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The emigration Kindergarten readiness checklist of scientists and specialists from Russia in the near future may be joined by a powerful outflow of yesterday’s high school students who are ready to apply for jobs in the United States, including in in-demand technical professions. After Barack Obama’s new address, America can give a green light to foreign applicants for citizenship and possibly guarantee jobs.

The U.S. president has figured out how to make the American economy healthier and raise national production: America needs immigration reform. It should make it easier for young people who grew up and were educated on U.S. soil to obtain citizenship. There are many valuable people who “would like to work in American laboratories, start a new business or defend the country. It should also be easier to get citizenship for those young people who came to the U.S. specifically to study – business, science, engineering. If they are not lured back to their home country, then, after they get an American diploma, they will return home and produce goods and create jobs there. America needs a law that would allow foreigners who “benefit the United States to earn U.S. citizenship,” Obama said. If Congress drafts such a law, Obama will sign it immediately.

It is no secret that America has always been a “vacuum cleaner” for high-class specialists and promising scientists. It was America that was mostly blamed for the brain drain from Russia, India, South Africa and some Asian countries. The United States’ interest in talented and promising foreigners is nothing new. The news is that America is now concentrating its attention not only on established and proven specialists, but also on applicants and schoolchildren who have yet to receive the necessary education. It is only logical that this initiative by Obama can deal a serious blow to those countries that have not been able to stop the brain drain for years. Such countries include Russia.

“Whatever the president and the government may say about innovation and support for science, let’s make no mistake: there is not enough money for science and education in the Russian Federation. The state’s support of gifted schoolchildren and students is clearly insufficient. That’s why it has become unprestigious in Russia to enter faculties related to knowledge-intensive industries,” comments Ekaterina Kondrashova, head of the analytical department of the Moscow Stock Center. If the immigration reform of Obama is implemented, the brain drain from Russia could accelerate, since “to get an education, citizenship in the U.S., and the ability sight words list to develop your own business is a fairly promising alternative to a Russian education.

The Russian authorities can offer little in the way of resistance to this trend, except a sense of patriotism. For example, at a meeting with students at Tomsk Polytechnic University, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said yesterday that the state would not prevent young professionals from going abroad because it is the choice of every citizen. President Dmitry Medvedev said the same thing yesterday at a meeting with journalism students at Lomonosov Moscow State University: “If you want to go, go. Medvedev said that he too had the opportunity to go abroad and pursue a legal career there, but he stayed in Russia because he wanted to work in his own country, “with all its costs, problems, and shortcomings.”