HIGH-TECH industry leaders told a Senate committee this week to raise the cap on how many skilled foreign workers we let into the country or, better yet, just throw it away. Why we need
immigrationThe U.S. Department of Labor's priority, meanwhile, is to give workplace skills to welfare recipients, displaced workers and youth. Keep foreigners out or they'll take jobs away from these people, they say.
T.J. Rodgers, CEO of Silicon Valley's Cypress Semiconductor Corp., said, ''Give me one immigrant and I'll create five jobs for you.'' Presumably, the immigrant he's talking about is an engineer or programmer, while the five jobs created likely will be in service industries, such as sales, tourism and fast food.
His plea for more foreign workers came one day after the American kids who took the Third International Mathematics and Science Study test got their report cards.
Among the 21 mostly European nations that took part, our 12th graders outperformed only Lithuania, Cyprus and South Africa. Mercifully, Asian countries chose not to participate.
The issue is motivation. While the rest of the world is still fighting to attain the economic security most Americans now take for granted, our kids seem to spend more time with MTV than homework.
There's a loud message here for Hawaii, where 30 percent of public high schools score below and only 19 percent exceed our miserable national average in math.