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Comment by lispm | Hacker News Reader

Strange, for me that would be a sign of alarm when immigrants take ALL the top positions in competitions. Kind of a ponzi scheme, where here the scientists of the next generation are all imported. As long as people are will to come, the system appears to work - but it really does not. Those who look at the surface will be blinded by the achievements, without seeing that the achievements are based on imported brains and there is a structural problem.

It's not that the US is a small country - it should be possible that some of the not so recently arrived families have competitive children, too. Let the families live two generations in the US and they are no longer competitive or no longer motivated enough? How attractive is it really to be in the US, when the 'dream team' is all imported from 'hungry' countries... what is with the rest of the people? The need education, too. Jobs. Well paid jobs.

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Kind of a ponzi scheme, where here the scientists of the next generation are all imported.

It's so much worse, except for a very few native Americans ALL others were imported, the scheme goes back hundreds of years!

Sure that's funny. But what's with the generations that are in the US long enough? There was a huge brain import during and before the second world war. Lots of jewish scientist found a new home in the US. They had a reason to leave their home. Chinese people may want to leave their country, because it is based on a communist one party dictatorship...

But the US now has 300 Million people living there and it still has to import 'brains'? There may be less 'brain' import from Europe - since Europe now has lots of competitive science (LHC, ...). Now the current generation are immigrants from China. But what next?

But what next?

Same as always, people who have good reason to prefer the states over their country of birth will try to come here. Some will succeed. Most of those will be run of the mill folks. Some will be great, some will be tragic.

It's so much worse, except for a very few native Americans ALL others were imported, the scheme goes back hundreds of years!

Actually if we look far enough back all those natives came from Asia as well.

Don't you mean Africa?

That would be even further back than the time period I am referencing.

FWIW, he only gave 27 names, so it's safe to assume that the other 13 were names like Brooks, Sage and DeBenedictis (the overall winner.) Here is the list of finalists: http://apps.societyforscience.org/sts/69sts/finalists.asp

So not all gloom and doom for white America. Yeah the children of immigrants were over-represented with respect to their numbers here in the US, but if you step back and look at the global picture, then they are just about proportional. And I think its a good sign that the US is still an attractive place for the worlds intellectual elite to come and raise children.

Not really. New immigrants work harder, and it takes hard work to get to the top.

That edge disappears later on, when they are more established. Then they loosen up a bit, and start using their abilities to innovate as well as achieve.

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