A study by Stuart Anderson of the National Foundation for American Policy, discloses that the contributions of skilled foreign-born professionals and their offspring are very important to the United States. Without them the country would be hard pressed to maintain its worldwide advantage in such fields as math and science.

Highlights of the study show:

• More than half of the engineers with a Ph.D. working in the U.S., and 45% of the nation’s computer science doctorates, are foreign-born.

• Children of immigrants comprise 65% of the 2006 U.S. Math Olympiad’s top scorers (13 of 20) and 46% of the U.S. Physics Team (11 of 24).

• At this year’s Intel Science Talent Search, which recognizes the nation’s top math and science students, 60% of the finalists and seven of the top 10 award winners were immigrants or their children. Last year, three of the top four awardees were foreign-born.

Anderson concluded, “If we had listened to the anti-immigration crowd over the past 20 years, we could have wiped out two-thirds of the top future scientists and mathematicians in the United States because we would have barred their parents from ever entering America.”

The study, titled The Multiplier Effect, is available at:STUDY

computer science doctorates, immigrants, math & science, National Foundation for American Policy, engineers [/tags]

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