Nobel prizes remind us why immigration matters

By GottaLaff

Please go read the entire piece, but here's a sample:

If you're looking for reasons to puff out your chest and take pride in being American, then take note that the first six Nobel Prize winners announced this week are U.S. citizens.

Here's something else you should know: Four of those winners were born outside the U.S.

That dynamic neatly summarizes the current state of our innovation economy. We are increasingly dependent on brainpower from overseas that migrates here to drive the research and discoveries we need to power economic growth.

Silicon Valley has been a bigger beneficiary of this influx of brains and talent than perhaps any other region in the U.S. And that means we have more to lose when the debate about immigration turns to demagoguery. [...]

According to statistics from the National Science Foundation released in February, foreign-born science and engineering students in 2003 earned one-third of all Ph.D.s awarded in the U.S. And the study noted that "those who do decide to finish advanced study in the United States overwhelmingly choose to stay in the country after earning their advanced degrees."

Thank goodness. In addition to Blackburn, the other foreign-born Nobel winners over the past two days included:

Charles Kao, who was born in Shanghai, and has both U.K. and U.S. citizenship.

William Boyle, of Bell Laboratories, was born in Nova Scotia and holds dual U.S. and Canadian citizenship.

Jack Szostak, of Harvard Medical School, was born in London, grew up in Canada and is now a U.S. citizen.

We should be particularly proud that these people did not go to Russia or Germany, but came here. Our nation remains as dependent today as on the day of its founding on the ideas and imagination brought by fresh waves of newcomers arriving on our shores.

How strange that a nation founded by immigrants so easily forgets their value.

Those durn furriners! If we're not careful, they may show a few of us real Amurkins up!

H/t: Ellen