Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
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Friday, January 13, 2006
The mindless fear of foreign brain power
I was flying back to the U.S. through Amsterdam last year with a group of journalists that included several international folks who had come here to study. All of them had been living in the U.S. for months and had flown overseas with our group a week earlier.
Before we could board the flight to Detroit, each of us was ferried off to a small table to meet with a Dutch agent for a short “interview.” Mine was no big deal. Three questions or so, stuff like where am I from, whom do I work for and what was the purpose of my trip? The uniformed officer was cordial and quick.
But standing a few feet away, the interview with my Turkish friend was quite different. The officer’s questions were curt and there was probably close to a dozen asked. From my table I could overhear the officer asking the same questions over and over, a technique interrogators use to trip up suspects. And the questions weren’t routine.
They were more like this — Why are you studying in the U.S.? What school are you studying at? What courses are you taking? Why isn’t your spouse traveling with you?
Afterward my international friends, who are are all quite well traveled, said this is typical treatment for foreigners visiting the U.S. It wasn’t the fact that extra checks were made, it was the tone and the “prove you’re not guilty” posture we witnessed there and at the U.S. border that way eye-popping.
The unspoken message they heard was this — we really don’t want you to come, but if you insist we’ll grudgingly allow it. That attitude is hurting the international competitiveness of our universities.
As USA Today recently reported, stingier rules for entry into the U.S. since Sept. 11, 2001 have sent many of the top foreign students, who in the past would have come here and contributed to the advancement of research at our universities, instead to schools in Europe, Australia, China, and elsewhere, making research in those places better and helping those countries compete with us, especially in science and technology.
Even President Bush is now calling for change to address the problem, as the story notes.
Last year I saw a presentation by Linda Lim, a University of Michigan economist, about the America’s place in the world economy. One thing she stressed was that the quality of American universities has consistently attracted the very brightest students from around the world, many of whom make advances while they are here or stay and perhaps start a ground breaking company. Importing the best brain power from around the world is a major engine for the U.S. economy.
So is now is the time to ease the restrictions some, despite the fear of foreign terrorists?
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