Are there too few engineers? Enough of the shortage shouting.

"When my colleagues get a letter from a constituent who has been displaced by foreign workers, they should write back to them and say, 'It is the policy of this government to displace you, to move you into a lower economic income category, because we believe in cheap labor and we believe the

--Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.)

For the past 50 years, there have been cries of an impeding "crisis" caused by shortages of engineers and scientists. It has not come to pass, and won't. Yet Congress, bowing at the alter of corporate donations, paid trips and bribes has done whatever it can to pass legislation that benefits America's large transnational corporations at the expense of American engineers.

The following quote appeared in Forbes magazine in 1956: "Since 1947 the number of scientists and engineers employed has gone from 575,000 to 900,000. Engineers now start at $400 per month in contrast to less than $250 nine years ago. It is estimated that there is a current need for 45,000 engineers a year. We graduate only 23,000. Four-hundred men trained as nuclear scientists graduate each year. Twelve hundred are needed. The most challenging aspect of the problem lies in the fact that today only 16 percent of university students major in science or engineering, down from 25 percent since 1950, while in Russia over one-third of all students major in engineering."

Stunning isn't it!--that the story remains the same for nearly 50 years, with the only difference now being a different group of people shouting "shortage!"

We have heard from the AeA, the National Science Foundation, the Information Technology Association of America, Compete America--you name them, they all say that there is a "future crisis" in training qualified American workers. These shortages seem to always be just over the horizon, and never materialize.

In October 2000, through some unethical maneuvering, the House of Representatives, with only 40 members present and on a voice vote, voted to accept the "American Competitiveness in the 21st Century Act of 2000" (S-2045). Isn't it ironic that a bill whose main purpose was to import foreign workers willing to work for less money and replace American citizens in the country's best and most important jobs is called the "American Competitiveness in the Twenty-First Century Act?"