Three Guys from Bangladesh
My mother’s hutch had been collecting dust in my garage for four years after she died. I thought about painting it, buying cool knobs and turning it into a coffee bar for clients, but I never got around to it. Truth is, I never really liked it.
The last time I saw the two-piece, multi-shelved colonial holder of Lenox China, stemware, flatware and my dad’s poker chips, it was being hoisted into the back of a borrowed truck by three first-year Ph.D. students at the University of Central Florida. All three were from Bangladesh and in the Aerospace Engineering program. Two had come to help Nafis, the one who’d given me $40 the day before to hold it for him after his wife approved the purchase. Nafis’s wife commented on the quality of the wood while their daughter played in the crushed river rock alongside my driveway. I told her my mother would be happy to know that she recognized Ethan Allen craftsmanship. I shared with them that my father was also an engineer. Dad worked at Texas Instruments, Raytheon and Harris. I didn’t tell them how mad my mother would be about me selling the hutch. I kept the poker chips.
As they drove off, I wondered if anyone parked alongside them at a red light would realize they were looking at future rocket scientists or professors or perhaps contributors to science and engineering or some major discovery. Would they have any idea that our country now awards more doctorates to people not born in the U.S. than it does to those born inside the U.S.? And the gap is growing steadily. So says the National Science Foundation.
I wondered where Mom’s hutch would wind up. Would it remain in the country where it had been loaded on and off Mayflower moving vans in New Jersey, Texas, Virginia, Massachusetts and Florida? Would Nafis take it with him if a Canadian company hires him away because he can’t stay if he doesn’t have a firm job offer here? While America debates immigration and building walls and flying refugees here or there, does anybody even care that some of the best brain power comes, learns, and then leaves, often to serve other nations? Does the average voter realize that other countries are loosening their laws to grab that talent? That’s the finding of the MIT Science Policy Review.
Meanwhile, fewer Americans are pursuing doctorates. I’m glad my mother’s hutch is with a family that wants it. But it made me think a lot about the possessions and the people we claim to treasure in this country only to let them drive off. Maybe I should have made that coffee bar after all. I hope our economy doesn’t wind up collecting dust one day because we were unable or unwilling to reconfigure the assets at our disposal.