When I was a school child we celebrated America as a nation of immigrants. We admired Andrew Carnegie and Igor Sikorsky, who were born elsewhere yet made huge contributions to our country. In America, anything was possible.
Now, under proposed federal rules to limit access to research, Sikorsky wouldn’t have been allowed to invent the helicopter. In the interest of preventing terrorist attack, our federal government plans to hobble the army of immigrant scientists laboring to stop the next pandemic, or cancer or even obesity all far bigger threats to our lives.
But why pass regulations to further restrict foreign-born students and teachers? They’re already disappearing. Foreign student applications to the UW were down over 30 percent last year. They’re going to places like Germany to create hotbeds of research there, and the brightest Americans will follow them.