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To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (159006)	8/10/2003 3:13:13 PM
From: hueyone	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

Thanks Lizzie. I see that Andy Grove, in the latest business week, is still arguing that shutting down immigration of highly skilled and educated foreign workers to the United States is a mistake: businessweek.com Let me just take one example that is absolutely frustrating to me. The U.S., for economic as well as scientific reasons, has been a magnet for the best and the brightest in the world. It is less of a magnet today, because we are accelerating the shutdown of the magnet by making immigration increasingly difficult. Picture today's immigration policies applied to the years before and during World War II, and what would have happened if foreign scientists were not allowed to work in the U.S.? I don't try to paint a cataclysmic scenario that in short order we are going to lose our lead. But we are losing the lead every day. The distance between us and the rest of the world is eroding anyway, because knowledge doesn't stay contained and people don't stay contained and the opportunities are not forever regional. But we are helping that trend. That is not the thing to do for the decades to come. This is all seems like an incrediby complex topic to me, with downside no matter which side you take. I can't help but suspect however, that one of the results of increased globalization of commerce, trade and information (which ironically has been enabled by the American technology industry), will be a declining standard of living for American white collar employees and a rising standard of living for foreign white collar employees in China, India and other less developed countries. I am afraid that when people say "The internet changes everything" one of the first things that will come to mind for American white collar workers in the future will be "Yes, it reduced my salary by 50% or more". Huey@feelingpessimistictoday.com