Consumer boycotts by ordinary Americans won't make a dent in the military-industrial complex, but I recall Asian-American organizations called upon "all Asian American scientists and engineers not to apply for jobs at the national labs operated under contracts with the U.S. Department of Energy" (Asian Pacific Americans in Higher Education [APAHE] Resolution on Dr. Wen Ho Lee, March 11, 2000, <http://www.spse.org/APAHE_Resolution.html>). I don't know if the boycott actually diminished Asian-American job applications, but it appears to have had a tangible result:
***** Wen Ho Lee Backlash At Weapons Labs NEW YORK, March 26, 2002
(REUTERS) Three top weapons laboratories in the United States are offering to change their hiring and promotion practices in return for the end of a boycott by two Asian-American groups over the treatment of Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee, the New York Times reported in its online edition Tuesday....
<http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/03/26/national/main504618.shtml> *****
The proportion of foreign-born scientists and engineers has been growing:
***** FYI Number 126: November 20, 2002 Science & Engineering Indicators: S&E Workforce Demographics
...The percentage of foreign born college graduates in the U.S. S&E labor force grew from 11.2 percent in 1980 to 19.3 percent in 2000. The report finds that "In April 1999, 27 percent of doctorate-holders in S&E in the United States were foreign born.... Almost one-fifth (19.9 percent) of those with master's degrees in S&E were foreign born. Even at the bachelor's degree level, 9.9 percent of those with S&E degrees were foreign born."...
<http://www.aip.org/enews/fyi/2002/126.html> ****
It is said that foreign-born scientists make exceptional contributions:
***** POPULATION RESEARCH AND POLICY REVIEW, 2001, Vol. 20, No. 1-2 Special Issue: High-skilled Migration...
Stephan, Paula E.; Levin., Sharon G.
Exceptional contributions to US science by the foreign-born and foreign-educated.
This paper contributes to the debate on high-skilled migration by examining whether the foreign-born and foreign-educated are disproportionately represented among individuals making exceptional contributions to science and engineering (S & E) in the U.S. Six indicators of scientific achievement are used: individuals elected to the National Academy of Sciences and/or National Academy of Engineering, authors of citation classics, authors of hot papers, the 250 most-cited authors, authors of highly cited patents, and scientists who have played a key role in launching biotechnology firms. We do not claim that this list is exhaustive, merely illustrative.
Using a variety of sources, we are able to determine the birth and educational origin of 89.3% of the study group of over 4,500 scientists and engineers. For each indicator of scientific achievement, we test to see if the observed frequency by birth (or educational) origin is significantly different from the frequency one would expect given the composition of the scientific labor force in the U.S. We find that although there is some variation by discipline, individuals making exceptional contributions to S & E in the U.S. are disproportionately drawn from the foreign born. Only in the instance of hot papers in the life sciences were we unable to reject the null hypothesis that the proportion is the same as that in the underlying population. The most frequent country of origin in the life sciences is Great Britain followed by Germany. In the physical sciences the reverse is true. We also find that individuals making exceptional contributions are, in many instances, disproportionately foreign educated, both at the undergraduate and at the graduate level.
We conclude that immigrants have been a source of strength and vitality for U.S. science and, on balance, the U.S. appears to have benefited from the educational investments made by other countries. We do not investigate, however, whether U.S. scientists and engineers have borne part of the cost of the inflow of foreign talent by being displaced from jobs and/or earning lower wages. Nor do we investigate the cost to the countries of origin.
(UNITED STATES, INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, IMMIGRANTS, TRAINING ABROAD, SKILLED WORKERS, INTELLECTUAL PROFESSIONS, LABOUR FORCE PARTICIPATION, SCIENCE).
English - pp. 59-79.
P. E. Stephan, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30303-3083, U.S.A.; S. G. Levin, Department of Economics, University of Missouri-St Louis, 8001 Natural Bridge Road, St. Louis, MO 63121-4499, U.S.A.
<http://www.cicred.org/rdr/rdr_uni/revue104-105/88-104-105.html> *****
Foreign scientists and engineers and foreign students who major in science and engineering can make a cross-class bloc with forward-thinking factions of the foreign ruling class and power elite in order to make joint efforts to reverse the brain drain to the USA. Now is the chance to do so, as the USG has tightened visa restrictions and implemented anti-immigrant policies since 9.11, creating delays and raising anxieties among the educational and R&D establishments. -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>