Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2004 23:33:31 -0700 From: Norm Matloff To: Norm Matloff Subject: myth of the immigrant math/science whiz kids To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter About a month ago, the National Foundation for American Policy released a report claiming that the H-1B program is indirectly supplying the U.S. with a population of math and science geniuses--not the H-1Bs themselves, but their CHILDREN. As you can see from the date on the WSJ editorial below, I've been saving this one for five or six weeks. The reason I've waited is that this is such a misunderstood topic that I wanted to wait until I found time to write a comprehensive analysis. I was irked to see that even the participants of a private e-mail list of anti-H-1B program/anti-offshoring activists were buying into the notion that children of H-1Bs are math and science geniuses. NFAP is actually a one-person operation (not uncommon among "think tanks" in the lobbying business), consisting only of longtime industry advocate Stuart Anderson. Anderson has been one of the more prolific writers in support of the H-1B program, authoring a report for Jack Kemp's Empower America back in 1996, several articles for International Educator, and so on. He was the (unsigned) author of the 1997 report by the ITAA lobbying organization, which was the impetus for Congress' enacting the first major H-1B increase, in 1998. Anderson went on to become a Senate staffer, authoring the 1998 and 2000 bills which expanded the H-1B program. So, this NFAP report is not the impartial document it appears to be. Nevertheless, as I said, the report formalizes a common myth, which must be addressed. Though the kids (whether or not they have immigrant parents) who do well in these contests deserve praise for their hard work, and all are of course bright students, the truth about these contests is substantially different from what most people realize. The main points are as follows: * A list of math/science contest winners is NOT a complete list of talented kids in these fields. I'll illustrate with my own daughter's school, a junior high school in the East San Francisco Bay Area. She participates in the school math club, whose main function to compete once a year in a national contest, Math Counts. Consistent with this NFAP report's findings, most of the kids in this math club (my daughter included) have at least one immigrant parent. But there are lots of kids at that school who are whizzes at math yet don't participate in the club or the contest. Indeed of the three top scorers in the school on a national math exam (AMC), two were not in the club and do not participate in the Math Counts contest. The immigrant parents really love these contests, so their kids are much more likely to participate. That then skews the percentage of winners (as does the next factor described below). * The winners of these contests tend to be from a handful of schools in the U.S. that give the kids special preparation. The most famous of the school math/science contests is the former Westinghouse Science Talent Search, which a few years ago became the Intel Science Talent Search (with another branch going to Siemens). Over the years (a trend changed recently by Intel, to its credit) the top contestants have tended to come from a small handful of schools, mostly in New York, which have special "Westinghouse programs" that groom students from Day One to do well in the contest. There is no better way to show the misleading nature of the NFAP report than to note that over the years, there have been almost no top contestants from the Bay Area, in spite of the huge population of kids of immigrant engineers and scientists in the Bay Area. The reason is that we have no schools with "Westinghouse programs" in the Bay Area. So what has counted has been what school a kid attends, not how talented he/she is. New York also has lots of immigrant kids, but the difference is that it has schools with "Westinghouse programs." [Added later in 2011: There now are such schools in the Bay Area, such as Lynwood.] But that's not even the most important point. What is most important about the Intel/Westinghouse contest is that the centerpiece of the contest--the project--is done under the "direction" of university researchers. Again, the kids work very hard on the projects, but the basic ideas are those of the university researchers, not the kids. It's a sham, folks. Now, remember when I said there are no schools with "Westinghouse programs" in the Bay Area? Well, there IS a school in the Bay Area, in the city of Cupertino, which does have a "Math Counts program," and guess what--they won the national Math Counts championship this past year. And I'm sure one of the reasons the Cupertino school does have a "Math Counts program" is due to pressure from the immigrant parents, who as I said earlier, love these contests. (Cupertino, in the heart of Silicon Valley, is one of the most heavily Chinese/Indian immigrant populated cities in the nation.) I think it's great that they have such a program, but again winning these contests is often a matter of what school a kid attends, rather than his/her actual talent, so again there is a non-talent reason for the disproportionate number of immigrants in the list of top contestants. * Many immigrants are willing to go to herculean extremes to win these contests. Nothing wrong with that--one has to admire such incredible dedication--but it surely puts in proper perspective the results of the contests. The contest mentioned in the WSJ editorial below--the National Spelling Bee--is a perfect case in point. I do urge you to rent the documentary they cite, "Spellbound" at your local video store. It is a fascinating closeup look at national school contests. Relevant here is that one of the kids profiled in the documentary is the son of an obviously well-off Indian immigrant. They live in a beautiful house on a hill overlooking the ocean in San Clemente. The parents went all out on the spelling project, sparing no expense. They collected statistical data on all the words ever used in the contest, data on which kinds of words tend to stump the kids, etc. They hired a spelling coach. They hired a French teacher--not to teach French to the kid, but to help him understand French spelling patterns so that he can more easily guess French-derived words in English which show up in the contest! They did the same thing for Spanish and German! He studied eight hours a day for the contest, over the course of a couple of years. He participated twice, and rose to one of the top slots both times. Again, good for him, but it shows that there are factors at work here which are not quite so admirable, e.g. the excessive use of family funds and wherewithal. I am also enclosing below an article about two daughters of Indian immigrant professors, both girls being huge success stories. In this case my statement "Good for them" is especially meaningful, as I know the parents a bit, having been somewhat acquainted with them years ago. I am delighted that their kids have done so well. But this aspect of the story will grab many people: Her parents take some credit, too. When they came to the United States from India nearly 20 years ago, they learned about academic competitions such as Westinghouse. "We said, 'Can our children do it?' " said Doraiswamy Ramachandran,Sohini's father. The answer, now proven, is yes. But it was not easy. "It takes a lot of effort to really plan out," said her mother, Geetha Ramachandran. Preparing a Westinghouse winner begins in fifth grade, Sohini's father said. It's not only the precocious math teaching, which not every parent is equipped to do. Again, congratulations to the Ramachandran family. My only point, though, is that there are plenty of kids who are great at science who just don't have those advantages, not to mention pressures. So, it doesn't mean that the top contestants in the contest are the only good scientists in the nation. * Doing well in these contests does not mean the participant is a "science genius." See above. Doing well in these contests comes from extremely hard work and the right connections, NOT brilliance in research. [Added later: For a much more detailed look at this point, see http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/ObamaStateOfUnion.txt] * Anderson is trying to use this report to support the industry's lobbying for an expansive H-1B program, but he is ignoring a major problem--the H-1B program is resulting in Americans who are talented in math and science being pushed OUT of the tech fields. Ironically, that includes the American kids whose parents are immigrants. Yes, Stuart, the H-1B program, together with offshoring, has made it very difficult for these kids whose virtues you extol so much to actually have careers in math and science. Norm Wall Street Journal Editorial REVIEW & OUTLOOK Give Us Your Nerds July 16, 2004; Page A12 If Emma Lazarus were composing her Lady Liberty sonnet today, she might consider that line. But who would have guessed in 1883 that immigrants and their children would be so vital to America's technological prowess more than 100 years later? So much of today's contentious immigration debate focuses on those arriving from Latin America to work in agriculture or take low-level service jobs that Americans tend to spurn. But a new study by Stuart Anderson of the National Foundation for American Policy reminds us that the contributions of skilled foreign-born professionals and their offspring are no less important to the U.S. Without them the country would be hard pressed to maintain its world-wide advantage in such fields as math and science. The report, titled "The Multiplier Effect," will be released on Monday and available at www.nfap.net. Here are some highlights: More than half of the engineers with Ph.D.s working in the U.S., and 45% of the nation's computer science doctorates, are foreign-born. Children of immigrants comprise 65% of the 2004 U.S. Math Olympiad's top scorers (13 of 20) and 46% of the U.S. Physics Team (11 of 24). At this year's Intel Science Talent Search, which recognizes the nation's top math and science students, 60% of the finalists and seven of the top 10 award winners were immigrants or their children. Last year, three of the top four awardees were foreign-born. Traditionally, these rigorous competitions have served as a font for the next generation of scientists and mathematicians. More than 95% of Intel Science Talent Search winners pursue science as a career, and 70% go on to earn an advanced degree. But the high rate of success among foreigners is even more extraordinary when you consider the tiny segment of the population that generates it. While the whiz kids and their parents hail from nations as far-flung as India, Romania, China, Vietnam, Israel, Turkey and Russia, many are here on a very limited number of H-1b visas that are reserved for immigrants with technical skills. These visas are given out to fewer than 100,000 foreigners each year, which is less than .04% of the 293 million individuals who live in the U.S. Anyone who saw "Spellbound," the captivating documentary about the annual National Spelling Bee, knows that math and science aren't the only subjects in which immigrants excel. And policy makers will surely continue to explore why it is that American students aren't competing better in these areas. At the same time these findings help illustrate that our economy benefits substantially from immigration, in particular from H-1b visa recipients and their children. Any policy that would depress the influx or close off our borders altogether is not in America's long-term interest, especially in a world where economic growth and competitiveness will depend above all on human capital. If we had listened to the anti-immigration crowd over the past 20 years, says Mr. Anderson in an interview, "we would have wiped out two-thirds of the top future scientist and mathematicians in the United States because we would have barred their parents from ever entering America." The Sacramento Bee Fair Oaks teen, like sister, is on academic fast track By Carlos Alcal Bee Staff Writer Jan. 28, 1998 They have so much in common. The academic trajectories of Sohini Ramachandran,15, and her older sister, Rageshree,are both rocket rides to the top. Both can notch their calculators with early high school graduation from Rio Americano. Both competed strongly in national spelling bees (Rageshree was national champ in 1988, when she was 13.) And, as of Tuesday, both have been named finalists in the prestigious Westinghouse Science Talent Search. Sohini was named this year for a computer analysis of plant DNA sequences. Her work, done under the guidance of a Stanford researcher, put her among only 40 national finalists vying for $205,000 in scholarships. Rageshree, now 22, was one of the top 10 Westinghouse scholars when she competed. The winners will be announced March 8, but even as finalists, they are winners. Former finalists include several Nobel Prize winners, MacArthur Foundation Fellows and National Medal of Science winners. There are differences between the academic sisters from Fair Oaks, though. "When we quarreled, I would say, 'I can be president of the United States and you can't,' " Sohini said. Her sister was born in India, while she was born here. "We still laugh about it." Political aspirations aside, Sohini sees herself as an outgoing questioner of accepted knowledge, while her sister is more of a quiet polymath. But Sohini -- the youngest Westinghouse finalist this year -- does seem to be following a trail blazed by Rageshree. Unlike many younger siblings of academic stars, Sohini doesn't resent the comparison. "I really tried to model myself after her," she said. "I don't feel like I was growing up in her shadow." It's a significant shadow, but Sohini is casting a big one of her own, sometimes almost upstaging her sister. At Rageshree's Stanford graduation (she entered at 16), Sohini made an impression on Stanford President Gerhard Casper by speaking to him in German. He asked when she would be enrolling. And at a mathematics convention with her parents, she chatted about Fermat's Last Theorem with Gerhard Frey, a German scholar renowned in part for his contributions to solving that long-intractable math puzzler. Her German was learned outside school, and well enough to get a top score on the Advanced Placement exam when she was a freshman. She's already taken five of the rigorous tests and expects to take five more this year. She will graduate from high school this year at 16. She's worked her way through the calculus sequence at CSU Sacramento, where her parents are math professors, and has moved on to statistics. And she's having fun -- yes fun -- with challenging advanced placement courses. She couldn't name a favorite: "I really liked every one," she said. However, there is a special place in her heart (or at least her mind) for mathematics. "It's so beautiful when you can take a big problem and simplify it to a small answer," she said, almost glowing with pleasure. Sohini sees math as a universal language and a logical foundation for almost every other field. Her parents started teaching the girls mathematics at early ages. At 3 -- they were reading by that age, too -- their mother had them learning to count and recognize numbers. It progressed from there. Sohini credits her sister for teaching her, albeit unintentionally, multiplication tables. When she would come home from school, Rageshree would find her homework interrupted by a pesky little sister. "I used to be really bothersome," Sohini said. Rageshree's solution was to write out a bunch of multiplication tables and tell her sister not to come back until she had memorized them. "I really credit that to her," Sohini said. Her parents take some credit, too. When they came to the United States from India nearly 20 years ago, they learned about academic competitions such as Westinghouse. "We said, 'Can our children do it?' " said Doraiswamy Ramachandran,Sohini's father. The answer, now proven, is yes. But it was not easy. "It takes a lot of effort to really plan out," said her mother, GeethaRamachandran. Preparing a Westinghouse winner begins in fifth grade, Sohini's father said. It's not only the precocious math teaching, which not every parent is equipped to do. Sohini and Rageshree grew up surrounded by books and scholars and have traveled widely. "They realized that being a scientist is not just sitting in an ivory tower," Doraiswamy Ramachandran said. Today, Rageshree is in medical school at the University of Pennsylvania, with designs on a combined medical degree and Ph.D. in science. Sohini seems destined to follow a similar path -- 70 percent of Westinghouse finalists do become either doctors or Ph.D.s. But she's not clear about what subject she will combine with mathematics. She's interested in law, economics, biology. Nor is she sure where she'll go to college. She's applied to 13 schools and leans toward Princeton, Harvard, Stanford and MIT, but must wait until April to find out where she's accepted. Copyright © 1998 The Sacramento Bee