As the 2000 Olympic Games prepare to open in Sydney, sports fans around the world will continue to see new records being set-especially in endurance events such as swimming, cycling and long-distance running-predicts a scientist studying the physiological limits of athletic performance.
Writing in the September/October issue of The Sciences, University of Cambridge biochemist Guy C. Brown reports that world records in many events have not begun to taper off and, in fact, they seem to show steady improvement with each passing decade.
“If there is a physiological maximum to the running speed of a human being, one would expect that as athletes approached that limit, improvements would become both rarer and smaller,” Brown says. “Remarkably, neither of those trends has shown up, with world-record running times having declined almost linearly in the past hundred years.”
Rates of Improvement
Brown notes, for example, that the men’s record for the 1,500-meter run decreased from 4:06.2 in 1900 to 3:26.0 in 1998, at roughly ten-second intervals every quarter century. He also points out that although women have generally been unable to match men’s records, their world marks are improving faster than the men’s are.
“If the rates of improvement continue, women will outrun men in most events by the year 2035, and much sooner in endurance events such as the marathon,” Brown says. According to projections made by The Sciences of world-record times for selected events, women will surpass the men’s record in the 10,000-meter run by the year 2020.
In his article, Brown looks closely at the chain of events that begins with the intake of oxygen by the lungs and ends with the consumption of energy by the contracting muscles. He also takes a peek at the future, when advanced surgeries, implants and genetic engineering may play a role in athletic performance.
It seems that not a day goes by without hearing about some new advance in the area of genetics. Whether it is mapping a new chromosome or finding a new marker for disease, the pace of discovery is sometimes awe-inspiring.
Recently, I was reading an article in a well-known science magazine about the mapping of Chromosome 21. The gist of the article was that with the recent mapping of this chromosome, much more can now be learned about Down syndrome. This is exciting news indeed. However, one phrase in particular struck me—the use of “devastating disease” to describe Down syndrome. These two words have tremendous implications for how we move ahead in this age of genetics, what we choose to study, and how we perceive ourselves and those around us.
Having worked with Down syndrome children and other children and adults with various developmental delays and special needs, I immediately questioned: “devastating” to whom? To the child with Down syndrome, to the parents of that child, or to society? Along those same lines, who determines when something is “devastating”? And finally, who determines how we treat something, or whether we treat something, that others consider “devastating”?
Questions Left Unasked
Such questions have long been asked by groups working with adults and children with special needs. I am reminded, for example, of the debate regarding the use of cochlear implants to help certain hearing-impaired children experience sounds. But all too often the questions are left unasked by policymakers, or by the scientists making the discoveries.
The answers to these seemingly simple questions are not always clear-cut. What is devastating to one person may not be to another. What is perceived as devastating by one culture may not be seen the same by another.
However, it is important to make sure these questions are asked as we move forward making discoveries about our genetic makeup. Indeed, as more is learned and we are able to effect changes in people as a result, asking such questions will be critical. The way they are answered will prove even more so, for it will say much about how we perceive humanity.
Based on employment, education is the single largest functional section of government in the region, employing 832,000 workers in 1998. Together, the state and local governments of the Tri-State region spend some $53 billion (6% of the gross regional product) on public education each year.
UPSHOT: Not Short of Resources
The regional pattern is similar to those in states nationwide. So the region’s schools do not seem to suffer from a lack of manpower or funding (see below). If there are improvements to be made, they will most likely need to focus not on increasing resources, but improving the way they are used and distributed.
Public K-12 Spending
TREND: More and More Money…
State and local governments in the region have nearly quadrupled their constant dollar per-pupil resource commitments to public elementary and secondary education in the last four decades. Indeed, New York has quintupled these resources and now spends twice as much per public school student as California.
UPSHOT: Reflects Rising Public Commitment
While debate over the content of the curriculum and the quality of the output persists, there is little question that education’s importance as a community value has become central to public decision making. A recent survey found education to be the #1 voter concern for the upcoming presidential election.
Higher Education
TREND: State Budgets Compare Poorly to Nation
Compared to the national average, the Tri-State region commits only a small fraction of state and local budget resources to higher education. New York’s 4.5% commitment gives it the dubious honor of ranking last in the nation on this measure. But perhaps there is comfort in community: Connecticut ranks 47th and New Jersey 45th.
UPSHOT: Questions About Priorities
If where you put your money reflects what you hold dear, higher education spending may raise questions about state priorities in an increasingly technology-driven economy. All three states are also falling below the national average on state per capita spending on higher education; in Connecticut’s case, nearly 30% below.
Tuition And Debt Are on The Move (Upward, Of Course)
Tuition inflation, like grade inflation, is no secret. Between 1995 and 1998, the total cost of tuition, room, and board to attend a public college in the Tri-State region rose about 14-19% across the three states. That’s roughly in line with the national average rise of 14%. How are students coping? Analysis of the Stafford federal student loan program indicates that the debt burden of undergraduates in the nation increased by 19% between 1995 and 1999.
Community college students saw an increase of 33%, and most striking, graduate students’ average debt more than doubled. The real affordability story is in the repayment burden. A good rule of thumb is that loan payments shouldn’t be more than 8% of monthly earnings. Today’s buoyant economy seems to be keeping debts in line, although graduate student debt is starting to push precarious heights.
U.S. Census Bureau, “Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1999”; National Center for Education Statistics, “Digest of Education Statistics 1999.”
Dot-com entrepreneurs may be today’s darlings of the trading floor, but a technology-intense economy rests on a much broader base of workers. Of particular, but often unrecognized, importance in educating these workers are the region’s 214 community colleges, serving about 225,000 full-time students each year.
From the point of view of producing associate degree employees with technical skills, the challenge set before community colleges has been significant: Between 1990 and 1997, employment in the computer and data processing services industry grew by 57% in the Tri-State region, and it is expected to lead growth in the coming decade.
But community colleges have managed to keep pace. Over the same 1990-97 period, the number of students earning associate degrees in computer and information sciences each year in the region nearly doubled. The Tri-State region awards more associate degrees in this field than California, which has a significantly larger computer services industry.
In engineering and related fields, the number of degrees since 1993 is declining slightly. However, this is also a reflection of the regional job market. The engineering and architectural services industry, one of the main employers for engineering technicians, has also been shrinking.
Federal Money for Adult Job Training
Federal resources for adult job training available to the region have nearly doubled since 1993. In addition to $311 million in Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) funding, the region receives about $125 million each year in Department of Education funding for vocational and adult education. Of course, the key to the effectiveness of Federal funds is their use. The new federal Workforce Investment Act emphasizes the need for “one-stop career centers.” Connecticut and New Jersey have made considerable strides in establishing such centers, but New York is still finding its footing.
Regional Teacher Training and Pay Compares Well with U.S.
One of the keys to quality education is quality teaching. Although much has been written about the sad state of some of the Tri-State region’s K-12 schools, the region’s teaching corps compares well with teachers in other technology-intense states. All three states score above the national average (which, admittedly, was a D+!) in the national teacher quality report developed and issued by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. New York State, with a B-, tied for fifth place nationally.
Considering training of science and math teachers, the three states outperform the nation and many of their economic competitors. Between 80% and 90% of the region’s science teachers in grades 7-12 hold an academic major in science, compared to 70% nationally and only 60% in California. In math, New Jersey lags the nation, but over 80% of math teachers in New York and Connecticut hold majors in math. This compares to 70% nationally and only 50% in California.
While the region’s science and math teachers stand up well to other states, there is still room for improvement compared to other subjects. By the same measure of having a major in the field, the region’s social studies, English, and foreign language teachers are, on average, better trained than their math and science colleagues.
Regionally Competitive
Teacher pay is also relatively competitive in the region. Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey are national leaders in teacher salary, ranking 1-3-4 (Alaska holds second place). Even when adjusted for cost of living differences between the states, all three still remain in the top five.
Regional teacher salaries are closer to the average pay of other professionals holding similar degrees than they are in the rest of the nation as well. Salaries are far more market-friendly than in Texas, for example, where the teaching/non-teaching gap is more than $20,000 per year. Indeed, the gap in Connecticut is only about $7,000.
But over time, the salary gaps worsen. Upward salary potential outside the teaching profession rapidly overtakes wage increases that teachers receive. Nationally, at ages 22-28 the average salary gap for all teachers is about $7,000. By ages 44-50 the gap has tripled, with teachers earning $24,000 per year less than their comparable counterparts. In the labor market, it appears that experience tends to pay more elsewhere.
National Center for Education Statistics, Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS); Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York Departments of Labor
Council of Chief State School Officers, “State Indicators of Science and Mathematics Education 1999”; Education Week, “Quality Counts 2000.”
Exploring the ways in which scientists are depicted, often in less-than-flattering ways, in movies. But is this just a reflection of the public’s conflicting attitudes toward scientists?
Genetically modified food is a hot topic today. Advocates point to its tremendous potential, while detractors highlight concerns about possible environmental and health effects. At times, debates degenerate to name-calling, with some critics referring to the crops and their resulting products as “Frankenfoods.”
Mulling this over recently after reading still another article about “Frankenfoods,” I thought about how such a term paints a stereotypical picture of the “mad scientist” in his or her laboratory, reaching beyond what is reasonable without any regard for the potential impact on humanity. This, unfortunately, is not an uncommon portrayal. There are numerous examples of negative portrayals of scientists in popular culture.
Take, for example, motion pictures. With only few exceptions (most notably, Indiana Jones), scientists are characterized at best as bumbling geeks as in Flubber or Back to the Future. Lovable characters, to be sure, but eccentric to say the least. At other times, they are depicted as playing god – as in Jurassic Park. And last but not least is the portrayal of scientists as downright conniving and evil, as in The Island of Dr. Moreau or various James Bond movies.
The Public’s Conflicting Attitudes Toward Scientists
I am not the first to ponder these stereotypes. In an article in the November/December 1998 issue of The Sciences, M.Z. Ribalow explains that the filmmakers’ depictions are based on the public’s conflicting attitudes toward scientists. “We want what they have, but fear what they will do with it,” he observes. “Often, we admire their intellectual curiosity, but doubt whether they understand the full implications of their knowledge. We need them, but mistrust both them and our need.”
The way scientists as a group communicate—or fail to communicate—with the public is partly responsible for this mistrust and fear, and that can be changed over time. However, there is an underlying issue, exemplified by the debates over genetically modified foods, that must be addressed as communication is improved.
Scientists push the frontiers of current knowledge by challenging existing theory. Sometimes entire belief systems may be uprooted as a result of scientific findings. In other words, scientists challenge us to question who we are and the way we understand the world–– something not every society welcomes. Such reluctance to face the implications of scientific findings cannot be minimized or ignored. Better communication alone will not resolve the conflicting public attitudes toward scientists unless that communication is based on mutual understanding—the public better understanding scientists, and scientists better understanding society.
The New York Academy of Sciences’ (the Academy’s) most valuable asset is the knowledge and experience of its members. Ninety-year-old Adnan Waly — an Academy member for 49 years, and an active member of its Lyceum Society — has watched and been a part of the unfolding of the “century of physics.”
During his long career, he had personal contact with almost all the eminent scientists working in or passing through Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. Waly shared his memories in an extensive series of interviews with Professor Martin Pope. Evelyn Samuel transcribed the entire series, which is available at the Niels Bohr Library of the American Institute of Physics.
Following are some selected highlights:
High-Voltage Mistakes
“We had a one-million-volt pulse generator, but if you activated this, all the instruments in the institute would break down. So the whole room was coated in aluminum in order to protect the other instruments, and I was standing beautifully on aluminum and adjusting the spark gaps. In order to make photographic exposures of some discharges, the control table was separated by a dark curtain so the one on the controls could not see the generator.
“Brasch [Arno] was at the controls, and when I had just adjusted the last spark he misunderstood something I said and switched the thing on. The current entered my arm. I had an insulating rod in my hand, and it broke into a million pieces. The current went through my body and out through my feet. I got an incredible cramp in my lungs, and my lungs collapsed totally.
“No air. I collapsed. The soles of my feet had big blisters where the current went out, and my arm was paralyzed for three days. Brasch came running over and dragged me to a nice comfortable chair. Then he did something else – he lost his head. He went into his bag – I’ll never forget this – and took out a piece of cake, which he knew I liked. Then he stuffed this in my mouth. I almost suffocated. I’ll never forget that. He almost killed me a second time.”
A Visit with the Gestapo
“When Hitler came to power, Max von Laue tried to recommend Jewish scientists to universities in the States, but he could not send letters as the mail was opened. I could travel because I had an Egyptian passport. My wife — at that time, my girlfriend — was Jewish. I went to the Egyptian embassy and said, ‘I’m an Egyptian.’ I didn’t know anything about Egypt — my father [who was from Egypt] had died when I was two years old. I pestered them until I got an Egyptian passport for myself and my wife.
“So I had an Egyptian passport and could travel. I traveled once to Egypt and twice to Holland to deliver the letters of von Laue. The Gestapo then asked me to come to their headquarters. It is very unpleasant to be summoned to Gestapo headquarters. A barred iron door closed behind me, and I was quizzed by two investigators for quite a while about why I traveled so much.
“At that time I had a very good imagination and an excellent memory. I concocted all sorts of stories, which they tried to pierce and defuse. After a few hours they bought my story. I had posted a friend in a car and told him to go to the Egyptian Consulate and tell them what happened if I didn’t return in five hours. But I was released.”
Art Meets Science at the Academy
“I was at The New York Academy of Sciences attending a lecture of the Nuclear Section. I found a seat in an empty row because not too many people were interested in nuclear physics at the time. The door opened, and in came a gentleman flanked by two gorgeous women. It was Salvadore Dali with his moustache and his cane. He sat in my row with the ladies, and he put his cane up, two hands on the cane and his chin resting on it, as was his habit. He looked at the pictures that were presented.
“One of the pictures was of a cloud chamber — a photograph of particles moving apart from a center. Some time afterwards I saw a television program where Dali was interviewed, and his latest painting was exactly what he had seen at the Academy, with tracks coming out from the center. ‘You don’t know what this is?’ Dali said to the interviewer. ‘These are pimmesons.’ The lecture had been on the π meson.”
Nikitin says it was his wife, Tatyana, who made sure the world didn’t forget about him.
Tatyana Tchernova tried to maintain some human contact with the unannounced visitors. She offered them something to eat. It was the middle of the night, October 5, 1995, in her tiny apartment in St. Petersburg. The men were from the FSB, the Russian secret police, and were trying to find evidence that would put her husband, Aleksandr Nikitin, in jail or even have him executed.
That same morning Aleksandr Nikitin had returned from Moscow having learned that he would be issued visas from the Canadian embassy. Those visas would have allowed him to take his family to Toronto and start a new life. There had started to be friction between what he did for a living, his conscience, and his country.
Nikitin’s line of work was nuclear energy. Specifically, he knew about nuclear reactors on military submarines. He had been chief mechanic on a nuclear submarine in the Russian navy, and then a senior safety inspector. When Nikitin began talking about the danger of nuclear accidents in the northern fleet of submarines publicly expressing concerns about the future of 100 decommissioned vessels afloat in the North Sea and the growing threat presented by nuclear waste in the area, some began to see him as a threat. When he collaborated with the Norwegian environmental organization Bellona to tell the story and to ask for help from the international community in containing the environmental hazard, the FSB came to visit.
Psychological Warfare
From left: Board of Governors Chair Bill Green, Russian engineer Aleksandr Nikitin, and Joseph L.Birman, chair of the Academy’s Committee on Human Rights of Scientists and Distinguished Professor of Physics at the City College of New York.
Nikitin was charged repeatedly with treason and with revealing state secrets. He spent 10 months in prison. “The first two months,” he says, “was an attempt to destroy me psychologically.” He and his family were harassed repeatedly. They were followed. Their tires were slashed. He was indicted eight times and tried twice, each trial leading to neither conviction nor acquittal. The prosecution was told to keep trying. “Prosecution turned into persecution on a human level,” says Irwin Cotler, a Montreal-based lawyer who has followed the case.
On December 29, 1999, Nikitin was acquitted on all charges by the St. Petersburg City Court. He barely had time to celebrate before the prosecution appealed the decision to the Russian Supreme Court. Nevertheless, observers hope that this last verdict will permanently deflate the prosecution’s case, and the verdict was celebrated as a major victory by The New York Academy of Sciences and by human rights and environmental organizations around the world.
The most dangerous point in Nikitin’s journey was probably those early days before the world had heard of his case – while he was still just one man against a machine rooted in Soviet-era police tactics. Nikitin says it was his wife, Tatyana, who made sure the world didn’t forget about him. “She was constantly doing something,” he says. “She made phone calls and found people everywhere. All the people who are standing by me now, she got them involved in my case.”
The Academy Fights for Nikitin’s Release
On April 17, 2000, Nikitin won the final victory in the four-year nightmarish espionage case against him. The Russian Supreme Court confirmed the December 1999 judgment of the St. Petersburg City Court to dismiss all charges against Nikitin. Although the prosecution has a year in which it can appeal the decision, in all likelihood this judgement brings Nikitin’s ordeal to a happy conclusion.
Working with The Bellona Foundation, the Sierra Club, and Amnesty International, the Academy mounted an intense lobbying effort in Washington, D.C. In addition, John Gillespie, Professor and Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Lehman College, City University of New York, and a member of the Academy’s Human Rights Committee, spent time in St. Petersburg as an observer during the trial.
This case was the result of Nikitin’s contributions to the Bellona report entitled “The Russian Northern Fleet: Sources of Radioactive Contamination.” The report described the dangers associated with Russia’s nuclear-powered vessels, the storage of spent nuclear fuel, and other radioactive waste generated by the vessels.
“There was no crime.”
For his efforts to expose this environmental threat to the Russian public, Nikitin was accused of espionage by the FSB, the successor to the Soviet-era KGB. He was imprisoned for several months and repeatedly placed on trial during the past four years. Nikitin consistently maintained that all information he contributed to the report was publicly available and that the world community needed to know about the dangerous storage practices of nuclear waste in the Russian navy. Therefore, he stated, such information could not be classified as secret under the Russian Constitution. This latest trial involved the eighth set of charges made against Nikitin since 1996.
“Of course there was no crime,” Nikitin explained. “The Bellona report just describes one of the main environmental challenges for Russia. Information about nuclear hazards, waste, and accidents onboard nuclear submarines is no threat to national security. It is the nuclear problems that constitute a threat to Russia.”
Speaking after the Supreme Court ruling, Nikitin said a lot of work needs to be done to turn this personal victory into one for the country.
“I’ll continue to work with my colleagues at Bellona and to work for safe handling of the radioactive waste stored in the Murmansk area. We also have to work to support other environmentalists in Russia who are facing FSB trouble-makers,” he said.
Nikitin is the director of Bellona St. Petersburg, one of the international affiliates of the Bellona Foundation. He also heads the Environmental Rights Center, an organization that protects the legal rights of citizens to due process and legal protection in environmental cases.
Music is a part of all human cultures – and of almost every individual’s life, from infancy to death. We are uniquely able to produce and respond to music. It’s time we took it seriously.
This spring, the Academy will host a conference on the Biological Foundations of Music that should help us begin to understand why and how the human brain has such an affinity for music as well as an ability to process its language.
“There seems to be some kind of innate predisposition that our species has to produce music,” says Robert Zatorre of the Montreal Neurological Institute, who co-organized the conference along with Isabelle Peretz of the Department of Psychology at the University of Montreal. “Small children are able to do fairly sophisticated things musically, without any training. We tend to overlook this because it’s so simple for us,” he adds. “Our brains do an excellent job of encoding complex patterns. It’s the converse of what computers are good at.”
Computers are still lumbering buffoons at the simple act of recognizing a tune, however, and Zatorre believes that looking at how the brain processes music can provide a unique avenue for understanding brain function. “There are many aspects of brain function that we still don’t understand,” he says. “If you want to know what’s unique about the human brain, you have to look at those functions that distinguish us from other species. In the world of sound processing, the perception of speech and the perception of musical sounds are the two that distinguish us from every other species. We talk to each other and we play music.”
Music, Biology, and the Brain
The Biological Foundations of Music Conference rewards many years of lonely work by a relatively small group of researchers. Both Zatorre and Peretz combined science and music in graduate school when few others considered the field a respectable line of inquiry. “I thought I was the only one on earth doing it,” Peretz says of her early years in graduate school in Belgium.
Nevertheless, both she and Zatorre stuck with their interests, and over the course of the past 10 years the field has begun to be seen as a respectable line of inquiry and to gather serious attention. The upcoming conference, which will be held at The Rockefeller University in New York City, May 20-22, is “the first serious conference on music and the brain anywhere in the world,” according to Rashid Shaikh, Director of Science and Technology Meetings for the Academy.
More than 20 presentations and discussions will be included on topics such as the origins of music, the question of music as an evolutionary adaption, neural processing of complex sounds, electrophysiology of pitch, the history of neurology and music, tonal processing, brain plasticity and musical training, music and emotion, and music and other cognitive functions such as the “Mozart effect.”
After millennia on the ground, we’re headed back to the treetops. That’s what Bruce Rinker would like, anyway. Rinker, an avowed acrophobe, has shinnied his way into the tops of trees from Africa to New York, from Central and South America to Florida. The science of canopy ecology is a new frontier, he says. And the view will knock your socks off.
“The U.S. and Europe spent a lot of time and money training ecologists to go into the tropics,” says Rinker. “And we learned about all these new species and new processes in the upper canopy. It didn’t take us long to ask: ‘If this is going on here, what’s going on back home?’”
Rinker and other canopy ecologists are starting to get answers to that question. On December 16, Rinker spoke to The New York Academy of Sciences’ (the Academy’s) Engineering Section about some of the findings of this new science. “Neotropical migrants—warblers and tanagers—stratify as they move through the forest,” he says. “Some never come out of the treetops.”
Rinker was introduced to the science of canopy ecology in 1991 when he was part of the U.S. team of an expedition into the treetops in Cameroon, Africa. Enthralled by the possibilities of these new techniques, he brought the technology home to the Millbrook School in New York, where he is Chairman of the Science Department and Project Director of the Forest Canopy Walkway. Built in 1995, this is one of only five such canopy research facilities in the United States.
An Amazing Miricle of Color and Noise
Rinker lights up when asked to describe the reactions of animals to his presence 120 feet off the ground. “One cold, overcast, and breezy Sunday, we no sooner got into the treetops when we could hear a swarm of neotropical migrants coming toward us. Within moments we were completely enveloped in this flock like a swarm of bees. They were literally walking on us black-throated blue warblers walking on my chest, on my shoes. There were grosbeaks and tanagers everywhere. It was the most amazing miracle of color and noise I’ve ever witnessed. It seemed as though they were oblivious to our presence. Then, in a couple of minutes, it was all over.”
Rinker is convinced of the utility of this new science and technology, but he would like to broaden its reach. “Traditionally the word canopy has referred to the upper layer of vegetation in the forest,” he explains. “We’re redefining the word, and it has upset some people. The problem is that there are all sorts of nooks and crannies and valleys and troughs. We’re redefining the word canopy to mean the entire forest system, from ground up. This means that not only can forests have canopies, but you can have sugar cane fields with canopies. You can have a golf course lawn with canopies. A kelp forest with canopies. Even the stromatolites of Australia define a canopy.
”Who knows what kind of insects and microclimate differences we will find,” he concludes.” This is all brand new.”
The Tri-State region has always been a magnet for immigrants. And nothing diversifies like diversity. The region’s bountiful collage of cultures and accessibility to global transportation continues to attract the largest portion of the nation’s immigrants. From 1994 to 1996, the region accounted for 24.7% of all legal, permanent immigrants, surpassing even California’s 23.6%.
That total influx to the region included 10,000 scientists and engineers (S&E), providing an important source of skilled personnel for both academic and industrial institutions. The vast majority of these S&E immigrants, 89%, settled in the 25-county area surrounding New York City.
The three counties with the most S&E immigrants were New York City’s Queens, Kings, and New York counties. However, the concentration of S&E immigrants within the overall immigration pattern is higher outside of New York City. While only 42% of all new immigrants to the Tri-State region settled outside New York City between 1994 and 1996, 64% of the S&E immigrants did. Communities in northern and central New Jersey, in fact, attracted only 22% of the region’s total immigration, but reeled in a whopping 38% of scientists and engineers.
Outside NYC Metro: Immigration and Concentration
Outside the 25-county area surrounding New York City there are still strong pockets of S&E immigrants, but the concentration is striking. Five counties account for 62% of the scientists and engineer flow outside the NYC Metro area. The five dominant counties are home either to academic and corporate S&E powerhouses (like Rochester with its academic, medical, and technology complex) or to industrial headquarters requiring significant technology and information systems input (like Hartford).
Immigrant Workforce Bolsters Region’s Skill Base
During the past twenty years, foreign-born workers have come to represent a steadily increasing share of the workforce of the Tri-State region. Immigration to the U.S. in the 1990s rivaled the peak period of the early twentieth century, and the Tri-State region is no exception. Between 1990 and 1998, the region’s foreign-born population grew from 14% to 18% of the total population.
Where They Come From
Spanish-speaking countries accounted for about a third of the Tri-State region’s immigrants. In contrast, in the Los Angeles area (the other major magnet for immigrants to the U.S.), Spanish-speaking countries together account for more than half of all new immigrants. In New York City, immigration from the former Soviet republics had by 1995 begun to surpass immigration from the Dominican Republic, the previous leader.
The Tri-State region’s immigrants arrive with occupations as diverse as their origins. Immigration is not only a significant source of highly trained scientists and engineers, but immigration is also a substantial contributor to the blue-collar and service and support workforces.
The 10,000 scientists and engineers, who made up about 5% of the region’s working legal immigrants from 1994-96, were joined by 2,400 college and university professors and instructors, 6,800 workers in various technical occupations, and 13,400 health care workers, including physicians.
The Importance of H1 Visas
Permanent residents are not the only new arrivals to the Tri-State region who contribute to the technology workforce. There are people admitted for a variety of temporary reasons as well. Among those admitted on a temporary basis are people who hold H1 visas. These are for workers whose entry into the U.S. is authorized because they possess specific skills, the demand for which cannot readily be met from domestic sources. A popular recent example has been computer programmers. Applicants for these visas must be sponsored by employers committed to hiring them, and the visas typically last from three to six years.
Between 1994 and 1996, 12,500 new entrants with H1 visas settled in the New York City metropolitan area. They represented only 2.1% of the area’s new arrivals—a reflection of national immigration policy that heavily emphasizes family, individual and political reasons for immigration, and traditionally has given less emphasis to employers’ workforce needs. Nearly 38% of the 1996 H1 workers held jobs in New York City, but just like the scientist and engineer immigrants, a larger fraction, 48%, were located in northern and central New Jersey.
Source: Data on the cover and Page 2 are from an analysis and report based on Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) Public Use Microdata Series, FY1994-96, prepared for Tri-State Trends by Hugh O’Neill and Anthony Townsend of Appleseed, a consultancy. Occupation and residence data are based on information reported to the INS at the time of entry into the U.S., and so may not reflect the occupation or place of residence now.
Analysis and report based on INS Public Use Microdata Series, FY1994-96, prepared for Tri-State Trends by Hugh O’Neill and Anthony Townsend of Appleseed, a consultancy.
