A high technology or "hi-tech" economy growing out of and strongly supported by our state's higher education research infrastructure is generally perceived and described by economic experts as the growth engine that is to propel Oklahoma in the new millennium. Why this is true is a complex and generally, beyond the surface hype, a not very well understood phenomena, but its basic appeal is such that most if not all states seeking to expand and diversify their economies have adopted it to some, and usually a large, extent as an economic growth paradigm. As such it is always the subject of a great deal of publicity when the economic showcase successes of our state our discussed. It figures prominently whenever people of influence - ; journalists, public officials, and civic leaders - discuss which way our state should be be going economically.

It certainly is true that hi-tech has potentially has a great number of desirable attributes for a region's economy, especially as a growth engine. It features a high percentage of highly educated people in at least relatively well paying positions, has a high tendency to multiply once established, is generally environmentally clean, and as such generates good publicity for the region as a vibrant and progressive place.

The usual implication of the benefits of hi-tech, as with all economic growth, is that the people of Oklahoma may benefit, and to a substantial degree benefit in a direct way, especially by gaining employment with these companies. Such of course is the whole basis of the confidence and support which the free-enterprise system commands in this country. The tie-in with higher education points to a supposed means of insuring this comes about. This is in fact a very popular selling point of hi-tech, that of a potential magnet source of good employment for our state's brighter and more ambitious youth. Higher education after all is generally believed to prepare people for desirable employment, and is supported in large part because of such belief.

Such in fact was almost universally the rule in the past, but due to great changes in our nation's immigration policy, which are even today, well over a decade since a sea change fully started to take effect, not well understood outside the tech-community workforce itself. Briefly as a result of the great expansion of immigration programs like the H1-B, there has been a great decline in both the percentage of American citizens working in the hi-tech industry, the quality of the working conditions there, and the length of the career one can expect there. Norman Matloff's website concerning one highly publicized aspect of the hi-tech field, computer programmers and software designers, documents this in detail. However the phenomenon in general is universal in the hi-tech industry, including such fields as biotechnology, engineering, and academic research among others.

As a result, there is a curious disconnect between the hype surrounding hi-tech in Oklahoma and the actual prospects for those most directly betting or who have bet their futures on it, those preparing to work or actually working in the field. It is one which from reading any of the news concerning the hi-tech field, such as newspaper articles or college enrollment brochures, one would be hard-pressed to find the slightest hint of.

Why this is true is not simple, as is usually the case with discerning the attitudes and positions taken by the civic, corporate, educational, and political elites on immigration. Briefly though in this as in so many other cases it just bespeaks the growing gulf between the attitudes and interests of these elites and leaders from those of ordinary Oklahoman's, who have mistakenly put their confidence in them. The situation of hi-tech workers is not easily familar to those in the communication fields, and hi-tech workers are not highly competant or effective politically or mediawise, thus the great irony, that much of Oklahoma's economic growth industry is of little real value to Oklahoman's themselves, goes almost completely unnoticed. Although the situation is perfectly normal of course to those who have familarity with colonial economic situations and the dual loyalties of local elites between the region and ruling power, it is somewhat foreign to those accustomed to thinking of themselves as a sovereign democratic polity, as Americans up until the age of globalization had been accustomed to.

Nevertheless, the situation is real for Oklahoma, and affects us far more than is generally acknowledged, especially by our elites, as the article Oklahoma, OU, Globalization and You describes.