USA: “America’s Top High School Science Students Are the Children of Immigrants”, including one from “shithole” Nigeria

With President Trump’s continued rants and rage against immigrants, here’s an old essay that may interest him and his “base”. Think of what the absence of these brilliant students would mean to U.S. colleges.

Even “shithole” Nigeria registers one of the 40 students; his/her both parents are Nigerians just like Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan.

And by the way –

• apart from the United States, Canada and Japan, there are no First World countries on the list.
• India (14) and China (11) ran away with 62.5% of these [sort of] Science Olympians whose both parents are immigrants, Singapore, South Korea – and Taiwan – Second World Asian power houses – have students whose both parents are immigrants-
• I do not see students from Finland, Norway … the types of countries Trump wants as senders of immigrants.

What is more: over a twelve-year period – 2004 – 2016, the percentage of such students increased from around 60% to over 80%.

Educational experts know that the presence of excellent students affect other students by making them better.

Thanks, Dr. Ọ̀páwọyè, for sharing this with me. Tola.

America’s Top High School Science Students Are the Children of Immigrants

Courtesy of Society for Science & the Public, March 2017

By ROB WILE

If the children of immigrants somehow disappeared from the U.S., America would suddenly be in a serious science talent deficit.

That’s the conclusion that can be drawn from a new report from the National Foundation for American Policy, a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to public policy research on trade, immigration, and education.

The organization found that 33 of the 40 finalists of the 2016 Intel Science Talent Search–the leading science competition for U.S. high school students, run by the Society for Science & the Public and now known as the Regeneron Science Talent Search–were the children of immigrants. Specifically, 30 out of the 40 finalists had parents who worked in America on H-1B visas, the option that is no longer available for expedited processing due to a recent policy change from the Trump administration.

“The science competition has been called the ‘Junior Nobel Prize,’” the Foundation says. “These outstanding children of immigrants would never have been in America if their parents had not been allowed into the U.S.”

Their ranks have been steadily increasing since 2004, the Foundation showed.

Here were the countries of origins for the 2016 finalists’ parents: India was No. 1 at 14, followed by China at No. 11.

And of the nine winners of the 2016 competition, seven were the children of immigrants.

MONDAY, APRIL 02, 2018. 2:10 P.M. [GMT]