On February 8, German newsmagazine Der Spiegel reported that the Max Planck Society—one of the world’s top scientific research institutions—is experiencing an uptick in applications from American scientists. Its president said the society regards the U.S. as “a new talent pool” at a time when the Trump administration seeks to cut billions in funding to the National Institutes of Health. There’s a deep historical irony in these recent developments: During the Third Reich, it was the Max Planck Society—then known as the Kaiser Wilhelm Society—that lost its best and brightest to the U.S. and other countries, including Albert Einstein.
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Democrats have many options.
Good read. Plus twenty.
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From your article: Moreover, most of the initial wave of American emigration will likely feature those with the means to leave—those who possess foreign passports, job opportunities abroad, or lots of disposable income. But this all points in the same direction: With Trump back in office and faithfully executing the blueprint for wrecking the country known as Project 2025 while collaborating with the world’s richest man to trash democracy and wage a war on brain cells in the federal government, a growing number of people in this country see the writing on the wall, and they’re looking for their bug-out plan.
Yup.
IP
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Hopefully they are here legally.
DB2
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Yeah, even if they are, that doesn’t mean they’ll stay.
From the article - “But remember, there’s a reason why Germany produced the most Nobel laureates before World War II, but the U.S. took the lead afterward. The United States’ loss will be some other nation’s gain—a lesson that we used to teach the rest of the world, but no longer.”
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Why? Americans should just be thankful they are here at all. I don’t think you or dividends appreciate how much of the American economic dominance is dependent on immigrants. Just a few numbers.
65,000 H1B visas are given each year and another 20,000 provided for those with a masters or higher degree.
The tech industry absorbs roughly 70 percent of H1B workers, with 50-70 percent of Silicon Valley being foreign-born. Silicon Valley's Indian Dream: The Fight Over US's Most Controversial Visa, The H1B - Forbes India.
Worth repeating, the majority of techies in the primary entrepreneurial tech region in the nation are foreign-born.
If we look at the two premier tech schools in America where much of the cutting edge STEM research is occurring we find that Caltech’s graduate students are 47% foreign and while at MIT it is 40%.
Immigrants are not just a luxury for the American economy or just a means to get cheap labor. It is a necessity for America’s economic success. The top-tier of foreign techies are smarter or work harder than 99% of Americans. Making America unattractive to immigrants is economic suicide.
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Sound legal to me, BWDIK.
Why do I hope they are here legally? Because of something called the rule of law. Don’t conflate legal and illegal immigration.
Speaking of illegal immigration “encounters” at our southern border are at their lowest since when Bill Clinton was president.
Last month, Border Patrol recorded about 8,450 apprehensions of migrants who crossed into the country unlawfully between official entry points along the U.S.-Mexico border, the statistics show.
On some days during a record spike in illegal crossings under the Biden administration, Border Patrol recorded more than 8,000 apprehensions in a single day.
DB2
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Can’t help it, America has already conflated the two.
When so much of the American economy depends on illegal immigrants it is pretty obvious that enforcement of the law is dictated by money. Let me know when CEOs get jailed for hiring illegals.
Largely because America is no longer seen as a nation that welcomes “the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to be free, the wretched refuse from your shores…” We used to be an exceptional nation. We aren’t any longer.
No doubt you see that as a positive. If we are an honest people, we would return the statue of liberty.
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We’re more likely to sell it for scrap.
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I mostly agree with your sentiments but with two big caveats:
- The Statue of Liberty was NOT about immigrants but rather about DEMOCRATIC LIBERTY, although the dear lady does have a delightfully welcoming aura and a nice poem affixed on her pillar
- illegal aliens are corrosive to the USA, while legal aliens can be, have been, and still could be a huge revitalizing tonic; but the illegal aliens are far far cheaper and easier to cheat and dominate that legal ones, and so illegal immigration is a primary goal of many major corporations and landowners.
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Speaking of “brain drain”
Abed Ayoub, head of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, says the threat is getting real. He says the ADC has heard from at least a dozen students who left the U.S. for winter break and were unable to return because their visas were canceled — with no explanation given.
Steve
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Next family get together I’ll let my Harvard and MIT BILs know this.
Then I’ll march to a CT city council meeting and ask for cuts to education
No point in fighting it
In passing the article mentions American researchers
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I’m glad you noticed that the article was about American researchers not foreign students coming to the US, or undocumented workers in construction. I feel that those extraneous issues were introduced into this thread to deflect attention from the point of the article.
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There is no brain drain from US.
This is just Democrats making silly points for political reasons and deliberately conflate legal and illegal immigration.
Illegal border encounters have slowed to a trickle, down from 15k per day while F1 student queue continues to grow and H1B demand is highest ever.
We see it regularly. People leaving the US for better lives outside the US. This includes US citizens.
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There is a brain drain going on in the federal government. As experts in the federal government are eliminated by Trump and Musk, who will do the work to keep the keep the government from going off the tracks and still keeping the nation safe, secure, and leading the world with the best experts? Trump is OK with eliminating federal scientists, engineers, mathematicians, economists, lawyers, computer specialists, cyber specialists and many others with security clearances to save trillions. There are no illegals in the these positions or anywhere else in the federl government.
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