Charlie Rose and Salman Khan. Source: news.stanford.edu

He can see that a girl sitting against the wall is zipping through geometry exercises; that a boy with long curls over his eyes is stuck on a lesson on long equations; and that another boy in the front row is getting a handle on probability.

Each student’s math journey shows up instantly on the laptop Mr. Roe carries as he wanders the room. He stops at each desk, cajoles, offers tips, reassures. For an hour, this crowded, dimly lighted classroom in the hardscrabble shadow of Silicon Valley hums with the sound of fingers clicking on keyboards, pencils scratching on paper and an occasional whoop when a student scores a streak of right answers.

The software program unleashed in this classroom is the brainchild of Salman Khan, an Ivy League-trained math whiz and the son of an immigrant single mother. Mr. Khan, 35, has become something of an online sensation with his Khan Academy math and science lessons on YouTube, which has attracted up to 3.5 million viewers a month.

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The success and future of America is always dependent on immigrants as they come to make a difference.   A vast majority of the graduate students and faculty members in science are immigrants.  Unfortunately, we are losing a lot of them due to our misguided policy and misdirected anger towards immigrants especially after 9/11.  Unless we continue to attract the brains from all over the world to continue to lead America as a nation of entrepreneurs, it will be our loss not theirs.