13 [02/22/13 Josh Harkinson, reporter, “How H-1B Visas Are Screwing Tech Workers,” http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/silicon-valley-h1b-visas-hurt-tech-workers DA July 16, 15]

But in reality, most of today's H-1B workers don't stick around to become the next Albert Einstein or Sergey Brin. ComputerWorld revealed last week that the top 10 users of H-1B visas last year were all offshore outsourcing firms such as Tata and Infosys. Together these firms hired nearly half of all H-1B workers, and less than 3 percent of them applied to become permanent residents . "The H-1B worker learns the job and then rotates back to the home country and takes the work with him,"explains Ron Hira, an immigration expert who teaches at the Rochester Institute of Technology. None other than India's former commerce secretary once dubbed the H-1B the "outsourcing visa."∂ Of course, the big tech companies claim H-1B workers are their last resort , and that they can't find qualified Americans to fill jobs. Pressing to raise the visa cap last year, Microsoft pointed to 6,000 job openings at the company.∂ Yet if tech workers are in such short supply, why are so many of them unemployed or underpaid? According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), tech employment rates still haven't rebounded to pre-recession levels. And from 2001 to 2011 , the mean hourly wage for computer programmers didn't even increase enough to beat inflation.∂ The ease of hiring H-1B workers certainly hasn't helped. More than 80 percent of H-1B visa holders are approved to be hired at wages below those paid to American-born workers for comparable positions , according to EPI. Experts who track labor conditions in the technology sector say that older, more expensive workers are particularly vulnerable to being undercut by their foreign counterparts. "You can be an exact match and never even get a phone call because you are too expensive," says Norman Matloff, a computer science professor at the University of California-Davis. "The minute that they see you've got 10 or 15 years of experience, they don't want you."∂ A 2007 study by the Urban Institute concluded that America was producing plenty of students with majors in s cience, t echnology, e ngineering, and m ath (the "STEM" professions)—many more than necessary to fill entry-level jobs. Yet Matloff sees this changing as H-1B workers cause Americans to major in more-lucrative fields such as law and business. "In terms of the number of people with graduate degrees in STEM," he says, "H-1B is the problem, not the solution."

Foreign students are decreasing US STEM quality. Matloff ’13 [02/12/13 Norman Matloff, researcher, “How Foreign Students Hurt U.S. Innovation,” http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/blog/how_foreign_students_hurt_us_i.php DA July 15, 15]

This projection was dead-on. Contrary to the industry lobbyists’ claim of student shortages in these fields, an extensive 2007 Urban Institute study found that the U.S. has plenty of STEM graduates at the bachelor’s degree level, but few go on to graduate work in the field .∂ The shift has spawned a new term, “diversion,” alluding to the STEM grads who are diverted to other fields. Other professions use similar talents but pay much more and have brighter job prospects. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has also advocated importing foreign workers to hold down wages (at all degree levels) in the technology industry. Financially, “it’s crazy to go into STEM” if you are a young person who is talented in math, as Anthony Carnevale, the director of Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, put it.∂ Yet, seemingly oblivious to this troubling situation, President Barack Obama is proposing that we give special green cards to all foreign graduate students in these fields. Republican Senators Orrin Hatch and Marco Rubio, among others, have made similar proposals.∂ To such boosters, every foreign student is a future Nobel laureate. As Democratic Representative Zoe Lofgren, author of

one proposal, has said, “You can’t have too many geniuses.” To be sure, there are individual students from abroad who prove her point: the game changers. Yet the average quality of the international STEM students is lower than that of the Americans.∂ Focusing on computer science and electrical engineering, my recent research, which is scheduled to be published by the Economic Policy Institute in March, compared American natives with former F-1s who were working in the U.S. as of 2003. For workers of comparable age , educational attainment and so on, the former foreign students on average had fewer patent applications, attended lower-ranked U.S. universities and were less likely to be working in research and development positions. (Here is an earlier report I wrote.)∂ Interviewed after the Cal State East Bay furor, biology professor Maria Nieto said the increase in foreign students had decreased overall quality. The weak foreign students are being admitted “because they can pay,” she added.

Domestic students have better capability, however employers prefer foreign students for cheaper wages.Matloff ’13 [02/28/13 Norman Matloff, Computer Science Professor @ UCD, Economic Policy Institute, “Are Foreign Students the ‘Best and Brightest’?” http://www.epi.org/publication/bp356-foreign-students-best-brightest-immigration-policy/ DA July 17, 15]

The technology industry, in lobbying Congress for expansion of programs to attract skilled foreign workers , has long claimed that foreign students graduating from U.S. universities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are typically “the best and the brightest ,” i.e., exceptionally talented innovators in their fields.∂ However, the industry and its supporters have offered little or no evidence to back up their assertion. The claim is investigated in this report, with a focus on former foreign students now working in the United States, the group viewed by the industry as key to innovation. ∂ The assertion that the foreign graduates offer superior skills or ability relative to U.S. graduates is found not to be supported by the data:∂ On a variety of measures, the former foreign students have talent lesser than, or equal to, their American peers. ∂ Skilled-foreign-worker programs are causing an internal brain drain in the United States. ∂ The lack of evidence that the foreign students and workers we are recruiting offer superior talent reinforces the need to assure that programs like II-iB visa are used only to attract the best and the brightest or to remedy genuine labor shortages—not to serve as a source of cheap, compliant labor. We must eliminate employer incentives for using foreign workers as cheap labor, and we must end the practice of using green card sponsorship to render foreign workers captive to the employers who bring them into the country. ∂ The primary task in removing the cheap-labor incentive is to reform the legal definition of prevailing wage, which is riddled with loopholes that permit the underpayment of II-iB workers relative to the true market wage.∂ We must close the legal loopholes involving the definition of w’hat constitutes a “qualified” worker for purposes of permanent labor certification. The laws should not force an employer to hire an American who cannot perform the job well, but neither should they reward employers who narrowly tailor job requirements so that only the desired foreign applicants qualify. ∂

AT: ISIS

Squo solves

Squo solves Islamophobia now—hate crimes have fallen since 9/11Goldberg 10, Jonah Goldberg is a writer for the American Enterprise Institute. He is also a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, a member of the board of contributors to USA Today, a contributor to Fox News, a contributing editor to National Review, and the founding editor of National Review Online. He was named by the Atlantic magazine as one of the top 50 political commentators in America. In 2011 he was named the Robert J. Novak Journalist of the Year at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). He has written on politics, media, and culture for a wide variety of publications and has appeared on numerous television and radio programs. Prior to joining National Review, he was a founding producer for Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg on PBS and wrote and produced several other PBS documentaries. He is the recipient of the prestigious Lowell Thomas Award. He is the author of two New York Times bestsellers, The Tyranny of Clichés (Sentinel HC, 2012) and Liberal Fascism (Doubleday, 2008). At AEI, Mr. Goldberg writes about political and cultural issues for American.com and the Enterprise Blog.“Islamophobia? Not Really”, 9/25/10, <http://www.aei.org/publication/islamophobia-not-really/> //ak Here’s a thought: The 70 percent of Americans who oppose what amounts to an Islamic Niketown two blocks from Ground Zero are the real victims of a climate of hate, and the much-ballyhooed anti-Muslim backlash is mostly a myth. Let’s start with some data. According to the FBI, hate crimes against Muslims increased by a staggering 1,600 percent in 2001. That sounds serious! But wait, the increase is a math mirage. There were 28 anti-Islamic incidents in 2000. That number climbed to 481 the year a bunch of Muslim

terrorists murdered 3,000 Americans in the name of Islam on Sept. 11. Now, that was a hate crime. Nowhere is there more open, honest, and intentional intolerance–in words and deeds–than from certain prominent Muslim leaders around the world. And yet, Americans are the bigots? Regardless, 2001 was the zenith or, looked at through the prism of our national shame, the nadir of the much-discussed anti-Muslim backlash in the United States–and civil libertarians and Muslim activists insisted it was 1930s Germany all over again. The following year, the number of anti-Islamic hate-crime incidents (overwhelmingly, nonviolent vandalism and nasty

words) dropped to 155. In 2003, there were 149 such incidents. And the number has hovered around the mid-100s or lower ever

since. Sure, even one hate crime is too many. But does that sound like an anti-Muslim backlash to you? Let’s

put this in even sharper focus. America is, outside of Israel, probably the most receptive and tolerant country in the world to Jews. And yet, in every year since 9/11, more Jews have been hate-crime victims than Muslims. A lot more. In 2001, there were twice as many anti-Jewish incidents as there were anti-Muslim, according to the FBI. In 2002 and pretty much every year since, anti-Jewish incidents have outstripped anti-Muslim incidents by at least 6 to 1. Why aren’t we talking about the anti-Jewish climate in America? Because there isn’t one. And there isn’t an anti-Muslim climate either. Yes, there’s a lot of heated rhetoric on the Internet. Absolutely, some Americans don’t like Muslims. But if you watch TV or movies, or

read, say, the op-ed page of the New York Times–never mind left-wing blogs–you’ll hear much more open bigotry toward evangelical Christians (in blogspeak, the “Taliban wing of the Republican party”) than you will toward Muslims. No doubt some American Muslims–particularly young Muslim men with ties to the Middle East and South Asia–have been scrutinized at airports more than elderly women of Norwegian extraction, but does that really amount to Islamophobia, given the dangers and complexities of the war on terror? For ten years we’ve been subjected to news stories about the Muslim backlash that’s always around the corner. It didn’t start with President Obama or with the “Ground Zero mosque.” President George W. Bush was at his most condescending when he explained, in the cadences of a guest reader at kindergarten story time, that “Islam is peace.” But he was right to emphasize America’s tolerance and to draw a sharp line between Muslim terrorists and their law-abiding co-religionists.

Squo solves—Muslim community is on the rise—14% of student visas is due to themHorowitz 15, Daniel Horowitz is the Senior Editor of Conservative Review. “Student Visas from Muslim Countries on the Rise,” Conservative Review, 7/16/15, https://www.conservativereview.com/Commentary/2015/07/student-visas-from-muslim-countries-on-the-riseSeveral months ago, we estimated that roughly 1.62 million individuals from predominantly Muslim countries have emigrated here since 9/11. We counted all of the green cards issued to foreign nationals of 43 countries with either near-100%

Muslim population or an overwhelming majority of Muslims. While some of these individuals are likely non-Muslims, we noted that it is a pretty fair estimate of the number of Muslim immigrants and coincides with the Pew estimate of 100,000 Muslim immigrants per year. 14% of the annual student visas are from Muslim countries, an even higher share than immigrant visas relative to the total immigrant population . A quick search and tally of the data at the IIE for the same 43 predominantly Muslim countries reveals that 127,332 student visas were granted to students from these same countries. Our government does this every year and the

trend is only growing . That means that 14% of the annual student visas are from Muslim countries, an even higher share than immigrant visas relative to the total immigrant population. Student Visas from Country of Origin

By far, the largest number of visas come from Saudi Arabia (remember 9/11?), topping out at 53,919 for the last

academic year. As we noted last year, the Saudi government has unlimited funds to pay for their international students, and with no caps on F1 visas, they could theoretically send hundreds of thousands of students here every year.

Turns ME security

Turn—the entrance of Islamic students decreases national security—high probability that they’re terrorists Horowitz 15, Daniel Horowitz is the Senior Editor of Conservative Review. “Student Visas from Muslim Countries on the Rise,” Conservative Review, 7/16/15, https://www.conservativereview.com/Commentary/2015/07/student-visas-from-muslim-countries-on-the-riseIran has sent us over 10,000 foreign students as well. What could go wrong? Oh, and with Mohammad Youssef Adbulazeer on everyone’s mind, it’s important to note that we’ve admitted 7,288 foreign students from Kuwait for that same academic year. No wonder Arabic is the fastest growing language on U.S. campuses. Consider this thought for a moment: the college population is almost exclusively between the ages of 18-25. Given that 36% of American Muslims under the age of 45 believe that violence against America can be justified as part of Global Jihad , what percentage of foreign students during the prime age for Jihad coming straight from the Middle East harbor the same sentiments? In that sense, student visas from the Middle East and North Africa represent a n even more direct security threat than immigrant visas. The rapid increase in Muslim foreign students should also raise concerns in the context of the growing push to bring in more “high skilled” STEM students and workers. Liberals often blame Jihad on poverty and

lack of a promising future for Muslim youth, but the reality is that many of these young Jihadis are smart and affluent with promising careers. Just look at the lifestyle of the Chattanooga Jihadi and the fact that he held a degree in electrical engineering. A huge share of the international students from Muslim countries is enrolled in STEM fields, according to the data compiled by IIE. Seventy-nine percent of Iranian students and 42% of Saudi students were enrolled in STEM programs. So just remember when they discuss bringing in more STEM students and workers, there is a high likelihood we would be importing more security risks. With this entire region embroiled in Islamic upheaval and the shocking success of the global cyber jihad in radicalizing Muslim youth, why in the world would we self-immolate and bring in so many potential security threats?

Turn—diplomacy makes middle-east war inevitable-- Iran deals have put us on the brinkBucci 4/3/15, Steven P. Bucci, who served America for three decades as an Army Special Forces officer and top Pentagon official, is director of the Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation. Bucci previously was a lead consultant to IBM on cyber security policy. He published numerous articles on related issues and regularly contributed to “Security Debrief,” a leading national security blog. He was also a lead advisor in the War on Terror and lead a team of 25 military experts to Baghdad to assist the Coalition Provisional Authority. “The Conditions are Ripe for a Major Middle Eastern War” http://www.heritage.org/about/staff/b/steven-bucci//akIt’s a huge amount of fire power, rivalry and armed conflict concentrated in a comparatively small region. And this tinderbox could blow up into a major conflagration, with destructive consequences unparalleled since World War Two. But, some might say, these opposing blocs have been in place for decades, why the worry now? Quite simply,

because America is no longer playing the role it has played in the region for a long, long time . For decades,

the U.S. served as security guarantor and diplomatic trouble-shooter for our friends in the region. The Saudis, Jordanians, Egyptians, and other friendlies didn’t have to worry that Iran would gain regional hegemony. They knew a strong, assertive America would keep Iran’s ambitions in check. Meanwhile, Iran and its proxies knew they could go only so far before being slowed and stopped by the judicious use of America power. The credible threat of American hard power was enough to keep our friends calm and our enemies quiet. That has changed. Our enemies have seen the U.S. “lead from behind” in Libya, then turn its back on our consulate in Benghazi. They’ve seen us draw a “red line” in Syria,

then walk away when Assad called our bluff. They’ve seen Russia annex Crimea and bolster the separatists in eastern Ukraine

while America refuses to provide military aid to Kiev. They’ve seen us flinch at the thought of putting American boots on the ground in the fight against ISIS. Put it all together, and it’s a picture of an America that is timid, or confused, or flaccid—a nation that still talks a good hard-power game, but lacks the will to follow through.

Moreover, they see an Administration so hungry for a “legacy” deal with Iran, that the Iranians considerable negotiating

skills are not even being taxed. In the G5+1 talks in Lausanne Secretary of State John Kerry has made concession after concession with no quid pro quo from Iran—to the point that France is now emerging as the hardliner on our side of the negotiating table. Our enemies aren’t the only ones who notice these developments. Our friends do, too. What must the Saudis and the others think when they see the administration cast aside regional ally No. 1—Israel? Can their “push out the door” be far off if they get in the way of the Administration’s single-minded drive to appease the Iranian regime? Those friends now have reason to fear that the nuclear negotiations with Iran will accelerate the U.S. withdrawal from the region or—even worse—produce an Iranian-American rapprochement at their expense. It is this fear that has led our friends to band together to defend

themselves against what they know to be a growing threat: Iran. While the Obama administration may be willing to turn a blind eye to this threat in its pursuit of a nuclear deal, Iran’s neighbors do not have that luxury . Since the U.S. has cut back on dispensing its usual antibiotics, our jittery friends in the Middle East now feel that they must counter—strongly and immediately—the local infections promoted and exploited by Iran. And they are sometimes doing so without consulting the U.S. The result is a Middle East more explosive and unpredictable than ever. The conditions are now ripe for a major Middle Eastern war—one that could spill across the globe, wherever Sunni and Shia Muslims interact. All that remains missing is a spark. Impossible you say? That June day in Sarajevo, no experts predicted the horrifying consequences of Garo Princip’s

actions. Today, the Saudis are massing 150,000 troops on the border with Yemen. The Pakistanis and the Egyptians have promised ground troops. These Sunnis Governments view their alliance as one of self-defense. But it’s a huge

threat to Iran’s desires for hegemony, and Tehran may even view it as a threat to the survival of the mullahs’ regime. No one wants war, big or little. But among the power blocs of the Middle East, Washington’s misbegotten policies have fueled uncertainty on one side and perceived opportunity on the other. In the aftermath of the Second World War, Americans

have always dreaded a clash of the superpowers. But the lesson of the First World War is that when large regional powers—especially

those driven by sectarian and apocalyptic forces—are poised to fight, any miscalculation can be equally cataclysmic. That situation exists today in the Middle East. And the Administration, far from easing the tensions, is actively destabilizing the region through its dealings with Iran.

No impact—ISIS

ISIS risks no real threat—history proves—in fact, there’s structural problems with ISIS that makes its downfall inevitableBrooks 15, Rosa Brooks is a senior fellow at New America and a law professor at Georgetown University. From 2009 to 2011, she served as a senior adviser to the undersecretary of defense for policy., “It’s had some military success, but the Islamic State is no existential threat,” Washingtonpost, 4/15/15,< http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/its-had-some-military-success-but-the-islamic-state-is-no-existential-threat/2015/04/16/5f6850de-c69d-11e4-b2a1-bed1aaea2816_story.html>Berger and Stern paint a picture of the Islamic State as a sophisticated, adaptive organization with a clear blueprint for the future, an elaborate internal administrative structure and strong millenarian appeal. Yes, it employs extreme violence and brutality — but it does so with deliberation and purpose. However, Stern and Berger also remind us that while the group’s “military successes are formidable,” it is not “an existential threat to any Western country.” Stern and Berger offer a nuanced and readable account of the ideological and organizational origins of the group, emphasizing the early fault lines between Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of the Islamic State’s precursor, al-Qaeda in Iraq. Even before 9/11, they note, bin Laden mistrusted Zarqawi’s embrace of extreme violence, particularly against Muslim civilians. But Zarqawi and his inner circle were heavily influenced by a 2004 tract called “The Management of Savagery,” by Abu Bakr Naji. The book urged jihadists to draw “the United States into a continual series of conflicts in the Middle East to destroy its image of invincibility,” Berger and Stern explain. It also advocated what became the Islamic State’s hallmark: the “embrace and wide broadcast of unvarnished violence as a tool to motivate would-be recruits and demoralize enemies.” After Zarqawi’s death, the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) was formed with support from al-Qaeda leaders. In 2010, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a veteran of the U.S. detention facility at Camp Bucca, became ISI’s leader. Baghdadi understood instinctively that ISI would eventually need shrewd managers and planners as much as charismatic ideologues, and he recruited into its leadership a number of secular former Iraqi Baathists he had come to know at Camp Bucca. Their military, technical and administrative skills proved invaluable. In 2011, Baghdadi sent a deputy to establish an offshoot in Syria. This group “came to be known as Jabhat al Nusra, which . . . positioned itself as an independent entity.” Baghdadi sought to reestablish direct control by declaring in April 2013 that the Islamic State of Iraq and Jabhat al-Nusra would merge to form a new Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. But the Syrian group instead broke away from the Islamic State and swore allegiance to al-Qaeda. Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State were soon fighting each other as well as the forces of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, and in February 2014, the Islamic State was formally disavowed by al-Qaeda. This didn’t slow the group, which steadily gained in military strength and media sophistication, producing an increasingly professional series of videos distributed via YouTube and a growing stream of pro-Islamic State tweets. By mid-2014, the militants had captured enough money and equipment from conquered territories and the disintegrating Iraqi army to become “the richest terrorist organization in the world.” In June 2014, the Islamic State declared itself a caliphate, with dominion over Muslims worldwide. The proclamation struck many as laughable, but the group was dead serious. Baghdadi was intent not simply on terrorizing Iraq and Syria, but also on remaking civic order, Islamic State-style. Even as the extremists posted graphic videos of beheaded Western hostages and massacres of hundreds of unarmed prisoners, they also focused on the nitty-gritty of municipal administration. The group actively recruited foreign technocrats, engineers and doctors, and soon it possessed all the trappings of governance, from a detainee-affairs office and a consumer protection bureau to nursing homes for the elderly. The Islamic State, Stern and Berger note, “was offering something novel” by “emphasizing two seemingly disparate themes — ultraviolence and civil society. They were unexpectedly potent when combined.” I would quibble here with the authors, who view this combination of ultraviolence and civil order as “strange” and “unprecedented.” Hardly: Historically, societies around the

world have found spectacles of extreme violence essential to the consolidation of power and the maintenance of civic order. Consider the Roman games, the public burnings of heretics in England, the ritual violence of the Spanish Inquisition or the more than 15,000 enemies of the revolution sent to the guillotine during the reign of terror following the French Revolution. In Europe, public executions attracted mobs of revelers. In the American South, lynchings of African Americans drew rowdy crowds well into the 20th century. Gruesome public executions served to display and consolidate the power of those capable of inflicting such atrocities

upon their opponents. Such spectacles were, as Michel Foucault famously put it, the “ritual destruction of infamy by omnipotence.” In the longer term, however, such public ultraviolence often became self-defeating: As Foucault also noted, the bloodthirsty crowds gathered to witness public executions sometimes developed a dangerous tendency to turn upon the executioners. Awakened bloodlust is difficult to control. Wise leaders eventually learn to dispense with spectacles of ultraviolence; unwise leaders may find themselves eventually dispensed with in their turn.

AT: STEM

Alt causes

Alt causes to loss of intellectual capital means plan doesn’t solve—foreign students can’t get a green card nor H-1B visa—that means they won’t stay in the USCui et al 14, YUQING CUI, AROLYN CONWILL, DANIEL DAY, all three are students from MIT, “Fix the law now to plug this brain drain ,” NY Daily News, Monday, September 8, 2014, http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/fix-law-plug-brain-drain-article-1.1929729Many highly skilled immigrants so sought after by business originally came to the U nited States from around the world to pursue higher education , at universities whose research and education funding is largely supported by American taxpayers. This federal investment gives American companies a competitive edge in attracting talent. Yet immigration law forfeits this advantage by making it incredibly hard for graduates to secure the work visas they need to stay here. At MIT, almost half of our classmates are international students. Indeed, international students make up a significant portion of the graduate student body in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) nationwide. In engineering alone, 45.3% and 55.1% of masters and Ph.D. degrees were awarded to foreign nationals in 2013. We know how lucky we are to be

part of a community that attracts some of the brightest minds from around the world. As part of the path to earning their degrees, our international peers learn to conduct cutting-edge research, making them valuable economic assets by the time they graduate. In fact, 76% of patents from the top 10 patent-generating universities had at least one foreign-born inventor in 2011. We see dozens of aspiring entrepreneurs among our classmates. Indeed, 64% of Indian, 66% of European, and 68% of Chinese graduate students nationwide aspire to start a business within the next decade. Looking at the Fortune 500 firms in America, some 40% were founded by immigrants or their children. Among these job-creating immigrants, more than half initially came to America to study. But the current immigration system makes it somewhere between difficult and impossible to retain this intellectual capital. As a result, many international advanced degree holders leave with the skills they acquired in the United States. Following a decades-long trend,

this year there were 172,000 eligible applicants competing for 85,000 available H-1B employer- sponsored visas. Permanent residency — a green card — is even harder to obtain. The quota of 140,000 green cards for employment and investment has remained the same since 1990, and, due to a backlog of available green cards, the Kauffman Foundation estimates that more than half a million skilled immigrants are waiting for permanent residency. Graduates who want to start companies face even higher hurdles: America does not have an entrepreneur visa category, essentially barring recent international graduates from starting companies domestically. Meanwhile, other countries, such as Britain, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, Chile, Australia and Canada, all embrace entrepreneurs through startup visa programs or by giving higher priority to skilled immigrants. Canada’s longest- publishing business magazine argues that the next foreign Steve Jobs would probably pick Canada’s startup visa over the one proposed in the Senate’s bipartisan immigration bill last year. This prophecy is coming true. Madhuri Eunni, an Indian national with a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from University of Kansas and who obtained a patent during her study, has decided to move to Toronto to launch her startup, because she could not obtain permanent residency in the U.S., despite nearly a decade of experience in the tech industry.

Intl students not key

Foreign students don’t increase pace of scientific research—if they really were so important, other countries would be doing the same—but they’re notGeorge J. Borjas, July 2002, he is a Professor of Economics and Social Policy, “An Evaluation of the Foreign Student Program,” RWP02-026, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Faculty Research Working Papers Series And, if one is so predisposed, it is easy to think of many more items that could be added to this generic list of potential benefits: the large numbers of foreign student employed in research labs quicken the pace of scientific discoveries; these discoveries increase the productivity of workers outside the higher education sector; foreign students will eventually become leaders in their own countries and pursue policies that will be influenced (hopefully in a pro-American way!) by their American sojourn; and so on. Needless to say, there is little evidence to support any of these claims. While some of these benefits could exist and be substantial, it is prudent to be somewhat skeptical—particularly when the claims are made by persons representing an industry that gains financially from the presence of foreign students . If having foreign students enrolled in American universities is so valuable to American students ( preparing them for “the world that they would encounter after graduating”),

why do we not see foreign countries offering tens of thousands of dollars to induce American students to attend foreign universities? Those countries, it would seem, have much more to gain by exposing their students to Americans. After all, the U nited S tates is the world’s largest economic market, and its culture and politics dominate world affairs. Yet, somehow, France has managed with fewer than 12,000 American students enrolled in its higher education sector, and Germany with fewer than 5,000 . These Americans represent a tiny fraction of total enrollment in the higher education sector in those countries. There is also the argument that the United States gains because the foreign student program lets us “skim” the best talent from other countries, and these highly exceptional persons will make important contributions in the arts, sciences, and politics after they settle in our country. As I noted earlier, however, over half of the foreign students who end up staying in the U nited S tates do so not because of their exceptional skills or because of high job demand for their services, but simply because they found an American spouse. Moreover, the actual way in which foreigners try to obtain student visas, and American educational institutions try to recruit them, does not bode well for an argument that only the best and the brightest somehow show up on our doorstep.

Innovation turn

Sole focus on STEM education kills liberal arts education and devastates economic competitivenessZakaria 15(Fareed Zakaria, a columnist for The Washington Post, is the host of “Fareed Zakaria GPS” on CNN and the author of “In Defense of a Liberal Education.”, “Why America’s obsession with STEM education is dangerous”, March 26th, 2015, Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-stem-wont-make-us-successful/2015/03/26/5f4604f2-d2a5-11e4-ab77-9646eea6a4c7_story.html, JAS)If Americans are united in any conviction these days, it is that we urgently need to shift the country’s education toward the teaching of specific , technical skills . Every month, it seems, we hear about our children’s bad test scores in math

and science — and about new initiatives from companies, universities or foundations to expand STEM courses (science, technology, engineering and math ) and deemphasize the humanities . From President Obama on down, public officials have cautioned against pursuing degrees like art history, which are seen as expensive luxuries in today’s world. Republicans want to go several steps further and defund these kinds of majors. “Is it a vital interest of the state to have more

anthropologists?” asked Florida’s Gov. Rick Scott. “I don’t think so.” America’s last bipartisan cause is this: A liberal education is irrelevant , and technical training is the new path forward . It is the only way, we are told, to ensure that

Americans survive in an age defined by technology and shaped by global competition. The stakes could not be higher. This dismissal of broad-based learning , however, comes from a fundamental misreading of the facts — and puts America on a dangerously narrow path for the future. The United States has led the world in economic dynamism, innovation and entrepreneurship thanks to exactly the kind of teaching we are now told to defenestrate . A broad general education helps foster critical thinking and creativity . Exposure to a variety of fields produces synergy and

cross fertilization. Yes, science and technology are crucial components of this education , but so are English and philosophy. When unveiling a new edition of the iPad, Steve Jobs explained that “it’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not

enough — that it’s technology married with liberal arts , married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our

hearts sing.” Innovation is not simply a technical matter but rather one of understanding how people and societies work, what they need and want. America will not dominate the 21st century by making cheaper computer chips but instead by constantly reimagining how

computers and other new technologies interact with human beings. For most of its history, the United States was unique in offering a well-rounded education . In their comprehensive study, “The Race Between Education and Technology,” Harvard’s Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz point out that in the 19th century , countries like

Britain, France and Germany educated only a few and put them through narrow programs designed to impart only the skills crucial to their professions. America, by contrast, provided mass general education because people were not rooted in specific locations with long-established trades that offered the only paths forward for young men. And the American economy historically changed so quickly that the nature of work and the requirements for success tended to shift from one generation to the next. People didn’t want to lock themselves into one professional guild or learn one specific skill for life. That was appropriate in another era, the technologists argue, but it is dangerous in today’s world. Look at where American kids stand compared with their peers abroad. The most recent international test, conducted in 2012, found that among the 34 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States ranked 27th in

math, 20th in science and 17th in reading. If rankings across the three subjects are averaged, the United States comes in 21st,

trailing nations such as the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovenia and Estonia . In truth, though, the United States has never done well on international tests, and they are not good predictors of our national success. Since 1964, when

the first such exam was administered to 13-year-olds in 12 countries, America has lagged behind its peers, rarely rising above the middle of the pack and doing particularly poorly in science and math. And yet over these past five decades, that same laggard country has dominated the world of science, technology, research and innovation . Consider the same

pattern in two other highly innovative countries, Sweden and Israel . Israel ranks first in the world in venture-capital investments as a

percentage of GDP; the United States ranks second, and Sweden is sixth , ahead of Great Britain and Germany. These nations do well by most measures of innovation, such as research and development spending and the number of high-tech companies as a share of all public companies. Yet all three countries fare surprisingly poorly in the OECD test rankings. Sweden and Israel performed even worse than the United States on the 2012 assessment, landing overall at 28th and 29th, respectively, among the 34 most-developed economies. But other than bad test-takers, their economies have a few important traits in common: They are

flexible. Their work cultures are non-hierarchical and merit-based. All operate like young countries, with energy and dynamism . All

three are open societies, happy to let in the world’s ideas, goods and services . And people in all three nations are confident — a characteristic that can be measured. Despite ranking 27th and 30th in math, respectively, American and Israeli students came out at the top in their belief in their math abilities , if one tallies up their responses to survey

questions about their skills. Sweden came in seventh, even though its math ranking was 28th. Thirty years ago, William Bennett, the Reagan-era secretary of education , noticed this disparity between achievement and confidence and quipped, “This country is a lot better at teaching self-esteem than it is at teaching math.” It’s a funny line, but there is actually something powerful in the plucky confidence of American, Swedish and Israeli students . It allows them to challenge their elders, start companies, persist when others think they are wrong and pick themselves up when they fail. Too much confidence runs the risk of self-delusion, but the trait is an essential ingredient for entrepreneurship. My point is not that it’s good that American students fare poorly on these tests. It isn’t. Asian countries like Japan and South Korea have benefitted enormously from having skilled workforces. But technical chops are just one ingredient needed for innovation and economic success .

America overcomes its disadvantage — a less-technically-trained workforce — with other advantages such as creativity,

critical thinking and an optimistic outlook. A country like Japan, by contrast, can’t do as much with its well-trained workers because it lacks many of the factors that produce continuous innovation. Americans should be careful before they try to mimic Asian educational systems, which are oriented around memorization and test-taking. I went through that kind of system. It has its strengths, but it’s not conducive to thinking, problem solving or creativity. That’s why most Asian countries, from Singapore to South Korea

to India, are trying to add features of a liberal education to their systems . Jack Ma, the founder of China’s Internet behemoth Alibaba, recently hypothesized in a speech that the Chinese are not as innovative as Westerners because China’s educational system,

which teaches the basics very well, does not nourish a student’s complete intelligence, allowing her to range freely, experiment and enjoy herself while learning : “Many painters learn by having fun, many works [of art and literature] are the products of having fun.

So, our entrepreneurs need to learn how to have fun, too.” No matter how strong your math and science skills are, you

still need to know how to learn, think and even write . Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon (and the owner of this newspaper), insists that his senior executives write memos, often as long as six printed pages, and begins senior-management meetings

with a period of quiet time, sometimes as long as 30 minutes, while everyone reads the “narratives” to themselves and makes notes on them. In an interview with Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky, Bezos said: “Full sentences are harder to write. They have verbs. The paragraphs have topic sentences. There is no way to write a six-page, narratively structured memo and not have clear thinking.” Companies often prefer strong basics to narrow expertise. Andrew Benett, a management consultant, surveyed 100 business leaders and found that 84 of them said they would rather hire smart, passionate people, even if they didn’t have the exact skills their companies needed. Innovation in business has always involved insights beyond technology. Consider the case of Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg was a classic liberal arts student who also happened to be passionately interested in computers . He studied ancient Greek intensively

in high school and majored in psychology while he attended college. And Facebook’s innovations have a lot to do with psychology. Zuckerberg has often pointed out that before Facebook was created, most people shielded their identities on the Internet. It was a land of anonymity. Facebook’s insight was that it could create a culture of real identities,

where people would voluntarily expose themselves to their friends, and this would become a transformative platform. Of course, Zuckerberg understands computers deeply and uses great coders to put his ideas into practice, but as he has put it, Facebook is “as much psychology and sociology as it is technology.” Twenty years ago, tech companies might have survived simply as product manufacturers.

Now they have to be on the cutting edge of design, marketing and social networking . You can make a sneaker equally well in

many parts of the world, but you can’t sell it for $300 unless you’ve built a story around it. The same is true for cars, clothes and coffee .

The value added is in the brand — how it is imagined, presented, sold and sustained . Or consider America’s vast entertainment

industry, built around stories, songs, design and creativity . All of this requires skills far beyond the offerings of a narrow STEM curriculum. Critical thinking is, in the end, the only way to protect American jobs. David Autor, the MIT economist who has most carefully studied the impact of technology and globalization on labor , writes that “human tasks that have proved most amenable to computerization are those that follow explicit, codifiable procedures — such as

multiplication — where computers now vastly exceed human labor in speed, quality, accuracy, and cost efficiency . Tasks that have

proved most vexing to automate are those that demand flexibility, judgment, and common sense — skills that we understand only tacitly — for example, developing a hypothesis or organizing a closet.” In 2013, two Oxford scholars conducted a comprehensive study on employment and found that, for workers to avoid the computerization of their

jobs, “they will have to acquire creative and social skills.” This doesn’t in any way detract from the need for training in technology, but it does suggest that as we work with computers (which is really the future of all work), the most

valuable skills will be the ones that are uniquely human, that computers cannot quite figure out — yet. And for those jobs , and that life , you could not do better than to follow your passion, engage with a breadth of material in both science and the humanities, and perhaps above all , study the human condition. One final reason to value a liberal education lies in its roots . For

most of human history, all education was skills-based . Hunters, farmers and warriors taught their young to hunt,

farm and fight . But about 2,500 years ago, that changed in Greece, which began to experiment with a new form of government:

democracy. This innovation in government required an innovation in education. Basic skills for sustenance were no longer sufficient. Citizens also had to learn how to manage their own societies and practice self-government. They still do.

STEM focus trades off with liberal arts education. But absent a liberal arts education, we can’t produce successful STEM (Retag)Jackson-Hayes 15 (Loretta Jackson-Hayes, associate professor of chemistry at Rhodes College in Memphis, “We don’t need more STEM majors. We need more STEM majors with liberal arts training.”, February 18th, 2015, Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/02/18/we-dont-need-more-stem-majors-we-need-more-stem-majors-with-liberal-arts-training/, JAS)In business and at every level of government, we hear how important it is to graduate more students majoring in science, technology, engineering and math, as our nation’s competitiveness depends on it. The Obama administration has set a goal of increasing STEM graduates by one million by 2022, and the “desperate need” for more STEM students makes regular headlines. The emphasis on bolstering STEM participation comes in tandem with bleak news about the liberal arts — bad job prospects , programs being cut, too many humanities majors. As a chemist , I

agree that remaining competitive in the sciences is a critical issue. But as an instructor , I also think that if American STEM grads are going lead the world in innovation, then their science education cannot be divorced from the liberal arts . Our culture has drawn an artificial line between art and science, one that did not exist for innovators like Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs. Leonardo’s curiosity and passion for painting, writing, engineering and biology helped him triumph in both art and science; his study of anatomy and dissections of corpses enabled his incredible drawings of the human figure. When introducing the iPad 2, Jobs , who dropped out of college but continued to audit calligraphy classes , declared: “It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough — it’s technology married with liberal arts , married with the humanities , that yields us the result that makes our heart sing.” (Indeed, one of Apple’s scientists, Steve Perlman, was inspired to invent the QuickTime multimedia program by an episode of “Star Trek.”) Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, credits her degree in philosophy and medieval history in helping her be the first woman to lead a high-tech Fortune 20 corporation. “If you go into a setting and everybody thinks alike, it’s easy,” she has said. “But you will probably get the wrong answer.” I became a chemistry professor by working side-by-side at the bench with a number of mentors, and the scholar/mentor relationships I’ve enjoyed were a critical aspect of my science education. And it is the centerpiece of a college experience within the liberal arts environment . For me,

it was the key that unlocked true learning , and for my students, it has made them better scientists and better equipped to

communicate their work to the public. Like apprentices to a painter, my students sit with me and plan experiments.

We gather and review data and determine the next questions to address. After two to three years of direct mentoring,

students develop the ability to interpret results on their own, describe how findings advance knowledge, generate ideas for subsequent experiments and plan these experiments themselves. Seniors train new students in the lab, helping them learn gene recombination techniques that depend on accurate calculations and precise delivery of reagents. Put simply, a microliter-scale

mistake can spell disaster for an experiment that took days to complete. And while my students work on these sensitive projects, they often

offer creative and innovative approaches. To reduce calculation errors , one of my students wrote a user-friendly computer program

to automatically measure replicate volumes. He did this by drawing on programming skills he learned in a computer science course he took for fun. Young people stuck exclusively in chemistry lecture halls will not evolve the same way. A scientist trained in the liberal arts has another huge advantage : writing ability. The study of writing and analyses of texts equip science students to communicate their findings as professionals in the field. My students accompany me to conferences, where they do the talking. They write portions of articles for publications and are true co-authors by virtue of their contributions to both the experiments

and the writing. Scientists are often unable to communicate effectively because, as Cornell University president David J. Skorton points out , “many of us never received the education in the humanities or social sciences that would allow us to explain to nonscientists what we do

and why it is important.” To innovate is to introduce change. While STEM workers can certainly drive innovation through science alone, imagine how much more innovative students and employees could be if the pool of knowledge from which they draw is

wider and deeper. That occurs as the result of a liberal arts education . Many in government and business publicly question the value of such an education. Yet employers in every sector continue to scoop up my students because of their ability to apply cross-disciplinary thinking to an incredibly complex world. They like my chemistry grads because not only can they find their way around a laboratory, but they’re also nimble thinkers who know to consider chemistry’s impact on society and the environment. Some medical schools have also caught on to this. The University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine has been admitting an increasing number of applicants with backgrounds in the humanities for the past 20 years. “It doesn’t make you a better doctor to know how fast a mass falls from a tree,” Gail Morris, head of the school’s admissions, told Newsweek. “We need whole people.” By all means, let’s grow our STEM graduates as aggressively as possible. But let’s make sure they also have that all-important grounding in the liberal arts . We can have both .

STEM High

The number of STEM students are high in the squo—many people in the US graduate with STEM degrees, most of them who did not find jobs in the STEM fieldSacks 14, Peter Sacks, author, economist, essayist and social critic, “Another Look at the STEM ‘Crisis’ in America,” the Fiscal Times, August 19, 2014, http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/08/19/Another-Look-STEM-Crisis-America Consider, first, that American colleges and universities produce about: 250,000 bachelor’s degrees in STEM fields each year; 80,000 STEM master’s degrees; 20,000 Ph.D. degrees in STEM fields; and 40,000 STEM related associate’s degrees. That total annual production of 350,000 STEM degrees in the United

States does not include an estimated 50,000 STEM workers supplied annually from foreign countries under the H-1b Visa program for guest workers. “Every year U.S. schools grant more STEM degrees than there are available jobs,” Charette writes. “When you factor in H-1B visa holders, existing STEM degree holders, and the like, it’s hard to make a case that there’s a STEM labor shortage.” Related: Financial Lessons You

Must Teach Your Kids But labor supply is just one aspect of the question. When economists look to a variety of market indicators, such as trends in wages, salaries, signing bonuses and training programs there is little evidence of a STEM shortage. In fact, starting salaries in many STEM occupations have remained fairly flat — or even shown signs of weakness in recent years — indicative of a surplus of STEM labor. According to the

most recent annual survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, starting salaries for computer scientists actually declined 2.5 percent in 2013, from about $60,000 to $58,500. That compares to an average increase of 2.5

percent for all college graduates. For graduates in math and science, starting salaries hardly changed, increasing less than 1 percent in 2013. While some engineering graduates, such as bioengineering, saw starting salaries rise 10 percent, salaries in some engineering fields, such civil, aerospace, and computer engineering actually declined. By way of comparison, consider that new graduates in sociology saw starting salaries rise 11 percent,

while salaries for criminal justice majors shot up 8 percent. What’s more, the STEM-trained labor force is far larger than the alarmists are willing to admit. According to a recent study by the U.S. Census Bureau, “The Relationship Between Science and Engineering Education and Employment in STEM Occupations,” the American labor force consists, in part, of several million employees who have been trained in STEM fields, but have chosen to work in non-STEM jobs. “The vast majority of workers who have been trained in science and engineering are not currently working in a STEM occupation,” the Census Bureau report said. In fact, an average of just 26 percent of science and engineering graduates, aged 25 to 64, worked in a STEM occupation in 2011, instead working in jobs such as management, health care, law, education, social work, accounting and counseling.

We have a sufficient number of STEM workers now. Their “statistics” are cherrypicked, and even if we do need more workers there are alt causesTEITELBAUM 14 (MICHAEL S. TEITELBAUM, senior research associate with the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, “The Myth of the Science and Engineering Shortage”, March 19 th, 2014, The Atlantic, http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/03/the-myth-of-the-science-and-engineering-shortage/284359/, JAS)Everyone knows that the United States has long suffered from widespread shortages in its science and engineering workforce, and that if continued these shortages will cause it to fall behind its major economic competitors . Everyone knows that these workforce shortages are due mainly to the myriad weaknesses of American K-12 education in science and mathematics, which international comparisons of student performance rank as average at best. Such claims are now well established as conventional wisdom . There is almost no debate in the mainstream. They echo

from corporate CEO to corporate CEO, from lobbyist to lobbyist, from editorial writer to editorial writer. But what if what everyone

knows is wrong? What if this conventional wisdom is just the same claims ricocheting in an echo chamber? The truth is that there is little credible evidence of the claimed widespread shortages in the U.S. science and engineering workforce . How can the conventional wisdom be so different from the empirical evidence? There are of course many complexities involved that cannot be addressed here . The

key points, though, are these : Science and engineering occupations are at the leading edge of economic competitiveness in an increasingly globalized world, and science and engineering workforces of sufficient size and quality are essential for any 21st century economy to prosper . These professional workforces also are crucial for addressing challenges such as international security , global climate change,

and domestic and global health . While they therefore are of great importance , college graduates employed in science and engineering occupations (as defined by the National Science Foundation) actually comprise only a small fraction of the workforce . Some of the largest and most heavily financed scientific fields are among those with the least attractive career prospects. A compelling body of research is now available , from many leading academic researchers and from respected research organizations such as the National Bureau of Economic Research, the RAND Corporation, and the Urban Institute . No one has been able to find any evidence indicating current widespread labor market shortages or hiring difficulties in science and engineering occupations that require bachelors degrees or higher , although some are forecasting high growth in occupations that require post-high school training but not a bachelors degree . All have concluded that U.S. higher education produces far more science and engineering graduates annually than there are S&E job openings —the only disagreement is whether it is 100 percent or 200 percent

more. Were there to be a genuine shortage at present , there would be evidence of employers raising wage offers to attract the scientists and engineers they want . But the evidence points in the other direction : Most studies report that real wages in many— but not all —science and engineering occupations have been flat or slow-growing , and unemployment as high or higher than in many comparably-skilled occupations. Because labor

markets in science and engineering differ greatly across fields, industries, and time periods , it is easy to cherry-pick specific specialties that really are in short supply, at least in specific years and locations. But generalizing from these cases to the whole of U.S. science and engineering is perilous. Employment in small but expanding areas of information technology such as social media may be booming, while other larger occupations languish or are increasingly moved offshore . It is true that high-skilled professional occupations almost always experience

unemployment rates far lower than those for the rest of the U.S. workforce, but unemployment among scientists and engineers is higher than in other professions such as physicians, dentists, lawyers, and registered nurses , and surprisingly high unemployment rates prevail for recent graduates even in fields with alleged serious “shortages” such as engineering (7.0 percent), computer science (7.8 percent) and information systems (11.7 percent).

Over time, new technologies , price changes, or sharp shifts in the labor market can create rapid rises in demand in a particular occupation. When that happens, the evidence shows that the market seems to adjust reasonably well.

Entire occupations that were previously unattractive and declining, such as petroleum engineering in the 1980s and 1990s, have rather suddenly become attractive and high-paid—due to increased energy prices and new technologies for domestic extraction of oil and gas . Others, such as those linked to manufacturing and construction— industries in which well over half of all engineers are employed —

have declined over the same period. Surprisingly, some of the largest and most heavily financed scientific fields, such as biomedical research, are among those with the least attractive career prospects, as a recent blue-ribbon advisory committee reported to the Director of the National Institutes of Health . Biomedical Ph.D. s are unusually lengthy and often require additional years of postdoctoral training , yet after completion those with such degrees experience labor market demand and remuneration that are

relatively low . Labor markets for scientists and engineers also differ geographically. Employer demand is far higher in a few hothouse metropolitan areas than in the rest of the country , especially during boom periods.

Moreover recruitment of domestic professionals to these regions may be more difficult than in others when would-be hires discover that the remuneration employers are offering does not come close to compensating for far higher housing and other costs. According to the most recent data from the National Association of Realtors, Silicon Valley (metro San Jose) has the highest median house prices in the country, at $775,000—

nearly four times higher than the national median. Far from offering expanding attractive career opportunities, it seems that many, but not all , science and engineering careers are headed in the opposite direction : unstable careers, slow-growing wages , and high risk of jobs moving offshore or being filled by temporary workers from abroad . Recent

science Ph.D.s often need to undertake three or more additional years in low-paid and temporary “postdoctoral” positions , but even then only a minority have realistic prospects of landing a coveted tenure-track academic position . Among college-educated information technology workers under age 30 , temporary workers from abroad constitute a large majority . Even in electrical and electronic engineering —an occupation that is right at the heart of high-tech innovation but that also has been heavily outsourced abroad—U.S.

employment in 2013 declined to about 300,000, down 35,000 and over 10 percent, from 2012, and down from about 385,000 in 2002. Unemployment rates for electrical engineers rose to a surprisingly high 4.8 percent in 2013. Claims of workforce shortages in science and engineering are hardly new . Indeed there have been no fewer than five “rounds” of “alarm/boom/bust” cycles since World War II . Each lasted about 10 to 15 years, and was initiated by alarms of “shortages,” followed by policies to increase the supply of scientists and engineers .

Unfortunately most were followed by painful busts—mass layoffs, hiring freezes, and funding cuts that inflicted severe damage to careers of both mature professionals and the booming numbers of emerging graduates ,

while also discouraging new entrants to these fields. Round one from the decade immediately following World War II, waning a decade later . Round two following the Sputnik launches in 1957 but waning sharply by the late 1960s,

leading to a bust of serious magnitude in the 1970s. Round three from the 1980s Reagan defense buildup, alarming Federal reports such as “A Nation at Risk” (1983), and new Federal funding for the “war on cancer.” Most of these had waned by the late 1980s, contributing to an ensuing bust in the early 1990s. Round four from the mid-1990s, driven

by concurrent booms in several high-tech industries (e.g. information technology , internet, telecommunications, biotech),

followed by concurrent busts beginning around 2001. Round five from the rapid doubling of the National Institutes of Health budget between 1998 and 2003, followed by a bust when subsequent funding flattened. Each of these rounds was accompanied by excessive claims, and a notable lack of credible evidence . Rounds one through three were motivated by existential Cold War concerns, with advocates focused on expanding the numbers of US students pursuing higher education and careers in science and engineering . As I discovered while researching my book, during rounds four and five, after Cold War security concerns had

waned, shortage claimants focused on visa policies that enabled U.S. employers and universities to recruit large numbers of temporary workers and graduate students from countries ( especially China and India ) that had rapid growth in science and engineering graduates but much lower income levels . One thing we might reasonably conclude is that over the past six decades there has been no shortage of shortage claims .

But what about the present and foreseeable future? Since 2005 a series of influential reports have been produced by respected organizations and individuals , once again pointing to alarming current (or more commonly “looming”) shortages due to failing K-12 education. Three such reports were published in 2005 alone, by the

Council on Competitiveness, by a special committee appointed by the National Research Council, and by a group of 15 business and technology organizations . Were these the opening salvos of the “alarm” stage of another 10-15 year cycle of alarm/boom/bust, the sixth such cycle since World War II? A deep recession with high

unemployment has intervened, and in any case we would not be able to know for sure until another 5 or more years have passed. These publications report correctly that the average performance of American K-12 students is middling in

international testing. These data also show that this average performance results from large numbers of both high-performing and low-performing US students. The average national scores reflect both ends of the scale, yet there continues to be a large pool of top science and math students in the U .S. OECD data on “high-performing” students suggests that the U.S. produces about 33 percent of the world total in this category in the sciences, though only about 14 percent in mathematics. RELATED STORY Why the S in STEM Is Overrated No one should conclude from this that American K-12 science and math education does not need major improvement. Emphatically to the contrary: Every high school graduate should be competent in science and mathematics—essential to success in almost any 21st century occupation and to informed citizenship as well. But there is a big disconnect between this broad educational imperative and the numerically limited scope of the science and engineering workforce . Editorial writers in respected publications continue to assert that American student interest in these fields is low and declining . Yet according to a recent report from ACT , the college admissions testing service, “student interest in STEM [Science ,Technology, Engineering, Mathematics] is high overall,” characteristic of some 48 percent of high school graduates tested in 2013. American high-school students are taking more math and science courses than ever before . Meanwhile UCLA’s respected annual surveys of entering college freshmen show that over the past several years nearly 40 percent have been reporting intentions to major in a STEM subject, not only a large fraction but also a substantial increase from past decades—this percentage was about 32 to 33 percent from 1995 to 2007.

We have a sufficient number of STEM workersCharette 13(Robert N. Charette, IEEE Spectrum contributing editor, “The STEM Crisis Is a Myth”, August 30 th, 2013, IEEE spectrum, http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-is-a-myth, JAS)You must have seen the warning a thousand times : Too few young people study scientific or technical subjects, businesses can’t find enough workers in those fields , and the country’s competitive edge is threatened. It pretty much doesn’t matter what country you’re talking about—the United States is facing this crisis, as is Japan, the United Kingdom, Australia,

China, Brazil, South Africa, Singapore, India…the list goes on. In many of these countries, the predicted shortfall of STEM (short for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) workers is supposed to number in the hundreds of thousands or even the millions. A 2012 report by President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, for instance, stated that over the next decade, 1 million additional STEM graduates will be needed. In the U.K., the Royal Academy of Engineering reported last year that the nation will have to graduate 100 000 STEM majors every year until 2020 just to stay even with demand. Germany, meanwhile, is said to have a shortage of about 210 000 workers in what’s known there as the MINT disciplines—mathematics, computer science, natural sciences, and technology. The situation is so dismal that governments everywhere are now pouring billions of dollars each year into myriad efforts designed to boost the ranks of STEM workers. President Obama has called for government and industry to train 10 000 new U.S. engineers

every year as well as 100 000 additional STEM teachers by 2020. And until those new recruits enter the workforce, tech

companies like Facebook, IBM, and Microsoft are lobbying to boost the number of H-1B visas—temporary immigration permits for skilled workers—from 65 000 per year to as many as 180 000. The European Union is similarly introducing the new Blue Card visa to bring in skilled workers from outside the EU. The government of India has said it needs to add 800 new

universities, in part to avoid a shortfall of 1 .6 million university-educated engineers by the end of the decade. And yet, alongside

such dire projections, you’ll also find reports suggesting just the opposite—that there are more STEM workers than suitable jobs. One study found, for example, that wages for U.S. workers in computer and math fields have largely stagnated since 2000. Even as the Great Recession slowly recedes, STEM workers at every stage of the career pipeline , from freshly minted grads to mid- and late-career Ph.D.s, still struggle to find employment as many companies, including Boeing, IBM, and Symantec,

continue to lay off thousands of STEM workers . 09STEMeducation graph A Matter of Supply vs . Demand:

Every year U.S. schools grant more STEM degrees than there are available jobs. When you factor in H-1B visa holders,

existing STEM degree holders , and the like, it’s hard to make a case that there’s a STEM labor shortage .

To parse the simultaneous claims of both a shortage and a surplus of STEM workers , we’ll need to delve into the data behind the debate, how it got going more than a half century ago, and the societal,

economic, and nationalistic biases that have perpetuated it. And what that dissection reveals is that there is indeed a STEM crisis—just not the one everyone’s been talking about. The real STEM crisis is one of literacy : the fact that

today’s students are not receiving a solid grounding in science, math, and engineering. In preparing this article, I went through hundreds of reports, articles, and white papers from the past six decades. There were plenty of data , but there was also an extraordinary amount of inconsistency. Who exactly is a STEM worker : somebody with a bachelor’s degree or higher in a STEM discipline? Somebody whose job requires use of a STEM subject? What about someone who manages STEM workers? And which disciplines and industries fall under the STEM umbrella? Such definitions obviously affect the counts. For example, in the United States, both the National

Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Commerce track the number of STEM jobs , but using different

metrics. According to Commerce, 7.6 million individuals worked in STEM jobs in 2010, or about 5.5 percent of the U.S.

workforce. That number includes professional and technical support occupations in the fields of computer science and mathematics, engineering, and life and physical sciences as well as management. The NSF, by contrast, counts 12.4 million

science and engineering jobs in the United States, including a number of areas that the Commerce Department excludes , such as health-care workers (4.3 million) and psychologists and social scientists (518 000). The STEM Crisis Through the Decades Predictions of an impending shortage of scientists and engineers are nothing new .

STEMeducationNYU “Right now…there is a sufficiency of engineers, but one of our greatest industrial organizations, after careful study, predicts the entire absorption of this group by the end of 1936, with a probable shortage of available engineers at that time.” —Collins P. Bliss, dean of New York University’s College of Engineering , 1934 09 STEM education Bush “With mounting demands for scientists both for teaching and for research, we will enter the postwar period with a serious deficit in our trained scientific personnel.” —Vannevar Bush,

director of the U .S. Office of Scientific Research and Development, 1945 09 STEM education Killian “Our national welfare, our defense, our standard of living could all be jeopardized by the mismanagement of this supply and demand problem in the field of trained creative intelligence.” —James Killian, president of MIT ,

1954 09 STEM education Graham “From 1972 through 1975, the expected demand for engineers will exceed not only the supply coming from American engineering schools, but also the combined supply from the United States and foreign countries, according to the [Engineering Manpower Commission] estimates.” —John W. Graham Jr., president of Clarkson College of Technology, 1970 09 STEM education Chip “The electronics and information technology industries will be short more than 100 000 electrical and computer science engineers over the next five years.” —American Electronics Association, 1983 “Already spot shortages exist in some science fields in the United States, and unless dramatic changes are made in the way we educate all of our students , including our

most talented, the shortages will increase.” —U.S. Office of Educational Research and Improvement, 1993 09 STEM education Gates “U.S. companies face a severe shortfall of scientists and engineers with expertise to develop the next generation of breakthroughs.” —Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft , 2008 09 STEM education Templeton “There is a skills gap in this country—for every unemployed person in the United States, there are two STEM job postings. The gap will only widen if we don’t engage now to address STEM education at the elementary and high

school levels.” —Richard K. Templeton, chairman, president, and CEO of Texas Instruments, 2013 Photos, from top: iStockphoto; Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone/Getty Images; AP Photo; Clarkson University; iStockphoto; Microsoft; Texas Instruments. SOURCES:

STEM (2011), Center on Education and the Workforce, Georgetown University; Science and Engineering Indicators 2012, National Science Foundation Such inconsistencies don’t just create confusion for numbers junkies like me; they also make rational policy discussions difficult.

Depending on your point of view, you can easily cherry-pick data to bolster your argument. Another surprise was the apparent mismatch between earning a STEM degree and having a STEM job . Of the 7 .6 million STEM workers counted by the Commerce Department, only 3. 3 million possess STEM degrees . Viewed another way,

about 15 million U.S. residents hold at least a bachelor’s degree in a STEM discipline , but three-fourths of

them—11.4 million—work outside of STEM . The departure of STEM graduates to other fields starts early. In

2008, the NSF surveyed STEM graduates who’d earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in 2006 and 2007. It found that 2 out of 10 were already working in non-STEM fields. And 10 years after receiving a STEM degree , 58 percent of STEM graduates had left the field, according to a 2011 study from Georgetown University. The takeaway? At

least in the United States, you don’t need a STEM degree to get a STEM job , and if you do get a degree , you

won’t necessarily work in that field after you graduate. If there is in fact a STEM worker shortage, wouldn’t you expect more people with STEM degrees to be filling those jobs? And if many STEM jobs can be filled by people who don’t have STEM degrees, then why the big push to get more students to pursue STEM? Now consider the projections that suggest a STEM worker shortfall. One of the most cited in recent U.S. debates comes from the 2011 Georgetown University report mentioned above, by Anthony P. Carnevale, Nicole Smith, and Michelle Melton of the Center on Education and the Workforce. It estimated there will be slightly more than 2.4 million STEM job openings in the United States between 2008 and 2018, with 1.1 million newly created jobs and the rest to replace workers who retire or move to non-STEM fields; they conclude that there will be roughly 277 000 STEM vacancies per year. But the Georgetown study did not fully

account for the Great Recession. It projected a downturn in 2009 but then a steady increase in jobs beginning in 2010 and a return to normal by the year 2018. In fact, though, more than 370 000 science and engineering jobs in the United

States were lost in 2011, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I don’t mean to single out this study for criticism; it just illustrates the difficulty of accurately predicting STEM demand and supply even a year or two out , let alone over a prolonged period. Highly competitive science- and technology-driven industries are volatile, where radical restructurings and boom-and-bust cycles have been the norm for decades. Many STEM jobs today are also targets for outsourcing or replacement by automation. The nature of STEM work has also changed dramatically in the past several decades. In engineering, for instance, your job is no longer linked to a company but to a funded project. Long-term employment with a single company has been replaced by a series of de facto temporary positions that can quickly end when a project ends or the market shifts. To be sure, engineers in the 1950s were sometimes laid off during recessions, but they expected to be hired back when the economy picked up. That rarely happens today. And unlike in decades past, employers seldom offer generous education and training benefits to engineers to keep them current, so out-of-work engineers find they quickly become technologically obsolete. Any of these factors can affect both short-term and longer-term demand for STEM workers, as well as for the particular skills those workers will need. The agencies that track science and

engineering employment know this to be true. Buried in Chapter 3 of a 2012 NSF workforce study, for instance, you’ll find

this caveat: “Projections of employment growth are plagued by uncertain assumptions and are notoriously difficult to make.” So is there a shortfall of STEM workers or isn’t there? The Georgetown study estimates that nearly two-thirds of the STEM job openings in the United States , or about 180 000 jobs per year,

will require bachelor’s degrees . Now, if you apply the Commerce Department’s definition of STEM to the NSF’s annual count of science and engineering bachelor’s degrees , that means about 252 000 STEM graduates emerged in 2009. So even if all the STEM openings were entry-level positions and even if only new STEM bachelor’s

holders could compete for them, that still leaves 70 000 graduates unable to get a job in their chosen field . Of course , the pool of U .S. STEM workers is much bigger than that : It includes new STEM master’s and Ph.D. graduates (in 2009, around 80 000 and 25 000, respectively), STEM associate degree graduates (about 40 000), H-1B visa

holders (more than 50 000), other immigrants and visa holders with STEM degrees, technical certificate holders, and non-STEM degree recipients looking to find STEM-related work. And then there’s the vast number of STEM degree holders who graduated in previous years or decades. Even in the computer and IT industry, the sector

that employs the most STEM workers and is expected to grow the most over the next 5 to 10 years, not everyone who wants a job can find one. A recent study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a liberal-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C., found that more than a third of recent computer science graduates aren’t working in their chosen major; of that group , almost a third say the reason is that there are no jobs available. Spot shortages for certain STEM specialists do crop up. For instance, the recent explosion in data analytics has sparked demand for data scientists in health care and retail. But the H-1B visa and similar immigrant hiring programs are meant to address such shortages. The problem is that students who are contemplating what field to specialize in can’t assume such shortages will still exist by the time they emerge from the educational pipeline. What’s perhaps most perplexing about the claim of a STEM worker shortage is

that many studies have directly contradicted it, including reports from Duke University, the Rochester Institute of Technology, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Rand Corp. A 2004 Rand study , for example, stated that there was no evidence

“that such shortages have existed at least since 1990, nor that they are on the horizon.” That report argued that the best indicator of a shortfall would be a widespread rise in salaries throughout the STEM community . But the price of labor has not risen, as you would expect it to do if STEM workers were scarce. In computing and IT,

wages have generally been stagnant for the past decade, according to the EPI and other analyses. And over the past 30

years, according to the Georgetown report, engineers’ and engineering technicians’ wages have grown the least of all STEM wages and also more slowly than those in non-STEM fields; while STEM workers as a group have seen wages rise 33 percent and non-STEM workers’ wages rose by 23 percent , engineering salaries grew by

just 18 percent. The situation is even more grim for those who get a Ph.D. in science, math, or engineering. The

Georgetown study states it succinctly: “At the highest levels of educational attainment, STEM wages are not competitive.” Given all of the above, it is difficult to make a case that there has been, is, or will soon be a STEM labor shortage . “If there was really a STEM labor market crisis, you’d be seeing very different behaviors from companies,” notes

Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology , in New York state . “You wouldn’t see companies cutting their retirement contributions, or hiring new workers and giving them worse benefits packages. Instead you would see signing bonuses, you’d see wage increases. You would see these companies really training their

incumbent workers.” “None of those things are observable,” Hira says. “In fact, they’re operating in the opposite way.” So why the persistent anxiety that a STEM crisis exists? Michael S. Teitelbaum, a Wertheim Fellow at Harvard Law School and a senior advisor to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, has studied the phenomenon, and he says that in the

United States the anxiety dates back to World War II. Ever since then it has tended to run in cycles that he calls “alarm, boom, and bust.” He says the cycle usually starts when “someone or some group sounds the alarm that there is a critical crisis of insufficient numbers of scientists, engineers, and mathematicians” and as a result the country “is in jeopardy of either a national security risk or of falling behind economically.” In the 1950s , he notes, Americans worried that the Soviet Union was producing 95 000 scientists and engineers a year while the United States was producing only about 57 000. In the 1980s, it was the perceived Japanese economic juggernaut that was the threat, and now it is China and India. You’ll hear similar arguments made elsewhere. In India, the director general of the Defence Research and Development Organisation ,

Vijay Kumar Saraswat, recently noted that in his country, “a meagre four persons out of every 1000 are choosing S&T or research, as compared to 110 in Japan, 76 in Germany and Israel, 55 in USA, 46 in Korea and 8 in China.” Leaders in South Africa and Brazil cite similar statistics to show how they are likewise falling behind in the STEM race. “The government responds either with money [for

research] or, more recently, with visas to increase the number of STEM workers,” Teitelbaum says . “This continues for a number of years until the claims of a shortage turn out not to be true and a bust ensues.” Students who graduate during the bust, he says, are shocked to discover that “they can’t find jobs, or they find jobs but not stable ones.” At the moment, we’re in the alarm-heading-toward-boom part of the cycle. According to a recent report from the Government Accountability Office , the U.S. government spends more than US $3 billion each year on 209 STEM-related initiatives overseen by 13 federal agencies. That’s about $100 for every U.S. student beyond primary school. In addition,

major corporations are collectively spending millions to support STEM educational programs. And every U.S. state , along with a host of public and private universities, high schools, middle schools, and even primary schools, has its own STEM initiatives .

The result is that many people’s fortunes are now tied to the STEM crisis, real or manufactured. Clearly, powerful forces must be at work to perpetuate the cycle. One is obvious: the bottom line. Companies would rather not pay STEM professionals high salaries

with lavish benefits, offer them training on the job, or guarantee them decades of stable employment. So having an oversupply of workers , whether domestically educated or imported, is to their benefit. It gives employers a larger pool from which

they can pick the “best and the brightest,” and it helps keep wages in check. No less an authority than Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, said as much when in 2007 he advocated boosting the number of skilled immigrants entering the United States so as to “suppress” the wages of their U .S. counterparts, which he

considered too high. Q. If a student came to you for advice, would you encourage him or her to pursue a career in STEM? IEEE Spectrum recently posed that question to a select group of IEEE members . Nearly three-quarters of respondents said they would “strongly encourage” the student to take such a career path

because it is “interesting and stimulating work” and one in which a person “can make a difference in the world.” For more, view the complete results from the latest IEEE Spectrum Forecasters Survey. Governments also push the STEM myth

because an abundance of scientists and engineers is widely viewed as an important engine for innovation and also for national defense. And the perception of a STEM crisis benefits higher education , says Ron Hira, because as “taxpayers subsidize more STEM education, that works in the interest of the universities” by allowing them to expand their enrollments. An oversupply of STEM workers may also have a beneficial effect on the economy , says Georgetown’s Nicole

Smith, one of the coauthors of the 2011 STEM study . If STEM graduates can’t find traditional STEM jobs ,

she says, “they will end up in other sectors of the economy and be productive.” The problem with proclaiming a STEM shortage when one doesn’t exist is that such claims can actually create a shortage down the road, Teitelbaum says. When previous STEM cycles hit their “bust” phase, up-and-coming students took note

and steered clear of those fields, as happened in computer science after the dot-com bubble burst in 2001. Emphasizing STEM at the expense of other disciplines carries other risks. Without a good grounding in the arts, literature, and history,

STEM students narrow their worldview—and their career options. In a 2011 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, Norman Augustine,

former chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin, argued that point. “In my position as CEO of a firm employing over 80 000 engineers, I can testify that most were excellent engineers,” he wrote. “But the factor that most distinguished those who

advanced in the organization was the ability to think broadly and read and write clearly.” A broader view, I and many others would argue, is that everyone needs a solid grounding in science, engineering, and math. In that sense, there is indeed a shortage—

a STEM knowledge shortage . To fill that shortage, you don’t necessarily need a college or university degree in a STEM discipline , but you do need to learn those subjects, and learn them well, from childhood until you head off to college or get a job. Improving everyone’s STEM skills would clearly be good for the workforce and for people’s

employment prospects, for public policy debates, and for everyday tasks like balancing checkbooks and calculating risks. And, of course , when science, math, and engineering are taught well, they engage students’ intellectual curiosity about the world and how it works. Many children born today are likely to live to be 100 and to have not just one distinct career but two or three by the time they retire at 80. Rather than spending our scarce resources on ending a mythical STEM shortage, we should figure out how to make all children literate in the sciences, technology, and the arts to give them the best foundation to pursue a career and then transition to new ones. And instead of continuing our current global obsession with STEM shortages, industry and government should focus on creating more STEM jobs that are enduring and satisfying as well.

Federal data shows there is no shortage in STEMSHERTER 14 (ALAIN SHERTER, covers business and economic affairs for CBSNews.com, “A shortage of scientists and techies? Think again”, July 11th, 2014, Money Watch, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-shortage-of-scientists-and-techies-think-again/, JAS)A common refrain among corporate and political leaders is that the U.S. needs more engineers, scientists and other workers with the kind of specialized expertise needed to boost economic growth. And that assessment plays a part in a range of public policy debates, from how to change the nation's immigration laws to how to energize job-creation. But new federal data suggest that idea is largely a myth , and it raises questions for students who are planning their careers. Roughly three-quarters of people who have

a bachelor's degree in science, technology, engineering and math -- or so-called STEM fields -- aren't working in those professions, the U.S. Census Bureau said Thursday. Citing statistics from its most recent American Community Survey, the bureau found that only about half of engineering, computer, math and statistics majors in the U .S.

had jobs in their chosen field. Science grads fared even worse: Just 26 percent of physical science majors and 15 percent of those

with a diploma in biology, environmental studies or agriculture were in a STEM-related occupation. It's worth noting that unemployment among people with STEM degrees is considerably lower than for the general population of workers. As of 2012 (the latest year with available data ), only 3.6 percent of college graduates between

the ages of 25 and 64 were without a job, according to the Census Bureau, compared with 6.1 percent for the broader U.S. workforce. Yet those grads aren't necessarily working in a STEM job, notes Liana Christin Landivar, a sociologist in the Census Bureau's industry and occupation statistics branch . Hal Salzman, a professor of planning and public policy at Rutgers

University, has calculated that twice as many STEM students graduate every year as are able to find jobs in their field. Some half a million grads with these degrees emerge from U.S. colleges and universities annually, and they must compete for

roughly 180,000 job openings, he said in a 2013 article. "Engineering has the highest rate at which graduates move into STEM

occupations, but even here the supply is over 50 percent higher than the demand," he wrote . "[Information technology], the industry most vocal about its inability to find enough workers, hires only two-thirds of each year's graduating class of bachelor's degree computer scientists." By comparison, at least three-quarters of college graduates in health fields find work in those disciplines. The Chronicle of Higher Education, citing a National Academies report, concluded last year that an excess of university Ph.D. candidates has led to a glut of life scientists, lab workers and physical scientists. Michael Teitelbaum, a senior research associate at Harvard Law School and former vice president of the Sloan Foundation, notes that over the last half-century U.S. policymakers have repeatedly sounded the alarm about a purported shortage of scientific talent. After the Soviet Union launched the world's

first man-made satellite, Sputnik, into space in 1957 , the U.S. Defense Department and Atomic Energy Commission led efforts to

produce more physicists. In 1983 , under President Ronald Reagan, a blue-ribbon commission produced the report "A Nation at Risk," which

warned of a "rising tide of mediocrity" in education and claimed that the country was falling behind in math , science

and other areas. In more recent decades , concerns have also been raised about a shortfall in cancer researchers and in engineers. After most of these episodes, employment in these fields temporarily boomed, only

for jobs to eventually dry up. "On the research side, the U.S. is still dominant," said Teitelbaum, author of a new book that explores

whether the U.S. is falling behind other nations in producing scientists and engineers , in a recent presentation . "There's no evidence that it has fallen behind international competitors in science and engineering."

There is no evidence of a shortage of STEM workers: It’s all industry propagandaEidelson 14(Josh Eidelson, reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek, “The Tech Worker Shortage Doesn't Really Exist”, November 24th, 2014, Bloomberg Business, http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-11-24/the-tech-worker-shortage-doesnt-really-exist, JAS)Along with temporary deportation relief for millions, President Obama’s executive action will increase the number of U.S. college graduates from abroad who can temporarily be hired by U.S. corporations. That hasn’t satisfied tech companies and trade groups, which contend more green cards or guest worker visas are needed to keep tech industries growing because of a shortage of qualified American workers . But scholars say there’s a problem with that argument: The tech worker shortage doesn’t actually exist. “There’s no evidence of any way , shape, or form that there’s a shortage in the conventional sense,” says Hal Salzman, a professor of planning and public policy at Rutgers University . “They may not be able to find them at the price they want. But I’m not sure that qualifies as a shortage, any more than my not being able to find a half-priced TV.” For a real-life example of an actual worker shortage, Salzman points to the case of petroleum engineers ,

where the supply of workers has failed to keep up with the growth in oil exploration . The result, says Salzman,

was just what economists would have predicted: Employers started offering more money, more people started becoming petroleum engineers, and the shortage was solved. In contrast, Salzman concluded in a paper released last year by the liberal

Economic Policy Institute, real IT wages are about the same as they were in 1999. Further, he and his co-authors found, only half of STEM (science, technology, engineering , and mathematics) college graduates each year get hired into STEM jobs.

“We don’t dispute the fact at all that Facebook (FB) and Microsoft (MSFT) would like to have more, cheaper workers,” says Salzman’s co-author Daniel Kuehn, now a research associate at the Urban Institute. “But that doesn’t constitute a shortage.” The real issue, say Salzman and others, is the industry’s desire for lower-wage,

more-exploitable guest workers, not a lack of available American staff . “It seems pretty clear that the industry just

wants lower-cost labor,” Dean Baker, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, wrote in an e-

mail. A 2011 review by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the H-1B visa program, which is what industry groups are lobbying to expand, had “fragmented and restricted” oversight that weakened its ostensible labor standards. “Many in

the tech industry are using it for cheaper, indentured labor,” says Rochester Institute of Technology public policy associate professor Ron Hira, an EPI research associate and co-author of the book Outsourcing America.

Asked what evidence existed of a labor shortage , a spokesperson for Facebook e-mailed a one-sentence statement: “We look forward to hearing more specifics about the President’s plan and how it will impact the skills gap that threatens the competitiveness of the tech sector.”

Squo solves—XO

Squo already encourages foreign students—Obama’s XO encourages themShanmugham 15, Sangeetha Shanmugham, World Education Services, “International STEM Students Will Benefit from Obama’s Executive Action,” Wesstudentadvisor, Jan 14, 2015, http://www.wesstudentadvisor.org/2015/01/international-stem-students-will.html#.dpufPresident Barack Obama’s recent executive action made headlines because it could keep five million undocumented immigrants from being deported. But international students in the U.S. have cause to celebrate as well: According to the executive order, they will have a chance to remain in the country for a longer period of time after graduating. Obama's executive order includes plans to expand and extend the federal Optional Practical Training (OPT) program, which enables foreign students to work in the U.S. while they're in school and for some period of time after they graduate. Currently, students in science, technology, engineering and math fields – or STEM fields – can remain in the U.S. on visas for 29 months after graduating, while others can remain for 12 months. In 2012, Obama expanded the STEM category to include computer and information sciences. The exact details of the extension are still unclear, but Obama has directed the Department of Homeland Security to suggest changes that could include expanding the definition of STEM fields again or increasing the visa times even more. The proposed Senate bill would eliminate the existing backlogs for employment-based green cards, exempt certain employment-based categories from the annual cap, and remove annual country limitations altogether. The bill would also exempt STEM Ph.D. and master’s graduates from the annual cap of 140,000 visas. This provision would effectively staple a green card to the diplomas of advanced STEM graduates from U.S. universities. The executive action would also allow some foreign students on F-1 visas to request 12 additional months of F-1 visa status and allow others with advanced degrees or exceptional skills to seek green cards without employer sponsorship. "Are we a nation that educates the world’s best and brightest in our universities, only to send them home to create businesses in countries that compete against us?" Obama said in his nationwide address on Nov. 20." Or are we a nation that encourages them to stay and create jobs here, create businesses here, create industries right here in America?"

AT: AerospaceAirpower high in the squoMizokami 14 [Kyle Mizokami writes on defense and security issues in Asia, particularly Japan. He is the founder and editor for the blogs Japan Security Watch, Asia Security for the United States Naval Institute. 12/9/14, “Top Guns: The Most Lethal Air Forces on the Planet” http://nationalinterest.org/feature/top-guns-the-most-lethal-air-forces-the-planet-11814//jweideman]The U.S. Air Force The preeminent air arm of the United States, the U.S. Air Force (USAF), is the primary service responsible for air and space missions. It manages everything from intercontinental ballistic missiles to X-37 space planes to A-10 Thunderbolt tank killers. It coordinates military space launches, airdrops of Army paratroopers and drops bombs on ISIS insurgents. The USAF operates 5,600 aircraft of all types , including F-22 Raptors, F-35, F-15 and F-16 fighters. It operates B-2, B-1 and B-52 strategic bombers, as well as C-5, C-17 and C-130 airlifters. It operates these aircraft from bases in the continental U nited S tates and overseas bases from the United Kingdom to Japan. The Air Force has roughly 312,000 active-duty members, coming in just behind the People’s Liberation Army Air Force, and yet it operates more planes than the PLAAF . The USAF was the first air force worldwide to fly stealth combat aircraft, the first to fly fifth-generation fighters, and the first to commit to an all-stealth combat aircraft force. The USAF plans on preserving its edge by purchasing 1,763 F-35s and up to 100 optionally manned Long-Range Strike Bombers . Unmanned

aerial vehicles, increasingly with stealthy profiles and attack capabilities, will gradually represent a larger proportion of the overall aircraft fleet. The USAF also manages two legs of the U.S. nuclear triad , including 450 intercontinental ballistic missiles and the strategic bomber force. The U.S.

Navy and Marine Corps Worthy of separate mention due to their size and capabilities, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps are combined the world’s second-largest air force, with a total of over 3,700 aircraft of all types . This includes 1,159 fighters, 133

attack aircraft, 172 patrol aircraft, 247 transports and 1,231 helicopters. The aircraft of the U.S. Navy are responsible for protecting the U.S. fleet and conducting air missions from and often over the world’s oceans and seas . Most of the aircraft of the Navy and Marine Corps operate from ships at sea, a difficult and dangerous job that requires a high level of training and proficiency.The most visible aspect of U.S. naval aviation are the carrier air wings that fly off eleven nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. Each wing typically consists of around sixty aircraft divided into three squadrons of F/A-18 Hornets and Super Hornets, one E-2C Hawkeye airborne early-warning squadron, one EA-18G Growler electronic warfare squadron, and one helicopter squadron. Other aspects of naval aviation include the helicopters that fly off U.S. Navy cruisers, destroyers and other surface ships, P-3 Orion and P-8 Poseidon maritime control aircraft, and variants of the P-3 that conduct electronic surveillance missions. US navy aviation also contributes to the U.S. strategic nuclear force, flying TACAMO (Take Charge And Move Out) aircraft whose mission is to provide command and control in the event of a nuclear war. U.S. Marine Corps aircraft are counted under the Navy total and serve on Navy ships, but are oriented towards Marine combined air-ground operations, with an emphasis on supporting marine ground forces.

They’re updating tech-- New funding and contracts overwhelm their internal linkMcCaney 15 [Kevin, founder of defense systems blog. Managing editor at Government Computer news. 1/27/15, “Air Force adds funds for developing better GPS equipment” http://defensesystems.com/articles/2015/01/27/air-force-rockwell-mgue-m-code-gps-recdeivers.aspx//jweideman]The Air Force has awarded another contract in its effort to accelerate development of new , more powerful

GPS receivers and meet congressional demands to get them into the hands of service members sooner rather than later. The service’s Space and Missile Systems Center at Los Angeles Air Force Base has awarded Rockwell Collins a $21.8 million contract modification to support the Military GPS User Equipment, or MGUE, program, a joint military program to develop M-Code-capable GPS receivers capable of functioning when conventional receivers are disrupted or offline . Earlier this month, the Air Force also awarded an $8.3 contract modification to L-3 Communications to speed up work on the same program. M-Code, which stands for Military Code, is a fairly new, high-powered GPS signal designed to resist jamming and other interference, and ensure the transmission of accurate military signals. It features enhanced security, messaging formats and frequency modulation techniques, and operates in a part of the spectrum separate from civil signals. Its development began in the late 1990s after concerns were raised about the potential for blocking existing GPS signals. M-Code’s design was completed in 2001 and the first M-Code signal was broadcast from a GPS Block II satellite launched in September 2005. The MGUE program has since been working on developing the M-Code receivers—and one reason for the recent moves to accelerate the program is that Congress, concerned that development was too slow, mandated that the military buy only M-Code-capable equipment by fiscal 2018. As with L-3 Communication, Rockwell Collins’ next phase of the project will focus on adding pre-prototype receiver cards and conducting test support activities, with the goal of fielding M-Code receivers to the U.S.

military services and NATO troops more quickly. Work on this phase is expected to be completed by the end of September 2016.

It’s the best in the worldCFR 15 [This is the transcript of an interview. Speaker: Deborah Lee James Secretary, U.S. Department of the Air Force. Presider: Thomas G. Mahnken Professor and Director of Advanced Strategy, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. 3/24/15 “Charting a Future for U.S. Air Power” http://www.cfr.org/defense-and-security/charting-future-us-air-power/p36292//jweideman]Tonight, with your permission what I would like to do is talk a little bit about what it means to have the best Air Force on the planet. And as far as I'm

concerned, despite all the stresses and strains , and I'm going to talk to you about some of those, we are the best Air Force on the planet . I also want to talk about how I think this affects our foreign policy, what our responsibilities are as a nation, and what some of all this means for the future. But before I get to all of the future, let's talk about where we are right now today. It was just a little bit more than a year ago, and really not all that long after I took office as secretary of the Air Force that we in the Air Force were looking toward making what we were predicting to be a rather orderly transition of our mission in Afghanistan away from combat operations and toward train, advise and assist role. In other words, we had expected and planned to have a period where a lot of those forces could come back to the United States or back to home base. It was going to be a time where we were able to

regroup and reset and retrain. What we didn't expect at that time, but in fact what we got, was a series of three events. And those three events happened in relatively rapid secession . And those three things combined placed significant additional and new demands on our Air Force that we simply didn't foresee . So in other words that regroup and reset and retrain strategy that went straight out of the window. First, in February of last year, the world watched as Russian forces took military action in the Eastern Ukraine . And then in June, this outfit called ISIL or ISIS or Daesh or whatever we happen to be calling them on any given day that most Americans had never even heard of at that time. This group started a calculated offensive to take ground and to terrorize ethnic populations in northeast Syria and

Iraq. And then the third event happened in August of last year when the CDC warned the world that we might just have an Ebola pandemic on our hands if

somebody didn't step up and take charge and take action. And as a result of all of this, the president ordered the Air Force essentially to help in quite a big way in all three of these areas. And the United States Air Force stepped up big time to do so. For instance, it took just 14 hours for the first F-15 to show up in Lithuania in response to the Crimean crisis, which of course was part of what is an ongoing effort to reassure our allies in the Baltic region that we stand firmly with them and that we stand firmly with NATO. And then it was of course U.S. airmen who ultimately broke the siege of Mount Sinjar, began with air jobs. There were also airstrikes involved. And ultimately about 20,000 Yazidis, who otherwise were stranded and surrounded and starving, were able to make their way to be—to get off of that mountain to relative safety. And of course the Air Force has been carrying out the majority of the fight against ISIS ever since. And then there was the example of the Kentucky Air National Guard's 123rd Contingency Response Group, deployed to Dakar, Senegal in support of Operation Unified Assistance. Their airbase-in-a-box arrived on a C-17 with more than 70 airmen who helped funnel

humanitarian supplies and equipment into West Africa to help fight Ebola. Now, if you notice, all of these examples demonstrate how the Air Force is really a very, very quick response force for our nation.

**NEG—Foreign Students—Off-case**

DAs

Politics DA

link—immigration

Congress is ideologically against Obama’s support of immigrant students—feels like jobs should go to Americans and it decreases US securityJessen 6/23, Leah Jessen, Heritage Foundation’s Youth Leadership Program, “Obama Administration Seeks Expansion of Student Visas for Immigrants,” Daily Signal, 6/23/15, http://dailysignal.com/2015/06/23/obama-administration-seeks-expansion-of-student-visas-for-immigrants/President Obama has proposed to extend the time some immigrant students can stay and work in the United States after they graduate from college, and some in Congress are unhappy because they say these students take and keep jobs that should go to Americans . The Optional Practical Training allows students to stay in the United States and work under their student visas after graduation. The program, which involved more than 100,000 of the nation’s 1 million foreign exchange students in 2013, allows students in any field to stay 12 months beyond graduation to receive practical experience. Since 2008, those in science, technology, engineering and math have been allowed to stay an additional 17 months beyond that, for a total of 29 months. The administration has proposed increasing the extension for these majors to 24 months, which means they would be able to work a full three years in the U.S. beyond

graduation on their student visas. If they subsequently earn a master’s degree, they can stay another three years. And Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has weighed in against the expansion of the program. In a letter to H omeland S ecurity S ecretary Jeh Johnson, Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, expressed concerns. Get our emails for free. We'll respect your inbox and keep you informed. Sign Up Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa (Photo: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images) Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa (Photo: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images) Grassley wrote, “The proposed new regulations, while still being internally discussed, are irresponsible and dangerous considering the Government Accountability Office report issued in March 2014 finding that the program was full of inefficiencies, susceptible to fraud, and that the department was not adequately overseeing it.” Grassley cited a report from the Government Accountability Office that found, “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a component of the Department of Homeland Security, has not identified or assessed fraud or noncompliance risks posed by schools that recommend and foreign students approved for optional practical training, in accordance with DHS risk management guidance.” Grassley asked Johnson to reconsider the rule and cancel the program. Or, failing that, to implement some key reforms, including:

Congress backlashes against foreign students taking “American jobs”Jessen 5/23 Leah Jessen is a news reporter for The Daily Signal and graduate of The Heritage Foundation's Young Leaders Program.“Obama Administration Seeks Expansion of Student Visas for Immigrants”, 5/23/15, <http://dailysignal.com/2015/06/23/obama-administration-seeks-expansion-of-student-visas-for-immigrants>///akPresident Obama has proposed to extend the time some immigrant students can stay and work in the United States after they graduate

from college, and some in Congress are unhappy because they say these students take and keep jobs that should go to Americans. The Optional Practical Training allows students to stay in the United States and work under their student visas

after graduation. The program, which involved more than 100,000 of the nation’s 1 million foreign exchange

students in 2013, allows students in any field to stay 12 months beyond graduation to receive practical experience. Since 2008, those in science, technology, engineering and math have been allowed to stay an additional 17 months beyond that, for a total of 29 months. The administration has proposed increasing the extension for these majors to 24 months, which means they would be able to work a full three years in the U.S. beyond graduation on their student visas. If they subsequently earn a master’s degree, they can stay another three years. And Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has weighed in against the expansion of the program. In a letter to Homeland Security

Secretary Jeh Johnson, Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, expressed concerns. Grassley wrote,

“The proposed new regulations, while still being internally discussed, are irresponsible and dangerous considering the

Government Accountability Office report issued in March 2014 finding that the program was full of inefficiencies, susceptible to fraud, and that the department was not adequately overseeing it.” Grassley cited a report from the Government

Accountability Office that found, “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a component of the Department of Homeland Security, has not identified or assessed fraud or noncompliance risks posed by schools that recommend and foreign students approved for optional practical training, in accordance with DHS risk management guidance.”

Obama’s XO poisoned the well on future immigration reformShapiro 2/24, Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute. He filed a brief supporting the legal challenge to DAPA on behalf of people who support the general thrust of President Obama’s immigration policy. “I’m an immigrant and a reform advocate. Obama’s executive actions are a disaster for the cause.” 2/24/15,

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/02/24/im-an-immigrant-and-a-reform-advocate-obamas-executive-actions-are-a-disaster-for-the-cause/>//akSecond, and more significantly, Obama has short-circuited any chance at a legislative solution. There’s a reason that

we’ve all heard how the president has “poisoned the well.” By resorting to executive actions—right after the

Republicans won the election running against just that style of governance—Obama ensures that Congress will never see him as an honest broker (and that includes any Democrats who remember their position on presidential unilateralism in the Bush years). Moreover, while it’s true that it would be difficult for this president to get any legislation through this Congress, he didn’t even try when his party controlled both chambers. And there are certainly reforms that would have easily gained majorities in the new Congress had Obama not acted as he did, such as expanding high-tech visas and employment-based green cards. Even a comprehensive reform that would give legal status to those here illegally was possible, turning mainly on the scope of

a guest-worker program and the “pathway to citizenship.” In short, Obama picked a big (or bigger) political fight that mires immigration reform in uncertain litigation rather than pushing for real change. And if, as is more likely than not,

the Supreme Court follows Judge Hanen’s lead and blocks the “piecemeal” executive action, reformers will be even worse off for having lost time and opportunity. It’s all so unfortunate, because everybody knows that our immigration system is a mess, quite possibly the worst part of the federal government. That’s quite a statement, I know—particularly coming from someone at the Cato Institute, and especially from a constitutional lawyer who spends quite a bit of his time on Obamacare. But it’s true: far from merely advancing bad policy, our current immigration system lacks a coherent policy that it purports to implement in the first place. Instead, it’s a compilation of various half-baked “reforms” going back decades, a schizophrenic set of laws and regulations.

link—Chattanooga

Increasing student visas are extremely controversial- especially after the Chattanooga shootingWells 7/18, Rick Wells is an author who recognizes that our nation, our Constitution and our traditions are under a full scale assault from multiple threats. “Sen Rand Paul – Time To Restrict Immigration From Terrorist Nations, Slam Shut The Jihadi Barn Door”, 7/18/15, <http://rickwells.us/sen-rand-paul-time-to-restrict-immigration-from-terrorist-nations-slam-shut-the-jihadi-barn-door/>//ak Senator Rand Paul is one of those who disagrees with the Muslim importation program currently being carried

out by the Obama regime and, in light of the terrorist attacks in Chattanooga, feels like it’s time to tighten things up. In an Interview with Breitbart News before a campaign event in Houston, Paul said: “I’m very concerned about immigration to this country from countries that have hotbeds of jihadism and hotbeds of this Islamism . There was a program in place that Bush had put in place—it stood for entry-exit program from about 25 different countries with a lot of Islamic radicals, frankly. I think there does need to be heightened scrutiny. Nobody has a right to come to America, so this isn’t something that we can say ‘oh their rights are being violated.’ It’s a privilege to come to America and we need to thoroughly screen those who are coming.” Of course Democrats and Establishment Republicans would have us believe that every person upon the planet is born with an inherent right to border-crash into the United States . They are rights that we citizens are somehow obligated to not only help them exercise but fund and provide legal assistance for as well. With that right to invade also comes the right to fraudulently vote in elections and the right to demand equal rights, the gateway of illegal invader privilege. For the murderer of four Marines in Chattanooga, those “rights” also included the opportunity for the Kuwaiti-born terrorist and his terrorist parents to be foolishly offered a seat at our table from which to bite the hand that unwillingly was feeding it. Those parents and the rest of his family, still remain in the United States. In the interview, Senator Paul noted another instance of similar abuse of America’s misguided hospitality by a Muslim import which involved missiles. He said, “In my hometown of Bowling Green, Kentucky, we had two Iraqi refugees who were let into our country who were plotting to buy stinger missiles a few years ago, but they got arrested and put in jail. But I think we’re doing the wrong thing by just having this open door policy to bring in people without significant scrutiny. I’m for increasing scrutiny on people who come on student visas from the 25 countries that have significant jihadism. Also, any kind of

permanent visas or green cards, we need to be very careful. I don’t think we’re being careful enough with who we let in. He added that, as chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee on Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management and as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he will be looking into the problem further. “I’m going to have our subcommittee and maybe committee in Homeland Security look into whether or not we could reinstitute this NSEERS [National Security Entry Exit Registration System] program—it was entry-exit program that was heightened scrutiny for 25 predominantly Muslim countries that have significant jihadist movements and anti-American sentiment in their country. We need increased scrutiny on those countries before those people come to our country to visit or permanently. We have to have heightened scrutiny.”

Obama is politically attacked for increasing immigration—accusing him of Chattanooga and Boston bombersUSCIS 15, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services is a component of the US Department of Homeland Security, “Immigration System Needs Fixing after Chattanooga,” US Immigration, July 20, 2015, http://www.us-immigration.com/us-immigration-news/us-citizenship/immigration-system-needs-fixing-after-chattanooga/----TGRepublican senators Ted Cruz and Jeff Sessions have thrown aside political correctness and have demanded that the immigration system of the U nited States is overhauled after the Chattanooga military base shooting by an Islamic extremist. Cruz has attacked President Obama’s identification of the killer as a lone gunman and his apparent unwillingness to address the elephant in the room of radical Islamic terrorism. Cruz has issued a statement in which he links the recent shooting to the 2009 attacks on military facilities in the United States in Texas and Arkansas , noting that the Obama administration again attempted to play the incidents off as workplace violence rather than addressing the religious motivation of the attacks. It took six years ‒ until 2015 ‒ for the victims of these attacks to be recognized as victims of assaults by foreign

terrorists, and Cruz says that the US cannot afford another six years to pass before it is willing to admit the reality of the Chattanooga shooting . Cruz wants to see enlisted men and women given the right to carry weapons in military facilities, for Congress to pass the Expatriate Terrorist Act to prevent Americans who go overseas to train with terrorists from returning to the United States, and to overhaul an immigration system that enables such individuals to obtain citizenship. Sessions agrees with Cruz on the latter point in particular, noting that a number of other terrorists, including the Boston bombers, were in the US legally at the time they committed attacks.

9/11 fears overwhelmed previous presidential oppositionTrilokekar 15, Roopa Desai Trilokekar, has worked in the U.S., India and Canada in various capacities facilitating international academic exchanges, “FROM SOFT POWER TO ECONOMIC DIPLOMACY? A Comparison Of The Changing Rationales And Roles Of The U. S. And Canadian Federal Governments In International Education,” CSHE, 2/9/15, http://www.cshe.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/shared/publications/docs/ROPS.CSHE_.2.15.DesaiTrilokekar.SoftPowerEconDeplomacy.2.9.2015.pdfU.S.A. - Clinton (93-2001) eventually rekindled his image as an internationalist president in the eyes of the IE community through his first- ever 2000 Presidential memorandum on an IE policy. The memorandum called for a “coherent and coordinated international education strategy [that] will help us meet the twin challenges of preparing our citizen for a global environment while continuing to attract and educate future leaders from abroad”. 81 It made specific reference to international students as contributors of “$9 million to the [U.S] economy”, while also serving as facilitators of cultural exchange and “our greatest foreign policy assets”. 82 This presidential level support for IE, even if mostly rhetorical, was dramatically challenged with the catastrophic events of September 11, 2001. With 9/11, IE posed a risk to the nation’s security. Recoiling back to restrictive

immigration policy processes initiated as a response to the Iranian crisis and the world trade center bombings, a new tracking system for international students was introduced by the Bush (Jr.) administration (2001-9). The passage of the US Patriot Act, the Enhance Border Security Act, the Homeland Security Act, and the Visa Entry Reform Act facilitated the federal government’s restrictive immigration policies and the implementation in 2003 of the controversial Student and Exchange Visitors Information

System (SEVIS), administered by the new Department of Homeland Security (operations were still DS responsibility).83 As Witt states, “the entire landscape of international education in the US shifted dramatically from a posture of recruitment to one of determent, from receptive to suspicious, from hospitable to hostile”.84 “The global war on terrorism replaced the cold war as the national security meta narrative”.85 This was a time of crisis in IE with the U.S. experiencing its first substantial drop in foreign students for the first time in over 30 years. Such a drop was not experienced even during the cold war.

Link—Rand Paul

Rand Paul hates student visas—wants to curtail them after Chattanooga Wells 7/18, Rick Wells is an author who recognizes that our nation, our Constitution and our traditions are under a full scale assault from multiple threats. “Sen Rand Paul – Time To Restrict Immigration From Terrorist Nations, Slam Shut The Jihadi Barn Door”, 7/18/15, <http://rickwells.us/sen-rand-paul-time-to-restrict-immigration-from-terrorist-nations-slam-shut-the-jihadi-barn-door/>//ak Senator Rand Paul is one of those who disagrees with the Muslim importation program currently being carried

out by the Obama regime and, in light of the terrorist attacks in Chattanooga, feels like it’s time to tighten things up. In an Interview with Breitbart News before a campaign event in Houston, Paul said: “I’m very concerned about immigration to this country from countries that have hotbeds of jihadism and hotbeds of this Islamism . There was a program in place that Bush had put in place—it stood for entry-exit program from about 25 different countries with a lot of Islamic radicals, frankly. I think there does need to be heightened scrutiny. Nobody has a right to come to America, so this isn’t something that we can say ‘oh their rights are being violated.’ It’s a privilege to come to America and we need to thoroughly screen those who are coming.” Of course Democrats and Establishment Republicans would have us believe that every person upon the planet is born with an inherent right to border-crash into the United States . They are rights that we citizens are somehow obligated to not only help them exercise but fund and provide legal assistance for as well. With that right to invade also comes the right to fraudulently vote in elections and the right to demand equal rights, the gateway of illegal invader privilege. For the murderer of four Marines in Chattanooga, those “rights” also included the opportunity for the Kuwaiti-born terrorist and his terrorist parents to be foolishly offered a seat at our table from which to bite the hand that unwillingly was feeding it. Those parents and the rest of his family, still remain in the United States. In the interview, Senator Paul noted another instance of similar abuse of America’s misguided hospitality by a Muslim import which involved missiles. He said, “In my hometown of Bowling Green, Kentucky, we had two Iraqi refugees who were let into our country who were plotting to buy stinger missiles a few years ago, but they got arrested and put in jail. But I think we’re doing the wrong thing by just having this open door policy to bring in people without significant scrutiny. I’m for increasing scrutiny on people who come on student visas from the 25 countries that have significant jihadism. Also, any kind of

permanent visas or green cards, we need to be very careful. I don’t think we’re being careful enough with who we let in. He added that, as chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee on Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management and as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he will be looking into the problem further. “I’m going to have our subcommittee and maybe committee in Homeland Security look into whether or not we could reinstitute this NSEERS [National Security Entry Exit Registration System] program—it was entry-exit program that was heightened scrutiny for 25 predominantly Muslim countries that have significant jihadist movements and anti-American sentiment in their country. We need increased scrutiny on those countries before those people come to our country to visit or permanently. We have to have heightened scrutiny.”

Rand Paul is key to the success of the Iran deal Fabian 7/14, Jordan Fabian is the White House Correspondent for the Hil. He received a B.A. in History, Law and Society from Cornell University. “Obama calls out Rand Paul on Iran deal”,7/14/15,http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/247944-obama-calls-out-rand-paul-on-iran-deal//ak President Obama challenged Republicans to back the nuclear agreement with Iran, arguing it would allow a future GOP president to keep a stronger check on Tehran’s nuclear ambitions . Obama conceded few, if

any, GOP elected officials will back the deal. But he called out Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) by name, asking whether the 2016 presidential hopeful would support the agreement. “It’ll be interesting to see what somebody like a Rand Paul has to say about this,” Obama said in an interview with New York Times columnist Tom Friedman. “I think that if I were succeeded by a Republican president — and I’ll

be doing everything that I can to prevent that from happening — but if I were, that Republican president would be in a much stronger position than I was when I came into office, in terms of constraining Iran’s nuclear program ,”

Obama added. Paul has broken with his GOP colleagues on national security issues and previously voiced support for negotiating with Iran. But he came out against the agreement Tuesday, saying on Twitter it left the core of Tehran’s

nuclear abilities intact. Obama is embarking on a sales pitch to build public support for the deal. He’s also lobbying

members of Congress to support the deal ahead of a 60-day review period, after which lawmakers will vote to approve or disapprove of the deal.

Terror DA

SEVIS link

SEVIS is key prevent terror and is effective in the squo—9/11 and the Boston Marathon bombing proves the importance of validating international students’ visasGonzalez 15, Daniel González, graduate of the University of Iowa’s journalism school , “International students under scrutiny by feds,” Azcentral, 1/28/15, http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/immigration/2015/01/17/international-students-scrutiny-feds/21942819/ The initiative is aimed at making sure schools in Arizona and across the U.S. are complying with regulations to help the government track and monitor the 1 million international students currently studying in the U.S. with visas, including some 19,000 attending Arizona schools. The regulations were created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to verify that international students are attending legitimate schools and abiding by the conditions of their visas. One of the 19 hijackers , Hani Hanjour, entered the U nited

States on a student visa but failed to attend the school in California where he had enrolled. More recently, issues relating to student visas arose regarding an alleged conspirator in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. Those incidents underscore the importance of making sure schools follow the regulations to help the government track international students. But those regulations can be daunting and confusing for school officials. As Cruz put it, "It's the federal government. There is just a lot of stuff and it

is just overwhelming." Which is where the school visits come in. "They are our way of getting down on the ground to the school official. Talking to them about their role, because they play a role in national security," said Rachel Canty, deputy director of ICE's Student Exchange and Visitor

Program. Keeping track of visiting students Under the initiative, ICE officials will visit the almost 9,000 institutions in the U.S. certified to enroll international students, including 156 schools in Arizona. Those schools include universities, community colleges, vocational schools, flight schools, language schools, high schools and elementary schools. ICE officials will meet with school personnel to answer questions and make sure they are complying with federal regulations. In December, Large, ICE's new Student and Exchange Visitor Program representative for Arizona, met for the first time with school officials at ACU, a small private school located off Cactus

Road in north Phoenix. The school has 13 international students out of a total enrollment of about 600, said Cruz, who is in charge of making sure the school complies with the regulations. Cruz told Large that keeping track of all the regulations isn't always easy. "I know the regulations and I am here to help you apply them," Large assured him. Arizona Christian University has students from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, France, Russia, Moldova, South Korea and Thailand, Cruz said. They "bring a new perspective on campus for our students," Cruz said, and having

them "brings a lot of diversity." Canty, the ICE official, also emphasized that international students "are vital for our economy. They bring lots of benefits to the United States." But she added, "We also want to know who they are and what they are doing while they are here." Under the regulations, schools are required to provide detailed information about international students to an Internet-based government database, known as SEVIS , short for Student and Exchange Visitor Information System.

That information includes the student's course of study, and their address on or off campus, among other details. But the database is only effective if school officials keep information up to date as required. "This information is used by a large number of other law-enforcement agencies so the data the school reps put in there is vital," Canty said. Schools that don't

comply with the regulations can lose their certification to enroll international students. In November, ICE declined to recertify Marietta Bible College in Ohio, after the school failed to properly respond to requests to prove it is a bona fide institution. ICE requested the information because the school is not accredited by the U.S. Department of Education. The school is fighting to regain certification. Timely updates key During the recent meeting, Large asked ACU officials whether they require international students to check in at the beginning of each semester. Yes, Cruz told her. International students must report to the registrar's office within the first week of school. "We need to physically see they are here," he said. "Good. Good," Large told him. "There are some that don't come," Cruz added. "We track them down." That is when Large asked about dorms

for international students living on campus. She told Cruz that in addition to providing actual dorm numbers, he needs to provide the specific address for international students living off campus, not just their post office boxes. Large said school officials must also update the database immediately when international students are kicked out or drop out of school. That way the government can better track down international students who overstay their visas and identify those who attempt to re-enter the country using invalid student visas. Cruz recounted an incident about two years ago involving a

former international student. An Australian student left ACU without finishing his studies and returned to his country. The next year, he was still carrying his student visa form in his passport when he returned to the United States with his family on vacation. But because Cruz had updated the database, Customs and Border Protection officials were able to determine the student's form was no longer valid. Cruz learned about the incident after the student called to apologize. "He said, 'I made a mistake,' " Cruz said. The incident shows "why it's so important that those SEVIS

records be up to date," said Carissa Cutrell, an ICE spokeswoman. In 2013, Homeland Security began requiring CBP officials to use the SEVIS database to verify that international students entering the United States have valid student visas. DHS did so in the wake of the April 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. A student from Kazakhstan , Azamat Tazhayakov , who had hidden evidence for one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, had come to the U.S . in January 2013 on an invalid student visa , according to news reports. At the time, the agent at the airport in New York where Tazhayakov entered did not have access to information on the SEVIS database. Tazhayakov was convicted of conspiracy and obstruction of justice last July, and awaits sentencing. Jury selection for Boston Marathon bombing defendant Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is ongoing in Boston.Complete surveillance is necessary—our link is a small minority of studentsBremer and Sonnenberg 00, Lewis Paul Bremer III (born September 30, 1941) is an American diplomat. He is most notable for leading the occupational authority of Iraq following the 2003 invasion by the United States. He served in this capacity from May 11, 2003 until June 28, 2004, serving as head of state of the internationally recognized government of Iraq. Maurice Sonnenberg is a senior American intelligence and financial advisor. “Countering the Changing Threat of International Terrorism”, Report of the National Commission on Terrorism, June 2000, <http://fas.org/irp/threat/commission.html?//ak**this evidence is in the context of CIPRIS being key—which is an earlier version of today’s SEVIS

Of the large number of foreign students who come to this country to study, there is a risk that a small minority may exploit their student status to support terrorist activity. The United States lacks the nationwide ability to monitor the immigration status of these students. In spite of elaborate immigration laws and the efforts of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the United States is, de facto, a country of open borders. The Commission found that the massive flows of people across U.S.borders make exclusion of all foreign terrorists impossible. There are more than 300 million legal crossings each year at the U.S./Mexican land border alone. Millions more stream through our airports. Beyond the millions who legally come and go, over four million persons reside illegally in the United States. About half of them entered the country without inspection, meaning they crossed U.S. borders between inspection stations or entered by small boat or aircraft. Roughly another two million people entered the United States with a valid visitor's visa, but overstayed their visa and remained here to live. That said, of the millions who come here to live or visit only a minuscule portion of all foreigners in the United States attempt to harm the country in any way. While the problems of controlling America's borders are far broader than just keeping out terrorists, the Commission found this an area of special concern. For example, thousands of people from countries officially designated as state sponsors of terrorism currently study in the United States. This is not objectionable in itself as the vast majority of these students contribute to America's diversity while here and return home with no adverse impact on U.S. national security. However, experience has shown the importance of monitoring the status of foreign students. Seven years ago,

investigators discovered that one of the terrorists involved in bombing the World Trade Center had entered the United States on a student visa, dropped out, and remained illegally. Today, there is still no mechanism for

ensuring the same thing won't happen again. One program holds promise as a means of addressing the issue. The

Coordinated Interagency Partnership Regulating International Students (CIPRIS), a regional pilot program mandated by the 1996 Illegal

Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIR/IRA) collects and makes readily available useful and current information about foreign student visa holders in the United States. For example, CIPRIS would record a foreign student's change in major from English literature to nuclear physics. The CIPRIS pilot program was implemented in 20 southern universities and is being considered for nationwide implementation after an opportunity for notice and comment. The Commission believes that CIPRIS could become a model for a nationwide program monitoring the status of foreign students.

Student visas are common practices for terrorist entry- Atta, Alshehhi, and Aldawsari proveNumbersUSA 12 An online educational forum that moderates, conservatives & liberals working for immigration numbers that serve

America's finest goals “FOILED TERROR PLOT EXPOSES VULNERABILITY OF STUDENT VISA SYSTEM”, 10/21/12,< https://www.numbersusa.com/content/news/october-21-2012/foiled-terror-plot-exposes-vulnerability-student-visa-system.html>//akTerrorists started using student visas to gain legal access to the United States in the 1990s . Before the 1993 terrorist attack against the World Trade Center, Evad Ismoil had entered the country on a student visa to

attend Wichita State University. He dropped out of college, only to resurface driving the van full of explosives during the attack. Several of the terrorists in the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, such as Mohammed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi, used student visas. More recently in February 2011, federal agents arrested Khalid Ali-M

Aldawsari, a student visa holder. In his apartment near Texas Tech University, they found bomb-making chemicals, wiring, a hazmat suit and clocks. Aldawsari had been planning to commit a terror attack against the U.S. for years, prosecutors said. Among his targets was the home of former President George W. Bush. The State Department is responsible for vetting student visa applications through the Consular Lookout and Support System, which keeps a list of foreign nationals who should not be granted a visa. The problem is, those who keep a low profile may not be on the list. In fiscal year 2011, the State Department issued 476,000 type "F" student visas worldwide, After a person enters on a student visa, the Department of Homeland Security becomes responsible for monitoring visa compliance. Schools and programs approved to host foreign students must report certain information to DHS’ Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), including changes in a student’s location and academic status. When certain changes trigger a possible visa violation, DHS is supposed to investigate. DHS has had some success in using SEVIS to track down dangerous aliens. In January 2012, ICE agents arrested a Saudi Arabian national who was admitted on

student visa. He had plans to blow up the White House and the Saudi Arabian cultural mission to the United States. House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Pete King (R-N.Y.) is reportedly interested in reforming the student visa system in the wake of the foiled attack against the Federal Reserve. "Al Qaeda made a decision several years ago that they were going to send people into our country who had valid papers, who are under the radar screen, who had no known terrorist connections," King said. "We are at war, and so many people forget that. This is the 15th attempted plot against New York since September 2001. It's the 60th plot against the United States."

Lack of surveillance enables entire “sham schools” to facilitate terrorist entranceEdghill 2/6, Laura Edghill is a freelance writer, church communications director, and public school board member. She is a graduate of the WORLD Journalism Institute's mid-career course. “Sham universities create student visa loopholes terrorists could exploit”, 2/6/15, < http://www.worldmag.com/2015/02/sham_universities_create_student_visa_loopholes_terrorists_could_exploit>//akUnfortunately Tri-Valley is not alone. In recent years, several other schools have been raided or shut down by federal authorities on allegations of visa fraud. Others include California Union University in Fullerton, Calif., College Prep Academy in Duluth, Ga., and Herguan University in Sunnyvale, Calif. Both California Union and College Prep are now closed and their former presidents convicted on a variety of visa-related charges. Herguan University’s CEO, Jerry Wang, is currently under investigation for visa fraud. Wang maintains his innocence, and the school remains open, for now. The sham schools appear to be lucrative businesses. Susan Xiao-Ping Su, founder and former president of Tri-Valley, raked in more than $5.6 million in student fees that she spent on commercial real estate, multiple personal homes, and other luxuries. “If there’s a way to make a buck, some people will do it,” said Brian Smeltzer, chief of the Counterterrorism and Criminal Exploitation Unit of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations. But the schools also are a potentially dangerous business. Since Sept. 11, 2001, 26 student visa holders have been arrested in the United States on terrorism-related charges. Every year, tens of thousands of students overstay their visas, and many of them remain indefinitely as undocumented foreign nationals. The Obama administration was sharply criticized last September when media reports revealed federal authorities couldn’t locate 6,000 foreigners who had entered the country on student visas. “My greatest concern is that they could be doing anything,” Peter Edge, the U.S.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement official who oversees investigations into visa violators, told ABC News. “Some of them could be here to do us harm.” And the schools are a source of financial loss and heartache for students like Challa, who said she paid nearly $3,000 for her first semester at Tri-Valley, but never received an assignment or exam. At the time the school was raided she was in the process of transferring to another university. She later completed her MBA and now works in the United States. “I had to pursue my studies here, I had to get a job,” she said. “I was the first person in my family to come to the U.S.” Su was convicted last year on 31 counts related to the fraudulent activity at Tri-Valley and sentenced to 16 years in prison. The school is now closed.

Crowdout DA

1NC

Foreign students crowd out US ones and kills the economy—also widens income gap between US and the world, leading to warGeorge J. Borjas, July 2002, he is a Professor of Economics and Social Policy, “An Evaluation of the Foreign Student Program,” RWP02-026, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Faculty Research Working Papers Series It is not even clear that it would be desirable for the United States to skim the best and brightest from abroad. Is the United States truly better off if it drains off the most capable engineers and brightest programmers from developing countries? Such a drain of human capital would further widen the income gap between the United S tates and the rest of the world, creating more incentives for migration to this country, adding to the pressures that low-skill workers face in the U.S. labor market, and increasing the expenditures on public assistance that such immigrants would likely receive . In addition, the resulting increase in global inequality would further aggravate many social and political conflicts. There are many other hard-to-measure impacts that need to be considered when assessing the foreign student program. For example, it is well knodwn that the labor market prospects for graduate students in bioscience worsened steadily over the past two decades, as more and more foreign students entered the field . A doctoral student in bioscience cannot expect to be employed in a permanent academic job until after completing a series of low-paid post-doctoral fellowships; the typical graduate from these programs is in her mid-30s by the time she earns her 8 Testimony of David Ward before the Committee on Education and the Workforce, U.S. House of Representatives, Subcommittees on 21st Century Competitiveness and Selected Education, October 31, 2001. 11 first professional salary. It is unlikely that the labor market in one of the hottest scientific fields would have been so soft had there not been a huge influx of foreign labor. While bright nativeborn undergraduates opt to pursue fields that have not been targeted by immigrants, such as business and law, the poor career prospects in bioscience remain quite attractive to students from India or China . In short, t he influx of large numbers of foreign students into particular programs probably altered the educational plans of generations of native-born Americans. And it is far from clear whether such a distortion in the career choices of our brightest students is in the national interest.

Squo solves—counter-terror efforts prevent foreign students from entering the US and killing the US economy by tracking them—that means surveillance solvesGeorge J. Borjas, July 2002, he is a Professor of Economics and Social Policy, “An Evaluation of the Foreign Student Program,” RWP02-026, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Faculty Research Working Papers Series The terrorist attacks of September 11 sparked a healthy—if belated—debate over the nature and structure of the foreign student program. Some policy changes have already been made —changes that have been

stubbornly resisted by the higher education sector for years. These reforms will improve the tracking of foreign students, so that some governmental agency will know how many foreign students from particular countries are present in the U nited S tates and where these students are located. But this is only a short-run fix. So far, the debate has managed to completely avoid asking the single most important question: is such a large-scale foreign

student program in the interests of the United States? Once one stops mindlessly humming the Ode to Diversity that plays such a central role in the modern secular liturgy—and particularly so in higher education—it is far from clear that the program generates a net benefit for the United States. Surely f oreign students benefit; many of them receive a highly subsidized education and a substantially improved chance to get the highly coveted green card that will let them live in the United States permanently. And surely colleges and universities benefit; they have a limitless supply of low-wage foreign student labor that is bound to keep wages and expenses down. But the benefits accruing to the entire economy are small, probably less than $1 billion a year. And this benefit is more than offset by the tuition subsidy that taxpayers grant to foreign students enrolled in public universities. As with much of the immigration debate, the net impact of foreign students is

more subtle than the proponents of large-scale immigration would have us believe—whether the proponents are strawberry growers in Central California or bureaucrats in the ivy-covered halls of Princeton.

2NC—foreign stu crowd out US ones

US students are not interested in the tech sector because they don’t want to compete with foreign ones—the computer boom proves US students are capable George J. Borjas, July 2002, he is a Professor of Economics and Social Policy, “An Evaluation of the Foreign Student Program,” RWP02-026, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Faculty Research Working Papers Series It is also worth emphasizing that the notion that Americans are not interested in scientific careers—and that is why we must keep importing foreign students—is plain nonsense. What Americans are not interested in is in pursuing a career where they have to compete with workers who originate in very poor countries and are willing and able to work for very low wages in the United States. As we saw with the computer boom of the 1990s, Americans are more than willing to acquire brand new skills when there is a substantial market reward for those skills. In the absence of the huge flows of foreign students, university labs would have to compete for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows by offering higher stipends and better working conditions, inducing many more Americans to enter these technical fields.

Foreign students force American students to switch to other fields—domestic students can’t find jobs or high wages due to the flood of foreign studentMatloff 13(Norman Matloff, professor of computer science at the University of California, Davis, “Are foreign students the ‘best and brightest’?”, February 23 rd, Economic Policy Institute, 2013,http://www.epi.org/publication/bp356-foreign-students-best-brightest-immigration-policy/, JAS)A term currently popular in STEM policymaker circles is diversion, referring to workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher in STEM but who work in non-STEM fields (Bernstein, Lowell, and

Martin 2011; Carnevale, Smith, and Melton 2011). Though this is a recognition of the fact that there is indeed an internal brain drain occurring in STEM , it does not address the questions of why this is occurring. The issue is addressed in this section, and the nexus of this internal brain drain with the H-1B and other foreign worker

programs will be shown. On July 7, 2012, the Washington Post (Vastag 2012) reported on a major study by a high-level committee in the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The main findings were that the vast majority of those with doctorates in the life sciences are never able to secure a research job in the field, even after years of low-paid postdoctoral research work. The article illustrated the point with personal cases, such as a woman with a doctorate in neuroscience now working

as an administrative assistant. Readers who followed up by watching the video presentation of the NIH report (NIH 2012) may have been startled to find that t he H-1B visa is part of the oversupply problem; the video mentioned the role of foreign researchers in the United States at several points. Approximately 54 percent of postdoctoral researchers are foreign, most of them on H-1B visas (Davis 2006). The NIH committee also stated that

the resulting huge labor surplus, and the ensuing low wages and poor career prospects, are driving many of the nation’s best and brightest out of the field. The diversion of educated workers due to the foreign influx is not at all limited to the lab sciences. A team of Berkeley economists identified this same problem in the CS/EE context in 1998 and elaborated on

the point in a 2009 book (Brown and Linden 2009): …high-tech engineers and managers have experienced lower wage growth than their counterparts nationally. …Why hasn’t the growth of high-tech wages kept up? …Foreign students are an important part of the story. …Approximately one-half of engineering Ph.D.s and one-third of engineering MSs were granted to foreign-born students in the mid-1990s. (Brown, Campbell, and Pinsonneault 1998, emphasis added) The H-1B-caused internal brain drain was actually anticipated, if not actually planned, in the government’s central science agency back in 1989. The Policy Research and Analysis (PRA) division of the National Science Foundation (NSF) complained that Ph.D. salaries were too high. In an unpublished report, PRA proposed a remedy in the form of importing a large number of foreign students, stating: These salary data show that real Ph.D.-level pay began to rise after 1982, moving from $52,000 to $64,000 in 1987 (measured in 1984 dollars). One set of salary projections show that real pay will reach $75,000 in 1996 and approach $100,000 shortly beyond the year 2000. … [To] the extent that increases in foreign student enrollments in doctoral programs decline or turn negative for reasons other than state or national policies it may be in the national interest to actively encourage foreign students. … A growing influx of foreign Ph.D.s into U.S. labor markets will hold down the level of Ph.D. salaries. …[The Americans] will select alternative career paths…by choosing to acquire a “professional” degree in business or law, or by switching into management as rapidly as possible after gaining employment in private industry…[as] the effective premium for acquiring a Ph.D. may actually be negative.

(Weinstein 1998; emphasis added) It is not clear whether the PRA report represented official NSF policy. However, the report did correctly project that the H-1B and related programs would drive American students away from doctoral study , i.e., would cause an internal brain drain in STEM. Significantly, the PRA accurately forecast that the STEM wage suppression would cause American students to shift to business and law. As seen earlier, the PERM data show that Microsoft pays its financial analysts and lawyers much more than it pays its engineers. Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan has made a number of public statements advocating the importation of foreign tech workers as a means of holding down salaries (Thibodeau 2009). (Greenspan referred to

tech workers as a “privileged elite,” apparently not placing the much higher-paid professions in the legal field and on Wall Street in that category.) The congressionally

commissioned National Research Council study also concluded that H-1B adversely impacts tech wages

(NRC 2001, 187). Note that diversion cannot be viewed as a failure of the American K-12 educational system, as is often claimed. True, some students are weak in STEM or are disinterested in it, but the points made above apply to students who are skilled at STEM, and who do specialize in STEM in college. As remarked above, the issue of diversion concerns workers who have bachelor’s degrees in STEM but who, either immediately after attaining their degrees or later on, are working outside of STEM. Indeed, in the NIH study discussed above, the workers have doctorates in STEM, plus years of postdoctoral work. As noted, the NIH fretted that the H-1B visa is resulting in loss of career to many Americans in lab science. In addition, t he stagnant salaries caused by the foreign influx discourage young people from pursuing a career in STEM. Young people see these market signals and respond accordingly . Even many Indian immigrant engineers’ children see the tech field as unstable, subject to outsourcing to India (Grimes 2005). The talents STEM students have been applying—keen quantitative insight, good

problem-solving and analytical skills, and so on—are much more highly rewarded outside STEM, as exemplified by the Microsoft salary analysis above. Georgetown University researcher Anthony Carnevale has remarked, “ If you’re a high math student in America, from a purely economic point of view, it’s crazy to go into STEM ” (Light and Silverman 2011). A Forbes Magazine article cites the troubling effects of

stagnant salaries and offshoring: Between 2003 and 2006 the percentage of graduates from MIT going into financial services rose from 13 percent to almost 25 percent. …One can hardly blame these young hires. Financial firms offer considerably higher pay, better career prospects and insulation against off-shoring, than traditional science and engineering companies. … (Schramm 2011) Gavin (2005) summarized the connection made by Richard Freeman of Harvard: In his paper, Freeman argues that fewer American-born workers pursue science and engineering not only because they have more career choices than foreign workers, but also because some choices offer better wages. Average annual salaries for lawyers, for example, amounted to more than $20,000 above those for doctoral-level engineers and $50,000 more than those for life scientists with doctorates, according to Census data that Freeman cites in the paper …. U.S. companies, he added in an interview, have been quite willing to encourage a foreign supply of technical workers. This has allowed them to pay lower wages, but it has also created conditions that make science and engineering less attractive to Americans. “You can’t say, ‘I want more visas’ and ‘I expect more Americans to enter the field,’” Freeman said. “The thing that always strikes me about these business guys is they never say, ‘We should be paying higher salaries.’”20 This internal brain drain might have been justified if the foreign workers were of higher caliber than the Americans, but, as shown earlier, this is not the case. The consistent theme in the results here has been that the immigrant engineers and programmers who first come to the United States on student visas—the group the industry lobbyists claim are most talented—are quite similar to the Americans in talent, or are of lesser talent than the Americans, contrary to the “genius” image projected by the industry.

2NC—turns STEM

Foreign students discourage domestic STEM studies, their quality of expertise in the field is lower, and they overflood the STEM studies with people looking for STEM jobsMatloff 13(Norman Matloff, professor of computer science at the University of California, Davis, “How Foreign Students Hurt U.S. Innovation”, February 12th, 2013, Washington Monthly, http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/blog/how_foreign_students_hurt_us_i.php#, JAS)In the old days, the U.S. program for foreign-student visas helped developing nations and brought diversity to then white-bread American campuses. Today, the F-1 program, as it is known, has become a profit center for universities and a wage-suppression tool for the technology industry. International students are attractive to strapped colleges because they tend to pay full tuition or, in the case of public institutions, pay more than full price in out-of-state rates. Last year, this was taken to a new

level at California State University, East Bay, a public institution just south of Oakland . The school directed its master’s degree programs to admit only non-California students, including foreign students. Even before this edict, international students made up 90 percent of its computer-science master’s program. The pursuit of foreign students by U.S. schools affects not only college access for Americans but also their careers. Back in 1989, an internal report of the National Science Foundation forecast that a large influx of F-1 doctoral students in science, technology, engineering and math — the STEM fields — would suppress wages. The stagnant salaries would then drive the American bachelor’s degree holders in these fields into more lucrative areas, such as business and law, after graduation, and discourage them from pursuing STEM doctorates. Americans Diverted This projection was dead-on. Contrary to the industry lobbyists’ claim of student shortages in these fields, an extensive 2007 Urban Institute study found that the U.S. has plenty of STEM graduates at the bachelor’s degree level, but few go on to graduate work in the field. The shift has spawned a new term, “diversion,” alluding to the STEM grads who are diverted to other fields. Other

professions use similar talents but pay much more and have brighter job prospects. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has also advocated importing foreign workers to hold down wages (at all degree levels) in the technology industry. Financially, “it’s crazy to go into STEM” if you are a young person who is talented in math , as Anthony Carnevale, the director of Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, put it. Yet, seemingly oblivious to this troubling situation, President Barack Obama is proposing that we give special green cards to all foreign graduate students in these fields. Republican Senators Orrin Hatch and Marco Rubio, among others, have made similar proposals. To such boosters, every foreign student is a future Nobel laureate. As Democratic Representative Zoe Lofgren, author of one proposal, has said, “You can’t have too many geniuses.” To be sure, there are individual students from abroad who prove her point: the game changers. Yet the average quality of the international STEM students is lower than that of the Americans. Focusing on computer science and electrical engineering, my recent research, which is scheduled to be published by the Economic Policy Institute in March , compared American natives with former F-1s who were working in the U.S. as of 2003 . For workers of comparable age, educational attainment and so on, the former foreign students on average had fewer patent applications, attended lower-ranked U.S. universities and were less likely to be working in research and development positions. (Here is an earlier report I wrote.) Interviewed after the Cal State East Bay furor, biology professor Maria Nieto said the increase in foreign students had decreased overall quality. The weak foreign students are being admitted “because they can pay,” she added. Oversupply Effect

Not only was Lofgren’s comment about the geniuses a lot of hype, you can have too many STEM workers , as the National Science Foundation internal report’s projection showed. Last year, a commission appointed by the other top U.S. science agency, the National Institutes of Health, found that a severe oversupply has created a brutal job market for those who pursue doctorates in science research. According to the report, graduates endure a gantlet of postdoctoral jobs (quasi-student positions that extend doctoral training) at low pay and long hours for years, all the while not knowing whether a permanent job will materialize in the end . For those who do

eventually secure an academic position in biomedical research, the median age when starting the job is 37. The NIH commission found that these bleak prospects may be dissuading the best and brightest Americans from entering

careers in science research, and cited the large number of foreign postdoctoral researchers as a major cause of the glut of lab scientists. The Government Accountability Office has noted the relationship between that oversupply to the availability of foreign postdocs. About 54 percent of these postdocs are foreign. None of this is to say the foreign student program should be shut down. But we shouldn’t be reducing educational and career opportunities for talented Americans . Today, the F-1 and similar programs are discouraging qualified Americans from going into science and math careers, and are bringing us diversion, not diversity. Aside from the effect on individuals and their careers, there are serious issues of national interest. Displacing those Americans who might potentially be more innovative — extrapolating from the patents per-capita numbers — and filling classrooms with foreign students who aren’t as likely to produce such breakthroughs is a net economic loss for the nation. How does the U.S. begin to fix this imbalance? Rather than offering work visas and green cards to all foreign students attaining U.S. postgraduate degrees, legislation should focus on facilitating the immigration of top talent.

China Brain Drain DA

1NC

UQ—China is attempting to slowly lure their students back from abroad by improving its domestic education—they are slowly succeeding, but it’s still a difficult fightThe Economist 14, The Economist offers authoritative insight and opinion on international news, politics, business, finance, science, technology and the connections between them. “China Trying to Reverse its Brain Drain matter,” Nov 22, 2014, http://www.economist.com/news/china/21633865-china-trying-reverse-its-brain-drain-matter-honoursEvery country sends out students. What makes China different is that most of these bright minds have stayed away. Only a third have come back, according to the Ministry of Education; fewer by some counts. A study this year by a scholar at America’s Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education found that 85% of those who gained their doctorate in America in 2006 were still there in 2011. To lure experts to Chinese universities, the government has launched a series of schemes since the mid-1990s. These have offered some combination of a one-off bonus of up to 1m yuan ($160,000), promotion, an assured salary and a housing allowance or even a free apartment . Some of the best universities have built homes for academics to rent or buy at a discount. All are promised top-notch facilities. Many campuses, which

were once spartan, now have swanky buildings (one of Tsinghua’s is pictured above). The programmes have also targeted non-Chinese. A “foreign expert thousand-talent scheme”, launched in 2011, has enticed around 200 people. Spending on universities has shot up, too: sixfold in 2001-11. The results have been striking. In 2005-2012 published research articles from higher-education institutions rose by 54%; patents granted went up eightfold. But most universities still have far to go. Only two Chinese institutions number in the top 100 in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. Shanghai’s Jiao Tong University includes only 32 institutions from mainland China among the world’s 500 best. The government frets about the failure of a Chinese scholar ever to win a Nobel prize in science (although the country has a laureate for

literature and an—unwelcome—winner in 2010 of the Nobel peace prize, Liu Xiaobo, an imprisoned dissident). Pulling some star scholars back from abroad will not be enough to turn China into an academic giant. Many of those who return do so on a part-time basis. According to David Zweig of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, nearly 75% of Chinese nationals who were lured by a “thousand-talent” programme launched in 2008 did not give up tenure elsewhere. Such schemes have often bought reputation rather than better research. They typically target full professors whose more productive, innovative years may already be behind them. (They also favour experts in science, technology and management; the Communist Party is less interested in

attracting scholars in more politically controversial fields.) Chinese universities have great difficulty fostering talent at home. The premium on foreign experience in China has created perverse incentives, says Cao Cong of Nottingham University in Britain. It sends the message to today’s best and brightest that they should still spend their most productive years abroad. More than 300,000 students leave each year. Research inside China is moulded by the

heavy hand of the state. Many grants are allocated by administrators who lack expertise in evaluating proposals, rather than by open, competitive peer review. Staff are not encouraged to be sceptical about existing theories, especially those held by senior staff who control resources, says Mr Cao. The result is management by numbers: academics are rewarded for the quantity of their publications instead of quality. This creates incentives to eschew long-term, open-ended exploration. “Sometimes guanxi [connections] are all you need” to get promotions and grants, says Tsinghua’s Mr Shi, who since returning has recruited Chinese scientists from prestigious universities in America and elsewhere to work in his labs. In science the Communist Party has picked six main spheres of research to fund, including nanotechnology, climate change and stem cells. But

letting officials decide on research is a poor recipe for innovation. Until recently universities routinely hired their own students upon graduating. Many staff did not have doctorates, lecturers were given jobs for life with no motivation to excel and all promotion was internal. Ten years ago, when Peking University tried to replace this system with limited employment contracts and open competition for posts, it faced such resistance from its own staff that it had to shelve its plans . Today the signs are more encouraging . Some universities are changing the way they recruit and hence f inding it easier to attract staff from abroad. At Peking University departments now hire and promote using international evaluation-methods. They advertise jobs and academics apply for promotion and are rewarded according to their achievements. Departments such as Mr Shi’s at Tsinghua have attracted private funding to top up salaries for tenured positions. Assistant professors at some elite institutions are paid as much as $70,000-80,000 a year, up to 80% of which comes from donations. But academic institutions the world over are notoriously slow to reform. China has more than 2,400 universities and research facilities—and so far only a few minds have been changed.

Link—Chinese student brain drain collapses their economyWatt 07 (Watts-Guardian-The Guardian“China fears brain drain as its overseas students stay put” http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jun/02/internationaleducationnews.highereducation)China suffers the worst brain drain in the world, according to a new study that found seven out of every 10 students who enroll in an overseas university never return to live in their homeland. Despite the booming economy and government incentives to return, an increasing number of the country's brightest minds are relocating to wealthier nations, where they can usually benefit from higher living standards, brighter career opportunities and the freedom to have as many children as they wish. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences revealed 1.06 million Chinese had gone to study overseas since 1978, but only 275,000 had returned. The rest had taken postgraduate courses, found work, got married or changed citizenship. Unlike illegal migrants from the countryside - many of whom are poorly schooled - the students are usually welcomed with open arms by western institutions, which gain high scholarship fees and academic excellence. Britain has gone further than most to attract this pool of intellectual talent. Chinese students have been the biggest group of foreign nationals at UK schools and universities for several years. Last year their numbers increased 20% to 60,000. The report claims the lack of first-class scientists and research pioneers represents the biggest obstacle to China's ability to innovate . "This shows thatChinese students overseas, especially those with extraordinary abilities, are a real hit in the global tug-of-war for talent," Yang Xiaojing, one of the authors of the report, was quoted as saying in the China Daily. " Against the backdrop of economic globalisation, an excessive brain drain will inevitably threaten the human resources, security and eventually the national economic and social security of any country ."

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2NC link—brain drain => econ collapse

Braind drain leads to economic collapse—loss of laborAbdelbaki 09, Hisham H. Abdelbaki, University of Bahrain, Bahrain, “Estimation Of The Economic Impact Of Brain DrainOn The Labor Expelling Country ,” Vol 8, No 12, International Business & Economics Research Journal – December 2009, The emigration of human resources leads to many losses for the labor expelling country. Such losses would , without doubt, adversely affect the economic and social development programs in multiple aspects including state loss of migrants efforts in producing the desired growth whether in the

planning and preparation stages or in the implementation stage and the cost opportunity represented in the financial resources spent on the migrants prior to their emigration which could have been utilized in other areas taking into account, the limited financial resources in the underdeveloped countries which are mainly labor expelling countries. Hence, the loss of such countries is doubled . They neither benefited from their labor after years of spending in education and health, nor they saved their funds and exploited in other alternatives like improving education and health services, providing job opportunities for residents, improving the innovation climate or even increasing civil production to improve the living standards of individuals. The study is devoted to analyze and measure of economic effects of labor emigration in the labor expelling economy, through taking Egypt – the largest Arab country suffering from this phenomenon- as an example and using data derived from Egyptian sources. Estimates have emphasized growing losses generated by the Egyptian labor emigration, especially by brain drain. The paper concludes that measures and policies must be adopted to stop this drain by addressing the causes of labor emigration or rather, the existing properties of the labor expelling country. Also, efforts must be made to ensure that data related to immigration is always available, updated and estimated by official bodies having human, financial and technical capabilities for this task.Keywords:emigration, economic impact, brain drain, labor expelling country, remittances.FIRST: INTRODUCTION AND RESEARCH OBJECTIVEontemporary literature on growth stressed the importance of the human factor as a basic element of production on the one hand and the increasing return of knowledge as a source of long-term economic growth on the other hand. Based on that, successive studies have confirmed the vital role of education in eradicating poverty and underdevelopment (Romer,

1986, 1987 and Lucas, 1988). Even though underdeveloped countries suffer from a lack of skilled labor , large numbers of their skilled labor are migrating to work in developed countries in a phenomenon referred to in economic literature as the „Brain Drain‟ or „Migration of Brains‟ or other terms which means the migration of skilled labor from the country of birth to work in developed countries especially the United States, Europe and Canada, this phenomenon has started to gain attention since the sixties. Despite addressing the importance of the human factor in the growth and development, it is noted that the Endogenous Growth theory had overlooked the migration of human capital. The study of Haque and Kim, 1995 is considered an exception to this where they integrated the brain drain from underdeveloped countries to developed countries in an endogenous growth model.

2NC Impacts—Econ decline => China war

China economic decline leads to aggression—US-Sino relations decline and Chinese unrest acceleratesMead 9 Walter Russell Mead, Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, “Only Makes You Stronger,” The New Republic, 2/4/9, http://www.tnr.com/story_print.html?id=571cbbb9-2887-4d81-8542-92e83915f5f8The greatest danger both to U.S.-China relations and to American power itself is probably not that China will rise too far, too fast; it is that the current crisis might end China's growth miracle. In the worst- case scenario, the turmoil in the international economy will plunge China into a major economic downturn . The Chinese financial system will implode as loans to both state and private enterprises go bad. Millions or even tens of millions of Chinese will be unemployed in a country without a n effective social safety net . The collapse of asset bubbles in the stock and property markets will wipe out the savings of a generation of the Chinese middle class. The political consequences could include dangerous unrest --and a bitter climate of anti-foreign feeling that blames others for China's woes . ( Think of Weimar Germany , when both Nazi and communist politicians blamed the West for Germany's economic travails.) Worse, instability could lead to a vicious cycle , as nervous investors moved their money out of the country, further slowing growth and, in turn, fomenting ever- greater bitterness . Thanks to a generation of rapid economic growth, China has so far been able to manage the stresses and conflicts of modernization and change; nobody knows what will happen if the growth stops .

China economic collapse leads to instability and spills overYee and Storey 2 Herbert is a Professor of Politics and IR @ Hong Kong Baptist University, and Ian is a Lecturer in Defence Studies @ Deakin University. “The China Threat: Perceptions, Myths and Reality,” p. 5 The fourth factor contributing to the perception of a China threat is the fear of political and economic collapse in the PRC, resulting in territorial fragmentation, civil war and waves of refugees pouring into neighbouring countries . Naturally, any or all of these scenarios would have a profoundly negative impact on regional stability. Today the Chinese leadership faces a raft of internal problems, including the increasing political demands of its citizens, a growing population, a

shortage of natural resources and a deterioration in the natural environment caused by rapid industrialization and pollution. These problems are

putting a strain on the central government’s ability to govern effectively. Political disintegration or a Chinese civil war might result in millions of Chinese refugees seeking asylum in neighbouring countries. Such

an unprecedented exodus of refugees from a collapsed PRC would no doubt put a severe strain on the limited resources of China’s neighbours. A

fragmented China could also result in another nightmare scenario - nuc lear weapon s falling into the hands of irresponsible local provincial leaders or warlords . From this perspective, a disintegrating China would also pose a threat to its neighbours and the world .

2NC impacts—DA turns econ

Chinese key to global economy—offsets US slow downChina Daily 9/8/12Xinhua 12, official press agency of the People's Republic of China. “Chinese infrastructure investment conducive for global recovery,” China daily, 2012-09-08 , http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2012-09/08/content_15745141.htmChina's top economic planning agency earlier this week approved 25 urban rail projects that could be worth more than 800 billion yuan ($126.98 billion), along with other projects for roads, sewage treatment centers, waterways and ports. The move is expected to stimulate China's slowing economy and boost the world's economic recovery. The construction is part of the government's efforts to stabilize economic growth at a time when domestic demand remains weak and exports are suffering. China's economy grew by 7.6 percent year on year in the second quarter, its slowest pace in three years, according to official data. Analysts say the package will benefit the cement, iron, steel, construction, communications and equipment manufacturing sectors, as well as other basic industries. But more importantly, the package will serve as an important step in reviving the global economy, which has been dragged into a recession by the international financial crisis. The International Monetary Fund estimated that the world's economy will grow by only 3.5 percent this year, less than the 5.3- and 3.9-percent growth seen in 2010 and 2011, respectively. China has become a global powerhouse after decades of development, with its massive economic growth benefiting developed and undeveloped countries alike . China's demand for goods, services and technology has kept the factories of other countries humming, despite slower exports to the United States and Europe following the 2008 financial crisis. Therefore, the economic situation in China has great global significance . A slowdown in China's economy is perceived as a great risk , especially for the Asia-Pacific region. Saving China's economy will maintain the country's status as the "world's factory," allow ing it to continue to provide the world with an abundance of cheap, high-quality products, as well as help the world recover from the global financial crisis .

2NC impacts—Taiwain

China growth key to preventing Taiwan invasionLewis 7 Dan, Director of the Economic Research Council, “The Nightmare of a Chinese Economic Collapse,” World Finance, 4-19-07, http://www.worldfinance.com/news/137/ARTICLE/1144/2007-04-19.html

According to Professor David B. Smith, one of the City’s most accurate and respected economists in recent years, potentially far

more serious though is the impact that Chinese monetary policy could have on many Western nations such as the UK . Quite simply, China’s undervalued currency has enabled Western governments to maintain artificially strong currencies, reduce inflation and keep interest rates lower than they might otherwise be. We should therefore be very worried about how vulnerable Western economic growth is to an upward revaluation of the Chinese yen. Should that revaluation happen to appease China’s rural poor, at a stroke, the dollar, sterling and the euro

would quickly depreciate, rates in those currencies would have to rise substantially and the yield on government bonds would follow suit . This would add greatly to the debt servicing cost of budget deficits in the USA, the UK and much of Euro land. A reduction in demand for imported Chinese goods would quickly entail a decline in China’s economic growth rate. That is alarming. It has been calculated that to keep China’s society stable – ie to manage the transition from a rural to an urban society without devastating unemployment - the minimum growth rate is 7.2 percent . Anything less than that and unemployment will rise and the massive shift in population from the country to the cities

becomes unsustainable. This is when real discontent with communist party rule becomes vocal and hard to ignore. It doesn’t end there. That will at best bring a global recession . The crucial point is that communist authoritarian states have at least had some success in keeping a lid on ethnic tensions – so far. But when multi-ethnic communist countries fall apart from economic stress and the implosion of central power, history suggests that they don’t become successful democracies overnight. Far from it. There’s a very real chance that China might go the way of Yugoloslavia or the Soviet Union – chaos, civil unrest and internecine war . In the very worst case scenario, a Chinese government might seek to maintain national cohesion by going to war with Taiwan – whom America is pledged to defend. Today, people are looking at Chang’s book again. Contrary to popular belief, foreign investment has actually deferred political reform in the world’s oldest nation. China today is now far further from democracy than at any time since the Tianneman Square massacres in 1989. Chang’s pessimistic forecast for China was probably wrong. But my fear is there is at least a chance he was just early.

2NC impacts—WMD

Chinese economic decline leads to weapons of mass destruction—biological and nuclearOchs 2 | Past president of the Aberdeen Proving Ground Superfund Citizens Coalition, Member of the Depleted Uranium Task force of the Military Toxics Project, and M of the Chemical Weapons Working Group [Richard Ochs, , June 9, 2002, “Biological Weapons Must Be Abolished Immediately,” http://www.freefromterror.net/other_articles/abolish.html]Of all the weapons of mass destruction, the genetically engineered biological weapons, many without a known cure or vaccine, are an extreme danger to the continued survival of life on earth . Any perceived military value

or deterrence pales in comparison to the great risk these weapons pose just sitting in vials in laboratories. While a “nuclear winter,” resulting from a massive exchange of nuclear weapons, could also kill off most of life on earth and severely compromise the health of future generations, they are easier to control. Bio logical weapons , on the other hand, can get out of control very easily, as the recent anthrax attacks has demonstrated. There is no way to guarantee the security of these doomsday weapons

because very tiny amounts can be stolen or accidentally released and then grow or be grown to horrendous proportions. The Black Death of the Middle Ages would be small in comparison to the potential damage bioweapons could cause. Abolition of chemical weapons is less of a priority because, while they can also kill millions of people outright, their persistence in the environment would be less than nuclear or biological agents or more localized. Hence, chemical weapons would have a lesser effect on future generations of innocent people and the natural environment. Like the Holocaust, once a localized chemical extermination is over, it is over. With nuclear and biological weapons, the killing will probably never end. Radioactive elements last tens of thousands of years and will keep causing cancers virtually forever. Potentially worse than that, bio-engineered agents by the hundreds with no known cure could wreck even greater calamity on the human race than could persistent radiation. AIDS and ebola viruses are just a small example of recently emerging plagues with no known cure or vaccine. Can we imagine hundreds of such plagues? HUMAN EXTINCTION IS NOW POSSIBLE. Ironically, the Bush administration has just changed the U.S. nuclear doctrine to allow nuclear retaliation against threats upon allies by conventional weapons. The past doctrine allowed such use only as a last resort when our nation’s survival was at stake. Will the new policy also allow easier use of US bioweapons? How slippery is this slope?

Chinese lashout leads to weapons of mass destructionThe Epoch Times, Renxing San, 8/4/2004, 8/4, http://english.epochtimes.com/news/5-8-4/30931.htmlSince the Party’s life is “above all else,” it would not be surprising if the CCP resorts to the use of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons in its attempt to extend its life. The CCP , which disregards human life, would not hesitate to kill two hundred million Americans, along with seven or eight hundred million Chinese , to achieve its ends . These speeches let the public see the CCP for what it really is. With evil filling its every cell the CCP intends to wage a war against humankind in its desperate attempt to cling to life . That is the main theme of the speeches. This theme is murderous and utterly evil. In China we have seen beggars who coerced people to give them money by threatening to stab themselves with knives or pierce their throats with long nails. But we have never, until now, seen such a gangster who would use biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons to threaten the world, that all will die together with him. This bloody confession has confirmed the CCP’s nature: that of a monstrous murderer who has killed 80 million Chinese people and who now plans to hold one billion people hostage and gamble with their lives.

2NC—intel. capital K2 Chinese econ

Intellectual capital key to Chinese economy—even if its economy is based off of manufacturing in the squo, they’re shiftingEsposito and Tse 15, Mark Esposito teaches Systems Thinking, Business, Government & Society & Modern Dilemmas for the Harvard Extension School, and Terence TSE. Ph.D. in Management Studies, “Europe’s innovator’s need China’s capital,” World Economic Forum, Mar 19, 2015, https://agenda.weforum.org/2015/05/europes-innovators-need-chinas-capital-and-vice-versa/Even though China still accounts for the making of about 80% of the world’s air conditioners, 70% of mobile phones and 60% of shoes, the country has been gradually shifting away from the role of being just a manufacturing nation. This is perhaps not surprising since labour costs have been rising continuously, so much that companies are reallocating their production facilities to neighbouring Indonesia and Vietnam whose labour wages are only about 31% and 24%, respectively of that of China. According to an article in The Economist (“A tightening grip”, 14 March 2015), China’s average factory worker earns $27.50 per day compared with $8.60 in Indonesia and $6.70 in Vietnam . But this is only part of the story.

What is indeed less obvious is that while other Asian countries are busy competing for China ’s manufacturing businesses, the country has already set itself on the path to engage higher value activities that offer better profit margins. This is one reason why the country has been deploying ever more robotics to increase efficiency as well as quality. Production efficiency and care for quality are often the first steps to fostering new innovations. Hence, robotics is a key indicator as to whether an industry is moving into higher value-added

innovation-based activities. In 2013, China accounted for 25,000 of the 162,000 industrial robots sold worldwide, just slightly fewer than North America and Japan. Between 2005 and 2012, sales of industrial robots to the Chinese have increased by about 25% per year on average, making it the second-largest destination for industrial robots in 2012 . Engaging higher value activities requires more than just lifting productivity; it also has to take on more innovations. While China as a country itself may not offer as fertile a ground for creating as the US (or even Japan, which consistently ranks high in terms of the business sophistication of its enterprises), the country’s domestic market offers certain advantages to fledgling companies.

2NC—remittance doesn’t solve econ

Remittance fails to solve for long-term economic growth and poverty—remittances doesn’t address the fundamental problemWorld finance 15, magazine and website providing in-depth coverage and analysis of the financial industry, “The impact of migration on sender countries,” Apr 22, 2015, http://www.worldfinance.com/home/the-impact-of-migration-on-sender-countriesOthers are less optimistic about the benefits of remittance payments. In the 19th century, the ability of impoverished populations to migrate was also viewed as an “escape valve” that dissipated social discontent. The contemporary sociologist Werner Sombart observed that the migration opportunities offered by the American West prevented social conflict in the US. At the turn of the twentieth century the German state and many newly independent Balkan states also saw immigration as providing a safety valve for relieving social discontent within their own countries. According to Raúl Delgado Wise and Humberto Márquez Covarrubias, both of the Autonomous University of Zacatecas, Mexico, remittance payments are providing a similar function. Remittance is being relied upon by governments, in absence of meaningful economic development, as “a support for social stability.” In relation to sender countries such as Mexico, El Salvador, Philippines, and Morocco, Wise and Covarrubias write that “the chief benefit of remittance payments are used by states as, in that they mitigate poverty and marginalisation while offering an escape valve from the constraints of local, regional, and national labour markets.” The problem with such reliance upon remittance, say Wise and Covarrubias, is that it is “in reality a perversion of the idea of development that offers no prospects for the future.” Poverty is merely being relieved through remittances, with the support of governments and international agencies, rather than fundamentally addressing poverty through economic development policies.

2NC—No Brain circulation

Brain circulation is specifically false for China—students returning to China struggle to find like-minded scholars and are pressured to succeed—that means they’re unproductiveCao 13 (Cong Cao (Ph.D. in Sociology, Columbia University) is Associate Professor and Reader at the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies, University of Nottingham. Educated in both China and the U.S. and in both the natural and social sciences, he has worked at the University of Oregon, the National University of Singapore, and the State University of New York. “Culture change needed to counter brain drain” http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20130719150700309)So, why are China's first-rate academics reluctant to return home to participate in the country's expected rise to

superpower status? China remains a society that revolves around personal relations, or guanxi. After spending a long period overseas, academics are unlikely to have maintained a strong set of personal business relationships, which in turn reduces their access to sources of research funding. Since many Chinese scientists

have no experience of carrying out research in an international setting, returnees may experience another culture shock: they struggle to find like-minded scholars with whom they can collaborate. The Chinese research system favors instant results and does not tolerate failure. Vision and strategic thinking, which are held in such high

regard in the West, are off the agenda. This situation is improving. A special amendment to the law on the progress of science and

technology was passed in late 2007, acknowledging that failure is part of the innovation process. Yet there remains tremendous pressure on scientists, including returnees, for immediate results. There is growing evidence that plagiarism, fraud and manipulation of data are interwoven through China's research process. With the scientific community failing to take

action, many potential returnees are reluctant to enter this environment. Political obstacles also act as deterrents. Certain types of social science research are deemed politically unacceptable even though there is an understanding that China cannot afford to expand its economy without the participation of social thinkers and public intellectuals. Most of the academic returnees are natural scientists; social scientists (except economists) have not returned, and they are cautious about working even part-time in China for fear of political reprisals. The success of government efforts to attract individuals capable of steering China along a

path of sustainable development will be judged not on numbers of returnees, but on whether it can create a new research culture in which every scientist, whether trained overseas or at home, has the opportunity to demonstrate value. It's a pity, then, that the problems associated with initiatives like the Thousand Talents programme have dented China's ability to attract the brains the country desperately needs to make its next stride forward.

Chinese students want to stay in the US—they’re dissuaded to return home because they fear start-up companies will fail in ChinaFord 14 (Peter Ford is The Christian Science Monitor’s Beijing Bureau Chief. He covers news and features throughout China and also makes reporting trips to Japan and the Korean peninsula.Prior to his current posting, Peter served for six years as the Monitor’s Chief European Correspondent. “China’s Fear of Failure” http://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/china-brain-drain-entrepreneurs-chinese-scientists-wuxi-incentive-program)

As the city hosting one of China’s best-known incentive programs to encourage Chinese entrepreneurs and scientists to come home, Wuxi, near Shanghai, seemed a natural place for me to visit. The people who run the “Wuxi 530” program said they were happy enough to show me around and talk about their work, but they needed permission from the city’s (Communist party controlled) Foreign Affairs Office. And that, strangely, was not forthcoming. The Foreign Affairs Office, which oversees city officials’ contacts with foreigners, told my would-be hosts that “it is not suggested to arrange this planned visit in a sensitive moment.” It was “strongly recommended” that I change my schedule. The “sensitive moment” could only refer to the ruling Communist party’s 18th Party Congress, even though that meeting was not due to be held for at least a month after my planned visit, and in Beijing, 1,000 kilometers away from Wuxi. But I knew from experience that this was not the sort of ruling that you bother to challenge, even if it made no apparent sense. I went to Wuxi anyway, of course. If a reporter in China did only what the authorities suggested he do he would never write anything. I could not meet the people running the returnee program – they would have got into trouble if they had seen me – but I could talk to independent businessmen who had benefited from it. And it was while I was talking to them that I got an inkling of why, perhaps,

city government officials had wanted to keep me out of Wuxi. Because it transpired that a large proportion of the companies that returnees have set up in Wuxi have failed. And if there is one thing that Chinese officials hate to acknowledge, it is failure. No matter that large proportions of start-up companies all over the world fail. As many as 40 percent of startups in the United States quickly go bankrupt, according to Harvard Business School research. The big difference is that in America this is not a cause for shame, but regarded as a natural result of the risks that small entrepreneurs take. In China it is seen as a reflection –

and a poor one – on the officials who sponsored the entrepreneurs. I could not find out exactly how many of the businesses launched through the Wuxi incentive program had gone bust. The program managers were not allowed to talk to me, and the city government refused to do so. The

businessmen with whom I talked suggested, anecdotally, that around half of their peers had given up within a year or two. This is

not surprising to anyone anywhere in the world familiar with the pitfalls of starting a small business. But the official Chinese attitude is indicative of a

deeper mindset that may prove an obstacle in the long term to the country’s ambitions to boost innovation by

tempting home people with experience abroad. Cutting-edge scientists and hi-tech entrepreneurs in the U.S. and Europe are accustomed to taking risks, and accustomed to shrugging off initial failure as par for the course. Their funders and their investors share that outlook. In China, failure implies a shameful loss of face; only in rare circumstances will an official risk it. And that may explain why the very best Chinese scientists, and the very brightest entrepreneurs, are not coming home.

Indian Brain Drain DA

1NC

Indian brain drain is slowly ending in the squo—but if students were to leave, it would cost the Indian economy hugelyMishra 13 (Mishra graduated with a bachelor's degree in commerce from Allahabad University before earning his Master of Arts degree in English literature at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi)In the 1970s, long before the word ''globalisation'' achieved common currency, the buzzword in India was ''brain drain'' - an apparent problem of which almost everyone in my family and circle of friends wanted to be a part. Many young men and women educated at highly subsidised public institutions started leaving the country in the 1960s to deepen or monetise their skills in First World countries. Unlike short-term contract workers servicing the construction boom in the Persian Gulf and south-east Asia, these expensively educated seekers of greener grass, many of whom ended up as prominent bankers, entrepreneurs, innovators and scholars abroad, seemed unlikely to return to a slow-growth economy. The loss of the best and brightest may have diminished the growth prospects of what was then a very poor post-colonial country. But in the 1990s , as news spread of an economic bonanza in India, some of these long-departed brothers, sisters, cousins, nephews and nieces began to return. In many ways, the achievements as well as the illusions of ''rising'' India in the past two decades are largely due to this repatriating Indian diaspora, which brought fresh energy, capital, information, networks and ideas to the motherland. Disillusionment with India's political dysfunction and seemingly ineradicable corruption and inefficiency has made many of them want to go back to relatively low-growth but less challenging and more secure economic environments. This is part of a broader flight. India's biggest corporate beneficiaries of economic liberalisation - names such as Tata, Mahindra, Birla - are putting the bulk of their investments abroad. Escaping rapidly declining educational institutes at home, more Indian students than ever before - the number has risen 256 per cent in the past decade to almost 200,000 - have gone abroad, to Spain and China as well as the US, Britain and Australia. Young technology professionals and bright undergraduates are moving to Singapore, Australia and Silicon Valley. An influx of wealthy businessmen and financiers has made Indians the highest-income ethnic group in Singapore. A similar quest for more congenial climes is apparent among China's privileged classes. The country's rapid economic growth was actually triggered in the late 1970s and 1980s by its far-flung and patriotic diaspora. But the new China they enabled is now a place - environmentally challenged, and politically and economically unstable - that many of its wealthy inhabitants hope to leave. A recent report by Bain & Co revealed that an astonishing 60 per cent of Chinese it surveyed with a net worth of $1.5 million or more wanted to emigrate, and a third of them already have investments abroad. Chinese seeking second and third homes, and foreign residency and passports, have been pushing up real-estate prices from Hong Kong to London. Hong Kong, outshone by Shanghai in recent years, has become a fresh magnet for mainland Chinese. The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India estimates that Indian students studying abroad cost India as much as $17 billion a year in lost revenue. Only 37 per cent of Chinese educated overseas have returned to China in the past 30 years.  The Economic Times, India's biggest business daily, reported this July that fewer Indian students at Wharton and other prestigious business schools in the US are planning to come home this year; the recent depreciation of the rupee and signs of revival in the US economy are making them keener to stay on. There are, of course, some obvious advantages to emigration, most prominently the more than $400 billion worth of remittances migrants send to the developing world - a sum that makes the most ambitious foreign aid programs look meagre. The losses of brain drain can be mitigated. In his book Diaspora, Development and Democracy, an important overview of a little-reported phenomenon, the social scientist Devesh Kapur claims the costs and benefits of migration depend largely on how countries configure their domestic policies. This is certainly validated by Malaysia, where policies discriminating against ethnic Chinese and Indians have driven out some of the country's most skilled and best-educated people. But it is also true that citizens of nation-states are exposed today like never before to the seductive temptations of what the social anthropologist Aihwa Ong calls ''flexible citizenship''. A Filipina maid in Singapore or Hong Kong is in no position to market her skills very widely or lucratively. But an Ivy League-educated citizen of India or China can claim the rights and benefits of many societies, and invite ever-higher appraisals of her human worth. What does this rush to the exit by their elites portend for India and China, two of Asia's biggest nation-states, which not so long ago were widely expected to preside over a shift of power from the West to the East? This month in Hong Kong I met an old friend who had opened a business for rich consumers in China as early as the 1990s, and branched out into other realms, including culture. Having witnessed many ups and downs in previous decades, she imagined the presently diminished market for luxury goods in China was just another phase. But she was worried about the long-term ramifications of the sociopolitical and economic uncertainty settling upon Chinese elites, and the consequent flight to the safety and security of other societies. Back in the 1990s, she had invested in the future of a class of educated, well-off Chinese - its expansion, and the related growth of a sophisticated culture of consumption at home. Their departure from China, if not for good then with the intention of finding an additional base elsewhere, meant that she, too, had to find a haven elsewhere from the coming storms of Chinese life. Theoretically, she could exercise her rights as a flexible citizen, and follow her clientele to flashy playgrounds of the rich such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Dubai. Indeed, these old hubs of transportation and commerce are reinventing themselves as high-class tax shelters and playgrounds for Asia's plutocracy. But this is far from resolving the crisis of the nation-state, the original guarantor, in post-colonial India and China at least, of citizenship, rights, welfare and dignity - a gathering crisis that will affect everyone invested in Asia's political and economic stability.

Indian economic stability is key to prevent an Indo-Pak nuclear war—risk is high now Lamb 14 (Robert Lamp, is a nonresident senior fellow of the International Security Program at CSIS and a visiting research professor at the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute, where he is researching hybrid governance in fragile and conflict environments and the effectiveness of donor activities. “Regional Strategy in South Asia—India’s Role” http://csis.org/files/publication/140124_Camp_India_Web.pdf”

The realization of India’s great economic potential depends on stability and relative peace with Pakistan. Specifically, its effort to return to annual growth rates of seven per cent and greater, necessary to meet India’s demographic challenge, cannot be met in an environment of significant, ongoing conflict with Pakistan. Its efforts to play a leading role in Asia and on the world stage (including hopes for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council) cannot be met without relative peace and stability in South Asia. The worst-case scenario, a nuclear exchange, is by most estimates very unlikely, but hardly impossible. Attacks by terrorists on Pakistani military bases , so far unsuccessful, have raised Indian concern about a seizure of nuclear materials. Equally worrisome is Indian and Pakistani misunderstanding of what constitutes their respective redlines for a nuclear response. If Pakistani leaders , for instance, perceived that a conventional conflict was threatening the unity or existence of the nation, they might resort to a nuclear warning shot. Conflict with Pakistan spells disaster for India’s hopes for the near future. Wars in the past (against China in 1962 and Pakistan in 1965 and 1972) have stirred patriotic and nationalist fervor. A new war may not follow the same path. The Indian economy, increasingly interdependent with Asia and the West, would suffer a sharp and immediate blow at a time of conflict. The economic plight of the relatively poorer Muslim community combined with a Pakistan war could produce India’s ethnic nightmare—a radicalization of elements of that community with some turning to domestic terrorism. This scenario is the most likely to lead to regional instability and conflict. India has been a force for stability in the region but increased violence and terrorism at home—with dramatically lowered economic growth—is a recipe for a more jingoistic and aggressive government , supported by Hindu revivalists and an angry and aggressive civil society.

Indian-Pakistan dispute can easily go nuclear—tensions are high due to territorial disputes—risks extinctionWellen 14 (Russ Wellen, edits the Foreign Policy in Focus blog Focal Points for the Institute of Policy Studies. A student of the metaphysics of nuclear weapons, he has written about disarmament for a variety of publications such as AlterNet, Asia Times Online, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Journal of Psychohistory, and Truthout. “The Threshold for Nuclear War Between Pakistan and India Keeps Dropping” http://fpif.org/threshold-nuclear-war-pakistan-india-keeps-dropping.)

Most people think that, since the end of the Cold War, chances that a nuclear war will break out are slim to none. Though some nervousness has surfaced since the Ukraine crisis, it’s true that, barring an accident, the United States and Russia are unlikely to attack each other with nuclear weapons. Southeast Asia is another matter, as Gregory Koblentz warns in a report for the Council of Foreign Relations titled Strategic Stability in the Second Nuclear Age. Interviewed about the report by Deutsche Welle, Koblentz pointed out: “The only four countries currently expanding their nuclear arsenals are China, India, Pakistan and North Korea.” China, for example, is developing mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles to prevent its stationery ICBMs from becoming sitting ducks, as well as submarines capable of launching ballistic missiles. Meanwhile, by 2020, Pakistan could have enough nuclear material to build 200 nuclear weapons, about as many as Great Britain currently has. Koblentz told Deutsche Welle: Altogether, Pakistan has deployed or is developing eleven different nuclear delivery systems including ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and aircraft. As if terrorism, such as the Mumbai attacks of 2008, and territorial disputes, such as over Jammu and Kashmir, don’t make relations between Pakistan and India volatile enough, a new element has been introduced. Pakistan is now seeking to develop low-yield tactical nuclear weapons (as opposed to strategic ― the big ones) to compensate for its inferiority to India in conventional weapons and numbers of armed forces. Koblentz told Deutsche Welle: Since the conventional military imbalance between India and Pakistan is expected to grow thanks to India’s larger economy and higher gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate, Pakistan’s reliance on nuclear weapons to compensate for its conventional inferiority will likely be an enduring feature of the nuclear balance in South Asia. What makes tactical weapons so dangerous is that, by blurring the distinction between nuclear and conventional weapons, they turn nuclear weapons from unthinkable to thinkable. Equally as dangerous, Koblentz explains: The introduction of tactical nuclear weapons may lead Pakistan to loosen its highly centralized command and control practices. Due to their short-ranges (the Nasr/Hatf-IX has a range of about 60 kilometers), these types of weapons need to be deployed close to the fron t-lines and ready for use at short-notice. Thus are lower-ranking officers granted “greater authority and capability to arm and launch nuclear weapons” which “raises the risk of unauthorized actions during a crisis.”   Another risk … is inadvertent escalation. There is the potential for a conventional conflict

to escalate to the nuclear level if the commander of a forward-deployed, nuclear-armed unit finds himself in a ‘use it or lose it’ situation and launches the nuclear weapons under his control before his unit is overrun.” It’s all too vertiginous for words. Some in the United States might think that’s not our problem. Pakistan and India are digging their own grave ― let them lie in it.” But, of course, nuclear war in Southeast Asia has the potential to turn the entire world into a grave.

UQHighly educated young men and women continue to leave India to seek greener grass in the developed world. The lost of talent diminishes the prospects of growth because they undermine the India’s ability to innovation and attracts capital. Returnees are uniquely key to bring fresh energy, information, cap network, and skills back to India—that’s Mishra 13

Elite Graduates are returning to India in the squo due to better prospects—only 16% chose to leave the countryGentleman 08 (Amelia Gentleman, she won the George Orwell prize 2012 and Feature Writer of the Year at the

British Press Awards in 2011. Previously she was New Delhi correspondent for the International Herald Tribune,

“Brain gain for India as elite return”)Ashutosh Gupta's home in Richmond Park has all the lifestyle comforts that many educated Indians of his generation left India to attain - lush and peaceful gardens, a gym, a pool and, most important, unwavering electricity and water supplies. This luxury block in the ultra-modern Delhi suburb of Gurgaon (about 4,000 miles from Richmond, London) houses several hundred Indian families who have recently returned from living in the West, part of a 'reverse brain drain' migration which is gathering speed. Indian politicians

are beginning to highlight, approvingly, the emerging phenomenon of 'brain gain', as large numbers of Indian-born executives decide that job opportunities and living conditions are as good, if not better, in India and make their way home. Gupta, 38, moved to this gated enclave after 15 years spent studying and later working as a Goldman Sachs banker in New York and London. 'Ten years ago, if I had considered moving back, people would have questioned my sanity, and assumed I couldn't hack it in the US,' he said. 'Now everyone recognises that India is a very exciting place. There are tens of thousands of people like me making the decision to return.' A survey published last week showed that graduates from India's most prestigious universities, the Indian Institutes of Technology (known as IITs), increasingly see India as the best place in the world to base themselves. Until about five years ago large numbers of these elite graduates would abandon home at the first opportunity to take up well-paid jobs or to continue their education in the US and Europe. Between 1964 and 2001 (when the economy was sluggish), 35 per cent of the nation's most promising graduates moved abroad, according to research conducted by the Delhi-based organisation, Evalueserve, but from 2002 onwards (the period when India's GDP began to soar) only 16 per cent chose to leave. Now, the research suggests, the West no longer seems synonymous with wealth and opportunity. Asked to predict which country would 'hold the most promise for success' in 10 years' time, 72 per cent of the 677 IIT graduates surveyed named India, with only 17 per cent citing the US, 5 per cent Europe, and just 2 per cent China. The number who feel the US offers a better standard of living than India has fallen since 2001 from 13 per cent to almost zero. The study is a clear sign that the lamented flight of India's best students, which has troubled the government for decades, may be reversing, in tandem with the turnaround in economic prospects. The Indian government does not compile figures of the numbers of people emigrating or returning, but Alok Aggarwal, chairman of Evalue serve, who wrote the report, said the trend of returning Indians 'seemed to be very strong'. The pull of the West remained powerful for many Indians, he said, 'but at the very top level of graduates, the smart choice now is to stay'. The flow of reverse migration has been particularly striking in the southern Indian IT city of Bangalore, where research published last year estimated that more than 40,000 Indian technology professionals had arrived back from the US and the UK to take up work. Aggarwal, now 48, left India after graduating from an IIT in the 1980s and moved to the US. 'There was a lot of guilt associated with the decision to leave. We felt like rats leaving a sinking ship. But at the time there were few employment opportunities here,' he said. In the late 1980s Delhi did not seem a very alluring place to return to; even getting a phone line installed involved a wait of about two and a half years. Now the decision to choose India is much easier. Jobs are plentiful and, armed with good salaries, the newly returned can cocoon themselves in gated Western-style ghettoes, which shut out any trace of the ever-present slums, squalor and poverty. The golf clubs of Delhi and neighbouring Gurgaon are full of recently returned Indians. Gupta said his switch to a private equity job in Delhi was partly motivated by a desire to spend more time with his parents, and partly down to his sense that he could do much more with his talents in India, than he could in London. 'I would sit at my desk on Fleet Street, read about what was happening in India and I'd ask myself: What am I doing here? It was an obvious choice to return.' But the transition was painful. 'After so many years away, it was a shock to be back. The traffic, the chaos, it all takes a bit of adjustment.' But living alongside hundreds of other 'like-minded returnees' had helped to dull the culture shock. Yusuf Hatia, India vice-president of the public relations firm Fleishman-Hillard, was conscious that his decision to return to live in Mumbai a year ago, with his wife and young son, was a peculiar mirror of his parents' choice to emigrate to the UK, when he was aged three, in 1975. 'My parents left India for the UK for economic reasons, and because they believed that they could give me a better education there,' he said, adding that the same reasons - the appeal of good schools, better lifestyle, and well-paid and interesting work - had persuaded him to move back. His shift from Hackney to India's business capital has afforded him a full-time nanny, a driver and private education for his son 'without any of it seeming a ridiculous luxury'. The cost of renting an

apartment (about £5,000 a month, and rising) was an unexpected shock. 'A lot of my family who are of Indian origin, living in Britain, thought I was pretty crazy. They still see India as a place to escape from, a place of poverty, not somewhere to come and do business,' he said. 'Of course, India is still a place of poverty, but in the business world there is an extraordinary sense of optimism. The long term prospects for working here are better.'

Indian students K2 their econUS trained Indians are starting to return to India because of the new growth and employment opportunities. Bringing with them valuable work experience, skills, and access to a global network. These returnees have been key in contributing research, innovation, and economic groth

Indian Returnees are Primary Drivers of Growth in the Information Technology SectorChocko 07 (Professor Chacko received Bachelor's and Master's degrees in geography from the University of Calcutta in India. She also obtained a graduate degree in Public Health and a Ph.D. in geography from UCLA. Dr. Chacko has taught geography at various

institutions including Loreto College in Calcutta, UCLA in Los Angeles, and the George Washington University. She is primarily engaged in research on human migration and its ramifications. “From brain drain to brain gain: reverse migration to Bangalore and Hyderabad, India’s globalizing high tech cities”

The emigration of Indian professionals was triggered by the availability of jobs for trained engineers, physicians and scientists, the promise of a materially superior lifestyle, and also a shortage of medical personnel and engineers in the United States until the mid-1970s. Continued high levels of unemployment in India assisted the outflow. By 1990, persons who were born in India and living in the United States numbered over 450,000, an exponential increase from the approximately 12,000 persons of Indian origin noted in 1960 (Morning 2001). GeoJournal (2007) 68:131–140 133 123 As India’s highly skilled and educated people emigrated, there was concern that the country was losing its educated workforce to the West, through a phenomenon known as ‘‘brain drain’’. Entire graduating classes of the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) left for graduate studies in universities in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, many staying on to work after obtaining their advanced degrees (Morning 2001). The outmigration of India’s educated population has continued apace into the 21st century. In 2004–2005, Asian Indian students in American universities numbered over 80,000, up from approximately 33,000 in 1993–1994 (USEFI 2006). India was the second highest source of legal immigration to the United States after Mexico in 2005, contributing nearly 86,000 permanent residents (USCIS, 2006).

Indian nationals accounted for 14% of the visas granted in 2005 in the United States under the ‘‘employment preference’’ category, given to professionals with scarce and valued skills (USDHS 2006). However, reverse migration is also taking place. A growing number of U.S.-trained and U.S.-based Asian Indians report that they wish to return to their home country, and more are doing so (Kabra 2005). Members of a highly skilled workforce, they are returning to take advantage of new growth and employment opportunities in India, settling in its large metropolitan cities. Some of those who came back to India did so because jobs in the US information technology (IT) industry dried up in the aftermath of a slump in this sector between 2000 and 2004. Others were established professionals; permanent residents and citizens of the United States who returned after spending years abroad, bringing valuable work experience, entrepreneurial skills, access to global networks and even venture capital. Cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad and the suburbs of Delhi and Mumbai have become magnets for a stream of returning first-generation Indian immigrants from the United States. Particularly in the IT, biotechnology, research, and business sectors, these cities offer returning Indians career opportunities and familiar western-style work environments in their technology, business and industrial parks, research institutions and multinational firms. The contributions of Indian high-skill workers to economic growth in the United States’ IT industry, particularly in the areas of research, innovation and entrepreneurship are acknowledged (Saxenian 2005). Now Indian professionals in the US have not only become primary drivers of knowledge and capital flows to India, facilitating financial and skill transfers (Panagariya 2001), but embody such transfers as they themselves return. The reverse flow is relatively small; it is estimated that some 25,000 IT professionals returned to India between 2000 and 2004 after working abroad (Nasscom-McKinsey Report 2005). But this group of returnees has a high profile and is a resource that is welcomed back by national and state governments. The increasing density of transnational linkages between India and the developed world was precipitated by many factors. The liberalization of the economy in the 1990s encouraged foreign direct investment and the establishment of more offices by multinational firms in India. The Indian government promoted ideologies that supported an Asian Indian identity in its national’s abroad and socio-cultural and economic linkages with the home country. New legislative and tax rules encouraged remittances from Indian citizens who resided abroad (Non-resident Indians or NRIs), while restrictions related to visas, investment and the purchase of property by Indian nationals who were citizens of other countries were eased. In 2004, the Government of India instituted its Overseas Citizenship of India program for those who had been citizens of an independent India, but held the citizenship of another country. Except for the right to vote, to stand for public office and to purchase agricultural land, those who obtained the Overseas Citizenship had the same rights as Indian citizens. However, following 1999–2000, which saw a large influx of computer professionals to the USA, job opportunities for software programmers and hardware engineers declined somewhat while US visa requirements became more stringent following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the dot com bust. In the 1990s, an increasing number of traditional Fortune 500 companies as well as newer multinational technology corporations turned to India for software programming and development, call centers and back-office operations. India’s revenue from exports of these industries is expected to grow by 25% a year to $60 billion by 2010 (NasscomMcKinsey Report 2005). Industry giants like General Electric, Microsoft Corp. and Dell Inc. rapidly 134 GeoJournal (2007) 68:131–140 123 increased their workforce in India; many multinational corporations like Motorola, Larsen and Toubro and Siemens actively recruited Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) to work in their India-based operations. Simultaneously, Indian IT leaders like Infosys Technologies, Wipro and Tata Consultancy Services increased recruitment and extended their domain to other parts of the world, setting up offices in the United States and Canada, Europe, East Asia, Australia, and the Middle East. Infosys Technologies recruited 25 Asian Indian graduates from premier American universities for its competitive 100-seat summer internship. Leading Indian technology firms also looked to hire Indians with experience in the United States for middle and top level positions and estimate that between 5 and 12% of job applications are from NRIs. Indeed, India’s returning professionals have been categorized as ‘‘brain gain’’ or ‘‘brain circulation’’ and viewed as catalysts for economic and social development. Bangalore and Hyderabad: reasons for return

2NC—Info-Tech ILIndian returnees are primary drivers of growth in the information and technology sectorChocko 07 (Professor Chacko received Bachelor's and Master's degrees in geography from the University of Calcutta in India. She also obtained a graduate degree in Public Health and a Ph.D. in geography from UCLA. Dr. Chacko has taught geography at various institutions including Loreto College in Calcutta, UCLA in Los Angeles, and the George Washington University. She is primarily engaged in research on human migration and its ramifications. “From brain drain to brain gain: reverse migration to Bangalore and Hyderabad, India’s globalizing high tech cities”The emigration of Indian professionals was triggered by the availability of jobs for trained engineers, physicians and scientists, the promise of a materially superior lifestyle, and also a shortage of medical personnel and engineers in the United States until the mid-1970s. Continued high levels of unemployment in India assisted the outflow. By 1990, persons who were born in India and living in the United States numbered over 450,000, an exponential increase from the approximately 12,000 persons of Indian origin noted in 1960 (Morning 2001). GeoJournal (2007) 68:131–140 133 123 As India’s highly skilled and educated people emigrated, there was concern that the country was losing its educated workforce to the West, through a phenomenon known as ‘‘brain drain’’. Entire graduating classes of the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) left for graduate studies in universities in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, many staying on to work after obtaining their advanced degrees (Morning 2001). The outmigration of India’s educated population has continued apace into the 21st century. In 2004–2005, Asian Indian students in American universities numbered over 80,000, up from approximately 33,000 in 1993–1994 (USEFI 2006). India was the second highest source of legal immigration to the United States after Mexico in 2005, contributing nearly 86,000 permanent residents (USCIS, 2006). Indian nationals accounted for 14% of the visas granted in 2005 in the United States under the ‘‘employment preference’’ category, given to professionals with scarce and valued skills (USDHS 2006). However, reverse migration is also taking place. A growing number of U.S.-trained and U.S.-based Asian Indians report that they wish to return to their home country, and more are doing so (Kabra 2005). Members of a highly skilled workforce, they are returning to take advantage of new growth and employment opportunities in India, settling in its large metropolitan cities. Some of those who came back to India did so because jobs in the US information technology (IT) industry dried up in the aftermath of a slump in this sector between 2000 and 2004. Others were established professionals; permanent residents and citizens of the United States who returned after spending years abroad, bringing valuable work experience, entrepreneurial skills, access to global networks and even venture capital. Cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad and the suburbs of Delhi and Mumbai have become magnets for a stream of returning first-generation Indian immigrants from the United States. Particularly in the IT, biotechnology, research, and business sectors, these cities offer returning Indians career opportunities and familiar western-style work environments in their technology, business and industrial parks, research institutions and multinational firms. The contributions of Indian high-skill workers to economic growth in the United States’ IT industry, particularly in the areas of research, innovation and entrepreneurship are acknowledged (Saxenian 2005). Now Indian professionals in the US have not only become primary drivers of knowledge and capital flows to India, facilitating financial and skill transfers (Panagariya 2001), but embody such transfers as they themselves return. The reverse flow is relatively small; it is estimated that some 25,000 IT professionals returned to India between 2000 and 2004 after working abroad (Nasscom-McKinsey Report 2005). But this group of returnees has a high profile and is a resource that is welcomed back by national and state governments. The increasing density of transnational linkages between India and the developed world was precipitated by many factors. The liberalization of the economy in the 1990s encouraged foreign direct investment and the establishment of more offices by multinational firms in India. The Indian government promoted ideologies that supported an Asian Indian identity in its national’s abroad and socio-cultural and economic linkages with the home country. New legislative and tax rules encouraged remittances from Indian citizens who resided abroad (Non-resident Indians or NRIs), while restrictions related to visas, investment and the purchase of property by Indian nationals who were citizens of other countries were eased. In 2004, the Government of India instituted its Overseas Citizenship of India program for those who had been citizens of an independent India, but held the citizenship of another country. Except for the right to vote, to stand for public office and to purchase agricultural land, those who obtained the Overseas Citizenship had the same rights as Indian citizens. However, following 1999–2000, which saw a large influx of computer professionals to the USA, job opportunities for software programmers and hardware engineers declined somewhat while US visa requirements became more stringent following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the dot com bust. In the 1990s, an increasing number of traditional Fortune 500 companies as well as newer multinational technology corporations turned to India for software programming and development, call centers and back-office operations. India’s revenue from exports of these industries is expected to grow by 25% a year to $60 billion by 2010 (NasscomMcKinsey Report 2005). Industry giants like General Electric, Microsoft Corp. and Dell Inc. rapidly 134 GeoJournal (2007) 68:131–140 123 increased their workforce in India; many multinational corporations like Motorola, Larsen and Toubro and Siemens actively recruited Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) to work in their India-based operations. Simultaneously, Indian IT leaders like Infosys Technologies, Wipro and Tata Consultancy Services increased recruitment and extended their domain to other parts of the world, setting up offices in the United States and Canada, Europe, East Asia, Australia, and the Middle East. Infosys Technologies recruited 25 Asian Indian graduates from premier American universities for its competitive 100-seat summer internship. Leading Indian technology firms also looked to hire Indians with experience in the United States for middle and top level positions and estimate that between 5 and 12% of job applications are from NRIs. Indeed, India’s returning professionals have been categorized as ‘‘brain gain’’ or ‘‘brain circulation’’ and viewed as catalysts for economic and social development. Bangalore and Hyderabad: reasons for return

India’s Information Technology Sector is Key to the Overall Growth and Economy of IndiaVijayasri 14 (G. V. Vijayasri Research Scholar, Department of Economics, Andhra University, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India “THE ROLE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (IT) INDUSTRY IN INDIA”)A particular industry that has been instrumental in the growth of the Indian economy is the IT sector. The design, development, implementation or management of information systems is referred to as information technology. It describes the production, storage, manipulation and dissemination of information. IT industries account for 6% of the GDP of India and provide employment directly or indirectly for over 2.3 million people. It also contributes very significantly to India’s exports: accounting for around 18% in 2001. India produces roughly 150,000 technically and socially adept engineers every year. Most of them migrate to developed countries and form an integral part of the workforce there, thus becoming Abhinav International Monthly Refereed Journal of Research In Management & Technology 59 ISSN – 2320-0073 Volume II, August’13 www.abhinavjournal.com India’s most beloved export. In the 21st century, India has risen to the position of one of the largest IT capitals of the world. As of 2006, technologically inclined services sector in India accounted for 40% of the country’s GDP and 30% of export earnings. The IT industry has helped the growth of modern India in many ways. Indian engineers and technicians are sought world over for their competency and diligence and strong fundamentals in their field of work and study. India’s technology boom has also helped her shed her “Hollywood” image of being the land of mystics, snake

charmers and beggars and has put her on the world map for being a global information hub. Each of the above mentioned industries have grown at massive rates, providing jobs and products to Indians. For example HCL Enterprise is electronics, computing an

IT company based in India, has become a leading provider of IT service and technological solutions worldwide. In fact, the IT boom of the 90’s and the 2000’s in India was also accompanied with the growth of BPOs in the nation. India has

come under fire from certain groups of people worldwide for “stealing their jobs”, but the fact stands that foreign corporations love India for its abundant availability of skilled labour that can master foreign languages and are satisfied at comparatively low salaries. But with most recent graduates these days being absorbed into IT companies and BPOs and then getting

their ticket to America and Europe, India is losing a large chunk of its brains which will perhaps be detrimental to the

growth of innovative, indigenous technology and inventions in India. The IT industry in India has seen massive change, growth and development over the years. The future of this industry seems bright with more growth being predicted. Financial analysts are optimistically predicting strides in software technology development in India. Additionally, the growth of the IT sector is expected to bring about a corresponding growth in other sectors like employment, exports and Foreign Direct Investments. IT sector is also

intimately linked to other relevant sectors like biomedical technology, defense and infrastructure. Thus the future of the IT sector will directly impact the growth of the nation

A2: IT Sector not Key to Growth

India’s Information Technology Sector is Key to the Overall Growth and Economy of IndiaVijayasri 14 (G. V. Vijayasri Research Scholar, Department of Economics, Andhra University, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India “THE ROLE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (IT) INDUSTRY IN INDIA”)A particular industry that has been instrumental in the growth of the Indian economy is the IT sector. The design, development, implementation or management of information systems is referred to as information technology. It describes the production, storage, manipulation and dissemination of information. IT industries account for 6% of the GDP of India and provide employment directly or indirectly for over 2.3 million people. It also contributes very significantly to India’s exports: accounting for around 18% in 2001. India produces roughly 150,000 technically and socially adept engineers every year. Most of them migrate to developed countries and form an integral part of the workforce there, thus becoming Abhinav International Monthly Refereed Journal of Research In Management & Technology 59 ISSN – 2320-0073 Volume II, August’13 www.abhinavjournal.com India’s most beloved export. In the 21st century, India has risen to the position of one of the largest IT capitals of the world. As of 2006, technologically inclined services sector in India accounted for 40% of the country’s GDP and 30% of export earnings. The IT industry has helped the growth of modern India in many ways. Indian engineers and technicians are sought world over for their competency and diligence and strong fundamentals in their field of work and study. India’s technology boom has also helped her shed her “Hollywood” image of being the land of mystics, snake

charmers and beggars and has put her on the world map for being a global information hub. Each of the above mentioned industries have grown at massive rates, providing jobs and products to Indians. For example HCL Enterprise is electronics, computing an

IT company based in India, has become a leading provider of IT service and technological solutions worldwide. In fact, the IT boom of the 90’s and the 2000’s in India was also accompanied with the growth of BPOs in the nation. India has

come under fire from certain groups of people worldwide for “stealing their jobs”, but the fact stands that foreign corporations love India for its abundant availability of skilled labour that can master foreign languages and are satisfied at comparatively low salaries. But with most recent graduates these days being absorbed into IT companies and BPOs and then getting

their ticket to America and Europe, India is losing a large chunk of its brains which will perhaps be detrimental to the

growth of innovative, indigenous technology and inventions in India. The IT industry in India has seen massive change, growth and development over the years. The future of this industry seems bright with more growth being predicted. Financial analysts are optimistically predicting strides in software technology development in India. Additionally, the growth of the IT sector is expected to bring about a corresponding growth in other sectors like employment, exports and Foreign Direct Investments. IT sector is also

intimately linked to other relevant sectors like biomedical technology, defense and infrastructure. Thus the future of the IT sector will directly impact the growth of the nation

Russia Brain Drain DA.

Brain drain hurts Russian Econ

Russian Brain Drain is Hurting Russia’s EconomyEconomist 14 (The Economist, “The Great Mismatch” http://www.economist.com/node/21528433)Russia is facing a new wave of emigration as more and more skilled and white-collar workers leave for abroad,

the Gazeta.ru news website wrote on 2 November. It attributed this to political considerations and predicted trouble ahead for the jobs market and the economy in general as sanctions start to bite. "More people left the country in the first eight months of this year than in any complete year under Vladimir Putin's rule," it said. "All types are going but first and foremost they are skilled specialists who are can easily find employment overseas. This means that one of the Russian economy's main structural problems - a shortage of experienced technical, scientific and managerial personnel - is not going to be resolved any time soon."

Emigration from Russia was 203,659 in January to August 2014, Gazeta.ru continued, quoting government figures. The number for the same period of 2013 was 120,756 and for all of that year 186,382. The most popular destinations are the USA, Germany, Canada and Finland, it said. "There's no particular sectoral reason for this," an employment analyst told the website. "Nothing has happened in the economy as regards specific industries, these problems are all at the macro level." And the brain drain could accelerate, he added: "There's a time lag between political changes and their consequences and moving to another country is not an overnight process. The people leaving now would have started planning a while back and are those for whom the current political situation is the last straw." The departure of skilled workers would normally be a good thing, another analyst said. Russians going abroad and finding work and climbing the career ladder will bring their new abilities with them when they return. And even if they do not come back they retain links with their homeland and can help it win new business and trade, he said, pointing to the way that diasporas have helped in particular the Indian IT industry to flourish. "Such emigration would be a good thing for Russia but here the picture is entirely different," this analyst continued. "The brain drain is hitting the quality of engineering and management. The main problem for the employment market is that the economy is slowing down. It's hard to find a major company that isn't planning to lay off at least 10 per cent of its workforce in the next couple of months ." So Russia will get the worst of both worlds, he concluded: rising unemployment and a continuing shortage of skilled personnel. Immigration is actually outpacing emigration for Russia, a third analyst told Gazeta.ru. But that is due to the arrival of lower-skilled migrants from CIS countries and the rate of immigration is slowing while that of emigration is accelerating. According to government figures, 361,384 people moved to Russia in the first eight months of this year, against 315,350 in the same period of 2013. "Population growth in Russia from immigration slowed by 16.2 per cent due to an increase in the numbers leaving (up by 82,900 or 68.7 per cent)," Gazeta.ru said. The website also pointed to a further problem. "Some foreign companies have started laying off Russian employees in their offices abroad," one of the analysts explained. "This is happening mostly in the oil industry and engineering, which have been hit by sanctions. And we can interpret that as a sign that the sanctions are here to stay. If a company has lost its market in Russia it starts getting rid of the people who were servicing that market ... These people will return to Russia and they have already started doing so." The returnees improve the migration statistics a little but not the country's economic prospects. "Both trends are defined by the geopolitical situation,"

Putin said brain drain is a problem to Russian economy. RIA Novosti ’15 [06/24/15 RIA Novosti, Russia's international news agency, “Upset about Russia’s ‘brain drain,’ Putin puts foreign academic foundations on alert,” https://meduza.io/en/news/2015/06/24/upset-about-russia-s-brain-drain-putin-puts-foreign-academic-foundations-on-alert DA July 21, 15]

Vladimir Putin has asked Russia’s Council for Science and Education to pay special attention to foreign foundations that sponsor programs that take Russian students abroad for education in foreign universities. ∂ “These so-called foreign foundations, operating in schools, are networked organizations just ‘rummaging’ through Russian schools, under the guise of supporting the talented youth. In fact, they work just like a vacuum cleaner. They take our potential university students right out of school, ‘cultivate’ them with a grant, and take them away,” Putin said.∂ On May 26, 2015, Putin made a similar statement, complaining that too few Russian students return home after studying abroad on foreign grants. “This is something we need to think about,” Putin said at the time. ∂ As far back as 2011, Putin has publicly voiced his concerns about Russia’s “brain drain,” saying, “People with good training— valuable specialists—are an intellectual product. Figuratively speaking, these people are a commodity. They flow wherever the best conditions for the utilization of their skills. And [specialists] are also leaving Europe to go to America ,” Putin said four years ago. ∂ In March 2015, Vladimir Fortov, the president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, complained that Russian academics have been leaving the country more often in the past year and a half for jobs abroad, where salaries are higher. ∂ In October 2014 , Russia canceled the

Future Leaders Exchange ( FLEX ), a high school exchange program. In its 23-year history, FLEX helped more than 23,000 Russian teenagers study in the United States.

Russian Econ collapse leads to war

Russia economic collapse leads to lash-outKennedy 15 (Daneil Kennedy is an award-winning media and public relations professional, working across television, print, radio and the Internet in the roles of producer, editor, reporter, writer, educator and consultant -- with rich experience in the field (Asia, Europe, North America). Long-standing work experience with CNN, NPR and other broadcast outlets) “Russia’s Economic Squeeze getting tighter” http://www.cbsnews.com/news/is-russia-in-an-economic-cornerDoes Standard & Poor's Monday announcement that it downgraded its rating on Russia's sovereign credit to junk status signal an impending economic disaster for Moscow ? Probably not, although many analysts have warned that the

announcement will only add to the nation's ongoing financial woes. In its statement , S&P said the downgrade "reflects our view that Russia's monetary policy flexibility has become more limited and its economic growth prospects have weakened. We also see a heightened risk that external and fiscal buffers will deteriorate due to rising external pressures and increased government support to the economy. The downgrade also means Russia's sovereign credit rating is now at that same level as Turkey, Indonesia and Barbados. But the move was far from unexpected. Another of the Big Three rating agencies, Moody's, also downgraded Russia's debt rating this past October but left it one step above a junk rating. And Alexander Kliment, director of Russia and emerging markets research at New York-based political risk analysis firm Eurasia Group, noted that Russia's stagnating economy was in trouble even before its current woes began. Right now, he said, three factors are combining to create a ruinous economic "perfect storm" for Russia: the oil price collapse, the ruble's drop and Western sanctions over the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. According to the International Monetary Fund , oil currently accounts for about half of Russia's exports, as well as 45 percent of the national government's revenues. So, tumbling global oil prices not only dented Russia's economy but also negatively slammed the ruble , which S&P noted has dropped about 50 percent in value compared to a year ago. Then there are the economic sanctions leveled against Moscow by the U.S. and the EU over the deepening conflict in Ukraine. "The sanctions exacerbate the problems posed by the oil prices and the ruble," Kliment told CBS MoneyWatch. "The sanctions make it difficult, if not impossible, for Russian companies to raise new capital, to attract new investment." But despite this trifecta of challenges for the Russian economy, as well as the S&P downgrade, Kliment thinks a Russian sovereign debt default is unlikely. ”Russia's sovereign debt is a very small percentage of GDP," he noted. "They do still have almost $400 billion in reserves." However, Kliment added, a lot of those funds will probably be used this year toward recapitalizing Russian banks, supporting the ruble and helping companies pay back their foreign debt. On top of all that are the geopolitical risks that a worsening Russian economy could bring. "Putin really sees the Ukraine crisis as a proxy for a larger conflict with the West in general, and with the U.S. in particular," Kliment says. "As the economy gets worse and it pushes Putin to make more dramatic shows of defending Russia's interests ... it raises the risks that Russia takes more unpredictable actions geopolitically." And while America's economic relationship with Russia may be limited, Kliment warned that Moscow could lash out against U.S . companies, investors and interests in unpredictable ways. Said Kliment: "Calculated unpredictability is one of Putin's specialties."

CPs

STEM CP

1nc

CP: The United States Federal Government should bolster STEM programs in low-income areas.

US STEM students key to preventing terror—foreign students literally can’t work in national securityLevy and Plucker 6/5/15, Harold O. Levy is the executive director of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation. Dr. Jonathan A. Plucker, endowed professor of the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut, recently released a state report card on serving high-performing, low-income students. “Brains, not Brawn”, < http://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2015/06/05/lack-of-stem-students-is-bad-for-national-security>//akYet too few students choose to study engineering, physics, computer science and mathematics, all necessary areas to shore up our cyberdefenses. One traditional solution for our shallow talent pool has been to import talent,

but this strategy is showing considerable strain. Even when we still use this strategy – for example, by issuing H-1B visas (85,000 this year) or encouraging foreign university students (just shy of 900,000) to stay in the country upon graduation – it does not improve our national security: Government, defense, and aerospace companies can't hire foreign citizens for jobs requiring a domestic security clearance , yet increasing numbers of jobs in these fields require such clearances. It is literally impossible for us to "talent import" our way to a well-defended nation. As long as national security clearance is required for data warriors (and we think

it should be), an army of mercenaries can't defend us from a cyberattack. The way to start to deepen the American talent pool is to acknowledge that, for far too long, American education policy has primarily focused on basic proficiency, not academic excellence. The U.S. produces advanced students at a much lower rate than other developed countries, according to international assessments . The graduate programs in engineering and the hard sciences in our elite colleges are dominated by foreign students; government subsidies for these departments, properly understood, should be classified as a form of foreign aid. If it's true that "bright students can take care of themselves," then our bright students are doing a particularly poor job of it. Meanwhile, we are overlooking a major source of home-grown talent. Thousands of innovative minds are sitting on the sidelines; they are the nation's high-ability, low-income children. Because we do not provide basic support programs, far too few of them are attending selective universities, earning advanced degrees or acquiring security clearances . There is a measurable difference among lower-income versus higher-income students who reach advanced levels of academic performance – an "excellence gap." For example, 2 percent of low-income students scored at the highest level on a recent national math test in fourth grade, compared with 13 percent of higher-income students. High-ability, low-income students have difficulty pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, and often they backslide as they plod – largely ignored – through our schools. If they aren't given the support they need, we've lost them for good.

Visa CP

1nc

CP: The United States Federal Government should pass the SKIL II act to permit more foreign students to obtain permanent residence.

Visas are the biggest incentive to attract foreign students- solves the aff and avoids the net benefitJohnson 04, Victor C. Johnson is NAFSA’s senior adviser for public policy. He spent 20 years in senior foreign affairs positions in Washington, DC, including a long stint as staff director of the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs. “Immigration Policy and International Students: A Threat to National Security”, Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development: Vol. 19: Iss. 1, Article 4. Available at: <http://scholarship.law.stjohns.edu/jcred/vol19/iss1/4< //akLet me finish with our biggest problem: the visa system. The Department of State, the agency that issues visas, has been under severe attack since 9/11 for granting visas to the terrorists . n18 As a result, the State Department has not had the political space to be able to exercise reason and discretion to get around visa problems the way that DHS has done with respect to SEVIS and enforcement. Secretary of State Powell understands the importance of educational exchange very well, n19 but he has bigger battles to wage, and it seems clear that he has decided not to spend a chit trying to construct a rational visa policy. In this situation, the State Department cannot be viewed as doing anything that would open it to the charge that it is creating loopholes for terrorists. The result is a visa system that simply does not work. People do not like being fingerprinted. They do not like what they perceive and refer to as "being treated like criminals." n20 They do not like to wait for weeks or even months for a personal visa interview and then travel long distances for it, especially if they only plan a short visit. n21 They do not like to see their visa [*30] applications languish for months in Washington just because they happen to be Muslim or scientists. n22 And they do not like the arbitrary nature of the system. Consequently, they are voting with their fee t. A survey that our colleague associations and our

organization did last fall suggests that international student enrollments at U.S. colleges and universities are, at best, leveling off. n23 For certain important parts of the world, including China and the Islamic countries, they are falling fast. n24

Next year we may actually see an unprecedented decline in enrollments. At the graduate level, according to another survey that we released on Wednesday, February 25, 2004, international graduate student applications for this coming fall are way down

compared with last fall. n25 We desperately need what we do not have: a visa policy , which maximizes national security by focusing not only on keeping objectionable individuals out, but also on letting legitimate individuals in. Under the Homeland Security Act, DHS acquired responsibility for visa policy. n26 It is a responsibility that cries out to be exercised because the State Department is too vulnerable to solve this problem on its own. You have our recommendations in your packets. We look forward to working with DHS to implement them. [*31] The bottom line is that despite the best intentions of DHS to manage the SEVIS problems and the enforcement problems, we appear to be witnessing the beginning of a shift in the attitudes of people around the world towards studying and researching in the United States. This does not auger well for the future of American world leadership or for our national security . For 50 years, everyone

wanted to come here. Now we continually hear that people are turned off by the process of getting here. The situation is not good. As deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage conceded in an interview with CNN last month, the pendulum has swung

way too far in the direction towards making people feel unwelcome. n27 We have to go beyond congratulating ourselves on fixing each particular SEVIS problem. As a matter of national policy, we must recognize that international students are part of the solution to terrorism, not part of the problem, and act to restore the reputation of the United States as the primary destination for international students.

2nc o/vEven if students come for college- lack of visas mean they don’t make it into the workforcePorter 11, Katherine L. Porter is an associate at Bryan Cave Law Firm, received her J.D. from Hofstra Law School and her B.A. from Tufts University, "Retain the Brains: Using a Conditional Residence Requirement to Keep the Best and Brightest Foreign Students in the United States," Hofstra Law Review: Vol. 40: Iss. 2, Article 11. http://scholarlycommons.law.hofstra.edu/hlr/vol40/iss2/11//akHowever, these potential arguments against the SKIL Act II and related legislation can be overcome. The "Americans First" argument ignores the fact that labor certification rules mandate that employers engage in an extensive screening process, which requires newspaper and online job database postings, interviews of potentially qualified American applicants, and detailed explanations of why each American worker was not hired.298 If the explanations offered by the employer appear inadequate, the DOL may choose to audit and penalize the employer for not complying with the labor certification's requirements. 299 Accordingly, the labor certification process provides the most effective check on the system without stunting important employment-based immigration and ensures that Americans are "first" and considered before foreign students for U.S. jobs.300 Further, the labor certification process also requires employers to request prevailing wages from the DOL for jobs offered in the United States to foreign students and mandates that employers pay at least the prevailing wage to future employees in those positions.30 ' As such, the prevailing wage requirement should guarantee that wages will not fall because of employment-based immigration given that the DOL will only grant a labor certification if it can be shown that "the employment of such alien will not adversely affect the wages

and working conditions of workers in the United States similarly employed., 302 Finally, recent studies show that foreign students are choosing to return to their home countries rather than stay in the United States and jump through the complicated visa hoops.3 0 3 Accordingly, brain drain is overcome by foreign students' desires to reunite with friends and family and take advantage of what foreign students perceive as better job opportunities in their home countries.30 4 Also, even if the SKIL Act II or related legislation is passed and more foreign students decide to stay in the United States, immigration advocates argue that foreign brain drain would still be offset by new arrivals of skilled workers in students' home countries, advances in domestic students' education spurred by students' migration, and spill-over effects in their home countries such as remittances, technology transfers, and increased trade flows.30 5 Thus, the United States should be focused on ensuring foreign student brain gain and brain retention.30 6 As previously discussed, retaining foreign students and permitting them to adjust status to permanent residence in the United States will increase the country's potential for innovation and its position as a global economic leader .30 7 The fact

that "more than one-third of Nobel laureates from the United States are immigrants, and [that] there are 62 patent applications for every 100 foreign PhD graduates in science and engineering (S&E) programs" only proves that increased foreign student immigration in the United States would be truly beneficial.3 °8

Further, from 2010 to 2011, foreign students contributed more than $21 billion to the U.S. economy .30 9 If more foreign students are allowed to stay in the United States per the SKIL Act II, these contributions to the economy will only continue and grow as foreign students pay more taxes and permanently settle here.310

Few options for permanent residence—current retainment programs failPorter 11, Katherine L. Porter is an associate at Bryan Cave Law Firm, received her J.D. from Hofstra Law School and her B.A. from Tufts University, "Retain the Brains: Using a Conditional Residence Requirement to Keep the Best and Brightest Foreign Students in the United States," Hofstra Law Review: Vol. 40: Iss. 2, Article 11. http://scholarlycommons.law.hofstra.edu/hlr/vol40/iss2/11//akFinally, with the current body of immigration law, there are few options available for foreign students to adjust their status and become permanent residents in the United States.1 40 Currently, only 140,000 employment-based green cards are processed every year ("employment-based green card cap") in the United States and are made available to a variety of immigrants in employment-based categories, not just categories through which foreign students may apply.' 41 Yet, upon graduation each foreign student that studies in the United States is eligible to remain and work in the country for a period of one year in a field related to their major. 142 This one year employment opportunity is known as the Optional Protocol Training ("OPT") and has been extended to twenty-nine months for students that major in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics ("STEM") fields.'43 However, the OPT is inherently temporary and does not on its own lead to permanent residence in the United States.' 44

Thus, the immigration options for foreign students who wish to obtain U.S. green cards are currently limited to investor visas 145 and sponsorships by U.S. employers 146 through H-LB visas. 147 It is uncommon and often

impractical for foreign students to pursue investor visas as they require an investment of $500,000 or $1,000,000, depending on the location of the investment. 48 Thus, this leaves H-lB visas as the most common nonimmigrant visa that may offer foreign students an

avenue through which they can apply for U.S. permanent residence. 1 49 Nevertheless, procuring permanent residence after having H-lB visas is still difficult for foreign students as significant obstacles prevent many foreign students from acquiring them in the first instance.150

Permanent residence tracks are key, especially in comparison to other countriesPorter 11, Katherine L. Porter is an associate at Bryan Cave Law Firm, received her J.D. from Hofstra Law School and her B.A. from Tufts University, "Retain the Brains: Using a Conditional Residence Requirement to Keep the Best and Brightest Foreign Students in the United States," Hofstra Law Review: Vol. 40: Iss. 2, Article 11. http://scholarlycommons.law.hofstra.edu/hlr/vol40/iss2/11//akIn order to stay competitive, the United States needs to carve out a permanent residence track for foreign students in its immigration laws. Many other countries are engaged in the immigration "race for talent" and have created paths for highly-skilled immigrants and foreign students to attain permanent residence after working and studying in their countries. 248 In his January 2012 State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama stated: Let's... remember that hundreds of thousands of talented, hardworking students in this country face another challenge: the fact that they aren't yet American citizens. Many were brought here as small children, are American through and through, yet they live every day with the threat of deportation. Others came more recently, to study business and science and engineering, but as soon as they get their degree, we send them home to invent new products and create new jobs somewhere else. That doesn't make sense. 249

STEM/sci dip

Increase of H1-B visas that allow doctors and scientists are key to scientific collaborationPickering and Agre 10 Thomas R. Pickering served as undersecretary of state from 1997-2000 and chairs the advisory council of the Civilian Research and Development Foundation. Peter Agre, a Nobel laureate, is a physician and director of the Malaria Research Institute at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “Science diplomacy aids conflict reduction”, 2/20/10, http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2010/feb/20/science-diplomacy-aids-conflict-reduction//akThe North Korea visit, organized by the U.S.-Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Science Engagement Consortium, exemplifies the vast potential of science for diplomacy. The U.S. government already has 43 bilateral umbrella science and technology agreements with nations worldwide, and the administration of President Barack Obama is elevating the profile of science engagement. In June, in Cairo, he promised a range of joint science and technology initiatives with Muslim-majority countries. In November, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appointed three science envoys to foster new partnerships and address common challenges, especially within Muslim-majority countries. In addition to providing resources, the government should quickly and significantly increase the number of H1-B visas being approved for foreign doctors, scientists and engineers . Foreign scientists working or studying in U.S. universities make critical contributions to human welfare and to our economy, and they often become informal goodwill ambassadors for America overseas. Science is a wide-ranging effort that naturally crosses

borders, and so scientist-to-scientist collaboration can promote goodwill at the grass roots. San Diego boasts a

remarkable initiative at High Tech High charter school. Twice in recent years, biology teacher Jay Vavra has led student teams to Africa to study the illegal trade in meat from wild and endangered animals. Working with game wardens and tribal leaders, they use sophisticated DNA bar coding techniques to analyze the meat and track down poachers. Such efforts advance science while supporting peace and the health of the planet. In an era of complex global challenges, science diplomacy can be crucial to finding solutions both to global problems and to global conflict.

Permanent residence key to increased innovationDeCapua 13(Joe DeCapua, contributor at voice of America, “Foreign Students Boost US Innovation”, November 5 th, 2013, Voice of America, http://www.voanews.com/content/us-foreign-students-5nov13/1783943.html, JAS)Foreign students earning their doctoral degrees in the United States can help revitalize innovation and economic growth. A new study says

the U.S. should make it easier for such students to enter and remain in the country . Listen to De Capua report on foreign students Three economists gathered data on the contributions made by foreign students. The team was led by Keith Maskus, professor of economics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. “My interest was piqued quite a long time ago after September 11th, 2001. One of the reactions to that was that the United States decided for a period of about two or three years to make it much more difficult for students from particular regions of the world to enter the United States and study graduate programs, especially in science and engineering.” He said, at the time, many in Washington and at

universities warned that policy would hinder scientific development and innovation . “And I thought, well, that’s very interesting, but do we really know if that’s true?” So Maskus, along with Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak of Yale and Eric Stuen of the University of Idaho, gathered data – a lot of data. “So what we did is got very detailed individual-level data on quite a large number of students – over 750,00 students, in fact – who had come to get Ph.Ds in the 100 top science and engineering universities in the United States from the late 1970s to the late 1990s. And we had information about where they came from, [including] what their visa status was, what area they wrote their dissertations in and, of course, at which university,” he said. The research indicated that diversity – a mix of American and foreign students -- can make a difference in productivity and efficiency . “It seems to have something to do with the fact that networks and laboratory sciences [are] really a function of how the graduate students and the post- doctoral students and everyone else can specialize in some element of science – and also the fact that their undergraduate training and possibly some graduate training in whatever it is – mathematics or bench science or laboratory science – gives them different approaches to thinking about problems. And when these people can get together and bounce ideas off each other the sort of outcome of that is more dynamic intellectual process. And you get more ideas with having some diversity like that,” he said. To get a U.S. visa, he said, students must

demonstrate that either they or their family has enough money to pay for a substantial portion of their education. That’s even if the student’s education is paid for by a scholarship. He says the current philosophy is: you’re welcome to come and study in the U.S., but when you’re done you have to go home. “We think that particular need to demonstrate this kind of income based ability to come to the United States is a little bit short-sighted. Our results show that you really ought to be more open to the highest quality students, regardless of their wealth or income back in their home countries. So that’s one thing. We would urge modification of American visa policy because of that ,” said Maskus. Another recommended change concerns permanent residence or green cards. He said, “If you look at policy in other major importing countries, like Western Europe, Canada, Australia – these countries have gone down the road of dramatically increasing the access of what we call green cards -- they call permanent residence – to international students who do get Ph.Ds in science, technology and engineering fields, whether in their universities in those countries or maybe in the United States or in some of these other countries. For example, if you get a Ph.D in the United States, it becomes that much easier to become a permanent resident in Canada.” Maskus and his colleagues say it would help the U.S. compete in the world if doctoral students had an easier time getting green cards . They say, currently, if those students want to remain in the U.S. , they must find a local employer , who’ll work on their behalf to get a temporary visa. “That does have the effect, we’re convinced, of pushing too many of these innovative people back outside the borders of the United States . So we argue for increasing the number of those visas and focusing on these students -- or even better -- just offering a very quick and straightforward process to permanent residence,” he said. In their article in the journal Science, the authors say any innovation and economic growth gains would far outweigh any diminished job prospects for American workers .

Student visas are critical to maintaining America’s technological and economic competitiveness Geological Society of America 12(Geological Society of America, scientific society with more than 25,000 members from academia, government, and industry, “Visas for Foreign Scientists and Students “, April 2012, Geological Society of America, http://www.geosociety.org/positions/pos8_visas.pdf, JAS)As representatives of organizations of U.S. higher education, science, and engineering, we have been deeply concerned about the significant increase in delays experienced earlier this year by many international students, scholars, and scientists who have applied for visas to study, conduct research, or attend conferences in this country . Our nation's colleges and universities and scientific and technical organizations are the engines of the new knowledge, innovation, and advanced training that power the country's research enterprise and contribute greatly to economic and national security. Moreover, they are important hubs of international scientific and technical exchanges , and they play a vital role in facilitating educational and cultural interactions that help to spread our nation's values . Lengthy and unnecessary delays frustrate and discourage many of the best and brightest international students, scholars, and scientists from studying and working in the United States, or attending academic and scientific conferences here and abroad. This compromises our ability to attract international scientific talent and maintain scientific and economic leadership . Given the current economic crisis, as delays continue, individuals are more likely to decide not to come to the United States. Our nation needs a visa system that supports international exchange and cooperation. We are confident that it is possible to have a system that protects national security, and yet is still timely and transparent, provides for thorough reviews of applicants, and welcomes the finest talent. Scientific exchange and security are not mutually exclusive; to the contrary, they complement each other, and each is vital to the other. We applaud this Administration's commitment to restoring America's image abroad. We understand that steps currently are being taken to increase personnel resources and improve and streamline the visa application review process to eliminate the current backlog of applications and significantly reduce wait times for prospective applicants undergoing Visas Mantis security review. The Department of State, Department of Homeland Security, and other partner agencies have worked closely with our community in recent years to make the visa process less cumbersome, and we are pleased that the Administration is taking these additional steps to address some of our concerns. It is, therefore, in the spirit of past and future cooperation that we offer the following recommendations: Address the current backlog of visa applications as expeditiously as possible by providing sufficient resources to the Department of State and its partner agencies to allow timely processing of visa applications. This action must be taken to prevent the world from again believing that the United States does not welcome international students, scholars, and scientists. Streamline the visa process for credentialed short-term visitors in science and

technology fields. A non-immigrant visa applicant who is a legitimate graduate student, researcher, or professional in any field of science and technology, and whose application is supported by a qualified university, scientific body, or corporation should receive a determination on his or her visa application within 30 days. Longer delays are very disruptive to scientific study, research and collaborations .

Reduce repetitive processing of visa applications for those well-known researchers and scholars who regularly visit the United States. The Department of State and its partner agencies should reduce repetitive reviews of international researchers and scholars who regularly travel to the United States to attend academic conferences and conduct research. Longer duration clearances and visas are needed. Establish protocols to make treatment of applicants more consistent. Consular staff at posts abroad should receive regular training on protocols for initiating a Visas Mantis review so that this screening tool can be used appropriately and consistently. Additional training and guidance for consular staff can enhance security while simultaneously reducing the number of applications submitted for Visas Mantis reviews, thereby alleviating potential delays. Provide more transparency in the visa system. We recommend that the Department of State provide more transparency for visa applicants who experience delays, and establish a special review process to address applications pending for more than 30 days. Review and streamline the Technology Alert List (TAL) to include only subject areas that clearly have explicit implications for national security . The list identifies sensitive areas of science and technology in which exports of technology or information might be controlled. However, over the years, the TAL has been broadened, and it now restrains and inhibits legitimate areas of scientific research .

Continue and expand ongoing efforts to renegotiate visa reciprocity agreements between the United States and key sending countries, such as China, to extend the duration of visas each country grants students and scholars of the other and to permit multiple entries on a single visa . We applaud the Department of State’s efforts to date in this area and encourage continued efforts. Improved reciprocity and allowing multiple entries would reduce the number of visa renewals that must be processed .

Convene a high level interagency panel to review the full range of visa-related policies and procedures put into place after 9/11. Many policies and procedures designed to enhance national security were put into place after 9/11 . An evaluation of their costeffectiveness is needed, and ineffective and unnecessary procedures should be revised or eliminated . Such a review would resolve these and other outstanding issues. We appreciate the steps taken recently to improve the visa processing system. We reiterate our commitment to work with the federal government to address remaining issues and improve the visa system further. A system that maintains our nation’s security while encouraging the entry of the brightest and most qualified international students , scholars, scientists, and engineers will bolster American scientific and economic competitiveness, as well as help restore America’s image abroad . We believe that implementing the above recommendations will help make this goal a reality.

Multilat CP

1nc

CP: The United States Federal Government should bolster SEVIS.

SEVIS is key to international relations—and it avoids the Terror DAClubb 02 David Bryan Clubb is director of the Office of International Services at the University of Pittsburgh, 1/9/2002, “Midweek Perspectives: Foreign students boost national security”, http://old.post-gazette.com/forum/20020109edclub09p4.asp//ak If many politicians and pundits had their way, the first casualty of the war on terrorism would be international educational exchange. That's because media outlets have focused on international students and scholars as threats to our national security and not as the national security assets that they in fact are. And many in political office have joined the media in failing to inform the public of the many benefits that international students and scholars bring to the United States; instead, they have chosen to lead the public to believe that if the government would just tighten controls on international student and scholar visas, we would all be much safer. Some have even called for a moratorium on all student

and scholar visas for up to six months. The truth is that international students and scholars are a tremendous foreign policy and national security asset for the United States. And, in any event, tightening controls on foreign student and scholar access alone would do very little to ensure our national security : Fewer than 2 percent of

the 30 million nonimmigrant visito rs who entered the country last year were international students. To focus so much attention on such a small minority of nonimmigrants in our country will do little to improve our national security . Certainly there is a need to do more to prevent fraud and ensure the legitimacy of the student and scholar visa process, but this can be done without sacrificing our position as the nation of choice for international students and scholars. If we allow the Sept. 11 attacks to drive us to shut the doors of our nation to international educational and cultural exchange, we will pay immeasurably in the loss of friendship, goodwill and understanding around the world. The United States must

continue to welcome international students and scholars to our college campuses. As former U.S. Secretary of Education Richard

W. Riley recently wrote, "These student ambassadors, who make lasting friendships in America and better understand our values and way of life, are the future world leaders with whom we will sit down to forge alliances around the globe." Many Americans may be surprised to learn just how many foreign leaders have been educated in the United States, among them King Abdullah of Jordan; United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, from Ghana; Jacques Chirac, president of France; Vicente Fox, president of Mexico; Shimon Peres, former prime minister of Israel; and many others from more than 60 countries around the world. Opening our country to educate these individuals ensures that current and future world leaders are exposed to the cultural, political, economic and educational values of America. These internationals are not part of the problem; rather, they are part of the solution and the hope for a more peaceful future. Secretary of State Colin Powell has stated, "I can think of no more valuable asset to our country than the friendship of future world leaders who have been educated here." The United States must find a way to achieve both the security objectives that ensure the protection of its citizens at home and the openness that assures its strong and effective leadership around the world. To sacrifice one at the expense of the other would be shortsighted and detrimental to our nation's strategic position in the world community. One way to achieve both objectives is for the U.S. Immigration & Naturalization Service to speed the implementation of the Student & Exchange Visitor Information System. SEVIS is a partnership between the INS, the State Department, the Education Department and school and exchange visitor experts . It is designed to convert a manual, paper-driven process to an automated process, and to ensure only bona fide students and scholars are issued visas and permitted to enter the United States. The system has been in development since

1995, and was statutorily mandated in Section 641 of the Illegal Immigration Reform & Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. The U.S. government has not done enough to fund and support the development of this program. While the

implementation of SEVIS will not resolve every issue, it is certainly a long-overdue step in the right direction. The U.S. government needs to provide the necessary funding and priority for this system and other initiatives that have been dragging on for years. In the meantime, the media and political leaders need to stop focusing all of their attention on the exaggerated notion of international students and scholars as threats to our national security, and instead start talking about them as strategic assets in our war against terrorism. The

continued commitment of the United States to support international educational and cultural exchange is essential in order to secure long-term victory in the war on terrorism.