Many of those 47% advanced math and science foreign student graduates want to stay here and earn a much better living than they could back in their home countries.

They would contribute mightily to our country in terms of both tax revenues generated and corporate assests.

Unfortunately, there are too few 'open spaces' in our immigration laws due mainly to the fact that Democrats want only immigrants that they are sure will vote for them.

Let me expand briefly on the above lest anyone say that immigrants can't vote.

They marry, have kids and many do go through the process to become citizens. They want to assimilate into this great society.

Democrats would rather have immigrants that come here poor, want to work and send money back to their home countries, and resist assimilating. Perfect opportunity for another perpetual voting constituency.

They are well into the third generation of the Hispanic slave voting plantation.

They take for granted their black constituency.

I got a PhD in math in the early 1990s and even back in my day foreign students dominated the field. I now teach computer science and east Asians/Indians (foreign or first/second generation) dominate the field, and the higher the degree level, the greater the domination. In my classes, white students are a fairly small percentage, Hispanics are few (although the overall school population is 1/3rd Hispanic) and blacks are almost nonexistent.

mac has got it right---we should make it easier for the people who earn advanced degrees to stay, and simultaneously make it difficult or impossible for those who come illegally. The liberals have it exactly backwards, and the reasons are obvious.

I am one of those math deficient american students who got a PhD in anthropology/archaeology, at a "Top Five in the Nation Program". Ironically, the archaeologists were considered math savvy students, "who like numbers".

When I got to my dissertation, I was able to muddle thru, and did some relatively simple programming to get the measures I needed for my work. At the same time I realized that my study would have been tremendously more rich if I had developed my math skills more thoroughly.

Nowadays, I frequently work with newly minted planners, architects, and engineers. I'm always amazed how many are unable to multiply and divide when they are caught away from their calculator or computer. When they get out the pencil and paper, it appears that they are working at a 3rd or 4th grade level.

By the way, no offense intended to those professionals who are skilled mathematicians. I know a few of you and ya'll deserve every penny you earn.

P.S.

I'll add another comment since I mentioned planners and architects in the previous post.

In my recent experience, planners and architects are so thoroughly indoctrinated into the "New Urbanist" ideology that they are unable-or unwilling- to comprehend the social and economic consequences of the work they do on behalf of themselves and the political entities they serve.

Its hard for me to believe that they can't understand why a consumer would prefer a $300,000 2800 ft. house in the suburbs over a $300,000 1200 ft. condo located in a high-crime area of a city.

I'm sure that even our mathematically-challenged native population can figure out which is a better deal.

Since "New Urban" ideology apparently trumps the logic of the household (microeconomic) economic equation, the planners are left to convince the consumers that they are better off when they pay more and get less.

On the other hand, and as best as I can tell, the architects make more money designing high-priced, city-center condos than they can earn designing spec houses for developers. The politicans/planners are on-board because they can squeeze more tax dollars per square foot of surface area from the condos, which need less extensive infrastructure to serve high density areas.

So who's buying?

Robert, I agree with you about many engineers that are lost without a calculator. I graduated High School (Brooklyn Technical) 50 years ago and have a Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering and Masters in Civil Engineering. This was in the days before pocket calculators. My knuckles drag as I still use a slide rule when I forgot where I left the calculator. With a slide rule in order to know where to place the decimal point you had to run the calculation in your head. With a calculator you can be off an order of magnitude or more and not know it. The other item is working with systems of measurements, English and Metric. With the English system I know automatically if the results make sense. With the Metric system I have to convert to English units to know if the result is logical. As an example, if the result is cubic meters per second, I have to convert it to cubic feet per second or gallons per minute to understand it. If anyone says that the metric system is more logical they have never worked with specific gravity, specific heat or a gravitational constant of 9.8. Remember the satellite that crashed a few years ago because one group working on the design used English units and another group used Metric units, DUH.

Howard, you're a man after my own heart: I learned to use a slide rule as a kid, when pocket calculators were relatively new but becoming more commonplace.

I still remember the heated debate about allowing students to use electronic calculators because we were supposed to be learning, you know... Math. How quaint it all seems now. When I did a stint as a Math teacher at one point in my life I didn't let my younger students use electronic calculators on tests - but I would let them use a slide rule if they wanted to. (Most of them had never even heard of something as outlandish as a slide rule, and none of them had ever seen one until I brought mine in.) I knew the truth of what you alluded to: to use a slide rule you must understand the underlying mathematical principles that apply to the problem you're trying to solve. I tutored any student who wanted to learn to use a slide rule, and a couple even took me up on it.

The funny thing about it is that, by putting in the effort to learn the principles behind the slide rule, they got a much better grasp of the underlying mathematical principles of the problems they had to solve than they would have had I let them use calculators. Then the slide rule became a tool rather than a crutch.

Perhaps next week Dr. Williams will write about the poor performance of U.S. students in S.T.E.M. versus their extremely high sense of self-esteem. They may not be able to count past 10 without taking their shoes off - but they feel GREAT about themselves and their future!

Ah, the irony of it all...