It's Not Rocket Science

"You know, I plan on traveling to the Moon at some time."
 ~ Wernher von Braun (1930)

It seems fitting that Trump will announce the endorsement of Sen. Jeff Sessions at a rally in Huntsville, Alabama where Wernher von Braun led a team of rocket scientists (initially all Germans). Von Braun  essentially drove our space program from the end of WW II through the Cold War. He is credited with inventing both the V-2 and Saturn V rockets.

But wasn't von Braun also a nasty foreigner who took STEM jobs away from Americans? Unfortunately for us, Robert Goddard had died. We have always attracted or taken (in von Braun's case) the very best scientific talent and probably always will. Years ago, I worked at a well-known science institute here in SoCal.  One day, an eminent chemistry professor named Sir Derek H. R. Barton, PhD, FRS, paid a visit. Now Sir Derek (RIP) had an interesting history. Schooled in Britain in her post war days, he made unprecedented contributions to the field of organic chemistry (you can read details here). After reaching mandatory retirement age in Britain, Barton left England to continue working, moving first to France and then eventually to Texas, that bastion of free enterprise.

I forget Sir Derek's lecture topic that day and my notes are buried somewhere, currently irretrievable. What stands out in my mind was his effusive praise for his graduate students and postdocs -- especially his Chinese ones. Not for their cleverness nor for their contributions -- for Sir Derek had an ego the size of Donald Trump's. Rather, he praised their willingness to work around the clock and through weekends for him for very little money. I still recall his quaint description of their microwaved noodle breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. And I remember thinking "this is who will rule the world." That was around 1997 or 1998.

Update On America's "STEM Crisis"

[This post is a continuation-in-part of a prior post here: 'STEM Crisis' In American Workforce May Not Be Real]

New legislation proposing to raise the number of H-1B visas for science and technology workers has lots of bipartisan support: Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Chris Coons (D-DE), and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) are on board. Link

Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions is having none of it:

[A] stunning 3 in 4 Americans with a STEM degree do not hold a job in a STEM field—that’s a pool of more than 11 million Americans with STEM qualifications who lack STEM employment.

It is understandable why these corporations push for legislation that will flood the labor market and keep pay low; what is not understandable is why we would ever consider advancing legislation that provides jobs for the citizens of other countries at the expense of our own. Who do we work for?

Democrats and a silent majority of Republicans are squeezing the American middle class from the bottom by holding out essentially limitless importation of unskilled labor; now Republicans and a silent* majority of Democrats are squeezing the American middle class at the top by offering essentially limitless importation of highly-skilled labor.
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*Except for that Sugar Mountain** chap, who is a loudmouth.
**Zuckerberg means "Sugar Mountain" in German

'STEM Crisis' In American Workforce May Not Be Real

'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.  Link

There are lots of other choice phrases and truths at the link.

In the name of efficient economics, we do import STEM workers -- not because they are better than American workers but because they will often work for less, and employers get leverage, viz. visas. This is a brutal and harsh reality but also one which affects the on-going and relentless push for more H1-B visas. The policy figures into the grand immigration debate, but at the "high end" rather than the "low end."