I agree with you assessment of many foreign nationals at major research universities like USC doing a lot of the cutting-edge research and development. As a recent USC graduate with a MSME I saw this first hand. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your perpective and political views and such, many of these people are sponsored by their home countries to study abroad, and unless they opt for “defection”, many will go back to their home countries to repay their education and understandably so. What our country needs to do is address this problem and tackle it first hand with massive publicity and incentives to persuade younger students to pursue careers in technology and engineering. At my company Raytheon we’re doing just that, and on a personal note, I have volunteered many hours at many of our local schools to give presentations about what is like to work as a professional engineer for a major Defense contractor. I’ve gotten good feedback from the kids and their parents, and I hope to continue to do this volunteer work to help remedy this situation.

Regards,

Otman Estrada