60-80% of graduate students in STEM fields in the U.S. are international students. It seems like having 60-80% fewer graduates would accelerate the decline of American science.
CS went from less than 50% to nearly 80% foreign graduate students over 10 years. Quite interesting!
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2017/10/11/foreign...
"Science" is addicted to cheap foreign labor, which has ruined the market for natives.
I'm not sure what your point was with the casual dismissal of 70 years of research in every field besides lithography. Am I supposed to think that international students only work on lithography? Most lithography research, as far as I'm aware, doesn't even happen in academia.
Your first point is a red herring: the presence of cheap labor in the sciences and the lack of decent jobs makes it unattractive to any sane person who was born in a first world country.
Schools aren't accepting foreign students because they're cheaper. They actually have greater apprehension about foreign students, because their language skills might be lacking, and because the American professors judging the applications might not personally know the foreign professors writing the recommendation letters.
Science is largely done by graduate students and postdocs. Professors are busy writing grants, teaching classes, advising students and sitting on committees. Their role in science is largely managerial, and in providing overall vision. All the grunt work and detail gets done by people below them. My point is that having smart and capable students is critical.
If you go into a top STEM department in the US, you'll probably see that a large majority of students are foreigners. If you were to exclude them, you could replace them with Americans, but those Americans would, on average, have lower grades, lower test scores and less previous research experience. Their work would not be as good, and the productivity of the department would fall.
The excluded students would instead go to top universities in other countries. Those universities would begin doing better research as a result. My prediction is that within a decade, you would see Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, UC Berkeley et al. fall off the top of the rankings, replaced by the top universities in Europe, one or two universities in Canada, and perhaps a few Asian universities.
If they are replaced by less capable students then the work being done will be of a lower quality.
They often do have more money. And rampant cheating. But regardless, Chinese students can attend any university in China or the US, while an American cannot realistically attend school in China. Obviously that means China is going to have a brighter educational future, as they use our system to advance their own.
It makes a very big difference in getting there.