Submitted by Joe D, Feb 23, 2008 10:30

While not suggesting that America prevent foreign students and scientists from studying here, it is a mystery as to why the US should fund any of these individuals that come from wealthy nations. While a case can be made to extend educational aid to students from poor nations, no such case can be made for students and scientists from China, Russia, India and other nations that have accumulated huge foreign exchange reserves.

The biomedical sciences example below is slightly outdated in spots but the point remains the same; students and scientists from wealthy nations should be funded by those nations to do work here. It makes no sense to take dollars away from American scientists to train and support the research of foreign scientists.

The NIH has distributed over 80 million dollars for funding research overseas in the current fiscal year. In the previous two years combined over ('05 and '06) 600 million dollars of NIH funds were distributed to foreign scientists and institutions.

http://silk.nih.gov/public/cbz2zoz.@www.fy2006.foreign.csv
(83,840,733 - 2006)

http://silk.nih.gov/public/cbz2zoz.@www.fy2005.foreign.csv
(284,337,954 - 2005)

http://silk.nih.gov/public/cbz2zoz.@www.fy2004.foreign.csv
(352,582,195 - 2004)

http://grants.nih.gov/grants/award/state/fy2003.foreign.txt

Funding of grants overseas cited above is in addition to NIH-funding of foreign scientists in the United States, be they graduate students, post docs, or research scientists who are funded off of a Principal Investigator's grant, or the Principal Investigator him/herself. If these foreign scientists want to study in the US then they should compete for funds in their home country to support their research here. If this seem's harsh consider the following:

As a result of many years of persistent trade surpluses with the United States, Asian countries now hold two-thirds of the $4 trillion of foreign exchange reserves worldwide.

China now has a record US$1.5 trillion reserve, recently overtaking Japan (about one trillion) as the world's biggest holder. Russia holds 1/2 trillion, India and South Korea are closing in on 300 billion. Obviously these countries have the funds to support their scientists and science graduate students seeking to work or study here. Just as obvious is that this would free up more funds for American scientists.

Note: Comments are screened, and in some cases edited, before posting. We reserve the right to reject anything we find objectionable.