Rendered at 07:16:22 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Cloudflare Workers.
yummypaint 19 hours ago [-]
When we hit the academic brain drain tipping point in the US, talent isn't going to just start trickling away, it's going to be like a greedy cup siphon. Countries preparing to attract these people now will reap a windfall the US has carefully cultivated over a century. This administration has demonstrated the federal government cannot be trusted to keep it's commitments and long-term plans, and it will now take a generation of stability to disabuse people of that notion.
sandworm101 18 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
sdcfgy 18 hours ago [-]
Yeah. America is a symptom of Americans...
ptero 18 hours ago [-]
While I agree with much of what you wrote the percentage of people supporting every (or even most) decision of this administration is very small. But a large portion of the population doesn't like the alternative any better.
They said a few years ago that Trump and Biden have a chance only if they run against each other.
So it is more nuanced. We will see what the candidates in 2 years look like.
hn_submit 18 hours ago [-]
The vote is skewed because of the large number of Latinos and East Asians that have flowed into the country over the last three decades. If you tally the vote by ethnicity you'll see there's a large amount of support from the white majority (which is getting smaller every year) for these measures.
dalyons 17 hours ago [-]
~47% of Latinos voted for trump in 2024. What are they skewing exactly?
ptero 18 hours ago [-]
I do not think you can get the support level for specific measures from a vote. A vote is a single, crude A vs B on a large set of measures. And when a vote is between two options seen as largely abhorrent the winning basket can be a very strange one. My 2c.
Varelion 18 hours ago [-]
“Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. F*ck Hope.”
― George Carlin
ZeroGravitas 18 hours ago [-]
And yet they lie and scheme and have propaganda campaigns designed to confuse the ordinary person.
Many of whom suck, but others are just e.g. scared old ladies who got told that God hates abortions after decades of their church not seeming to care.
Varelion 17 hours ago [-]
[dead]
caaqil 17 hours ago [-]
Interesting perspective. Incidentally, taking this view to its logical conclusion puts into perspective what a lot of US adversaries say regarding civilian targets in the US.
sandworm101 10 hours ago [-]
That is a debate whenever a democracy goes to war. There are few bright line rules and decisions invariably boil down the moral character of commanders. But do not scratch that itch. There are some not-good stories in america's last hundred years of war. The current situation is not much of an abberration for those who read beyond recent decades.
micromacrofoot 18 hours ago [-]
The thing about dumb people is that the dumber they are the easier it is to convince them that changing their position is against their interests.
This has been something that's been foisted upon the American public through its politics, propaganda, media, and other systems for decades. As a result they have been fleeced through the visage of democracy that has been capped and gerrymandered away from them.
We are now in a situation where the entire fate of the country rests on ~250k people who live in some of the poorest, most homogeneous, media-blasted parts of the country.
17 hours ago [-]
wand3r 18 hours ago [-]
This is such a crazy statement. Democracy in the US is dead. People are incredibly dumb and I believe you have the causal relationship reversed, even for relatively smart people.
The will of the American people is deeply influenced by interested parties dumping money into various areas. Rich elite own almost all media and even "democratized" social media is heavily influenced. You can't even use a search engine these days.
Ultimately, the 70% plus "will" of the people is money out of politics, stock bans for elected officials, no foreign wars and universal healthcare. Things both parties unite to curtail
markvdb 18 hours ago [-]
> Democracy in the US is dead. People are incredibly dumb[...]
So what alternative or incremental improvement to democracy would you propose? And more importantly, how would you like to get there?
Ruthalas 17 hours ago [-]
Not OP, but I genuinely think ranked choice voting would have a positive impact.
webarchitect 18 hours ago [-]
Democracy isn't dead, but in the US, it's sure in troubled water. The two-party system encouraged people not to think for themselves but instead have to choose between two parties that, at least initially had common ground but now are diametrically opposed to one another. Now one of the two parties is pretty weak, having lost ground, giving the impression that it had lost touch with the common people and focused on loud but semi-fringe issues. One party owning the system has the same look as Democracy is dead.
Not to mention that even with a strong leader in both parties, we are on a race to the bottom, each election oscillating between the two parties, each spending lots of money and focus undoing what the other party did. When the two parties had common ground, this was much less of an issue.
In the end, this isn't going to get fixed, the US is going to just keep printing money, blowing up the deficit until the last few countries outside the US who trust us no longer do. We'll be in too many wars, in too many places, with too few friends. End up the same way the USSR was when they were in Afghanistan for too long.
I don't think even if you pulled money out of politics, banned stock trading for elected officials, no foreign wars, universal health care - that we would right the ship. Our problems are fundamental. Our early leaders warned us against a two-party system, trying to show us the problems it would lead to, and we ignored it.
Hikikomori 16 hours ago [-]
In about a month we'll see if dementia don and goons are able to kill off the oscillation and cement their power.
ptero 17 hours ago [-]
I think this is a bit too pessimistic.
Yes, US will print money to inflate debt until it can no longer do so. Yes, the realignment after it cannot get treasuries sold externalkyexternally, will be painful. But this has happened before (in the world) and will happen again. The country doesn't have to fail in the way of the USSR.
And once the dust settles the long term state will probably be better for many countries, US included. My 2c.
webarchitect 17 hours ago [-]
Perhaps it is too pessimistic, but it's the default state to fail, die in some sense, just like any other organic thing. The world doesn't have a good record of these things we've created lasting very long.
The hopeful part of me thinks that what will emerge from the disorder will be better, just like anything else that survives today that was once part of something else.
pirate787 18 hours ago [-]
"Democracy is dead" because I disagree with the policy preferences of the majority of voters.
bix6 18 hours ago [-]
They aren’t wrong about the influence of money though.
wand3r 17 hours ago [-]
That isn't what I said. 50% of the country can not read. People, myself included, are susceptible to influence. Democracy is dead because of money in politics, low intelligence of voters and a 2 party system that heavily manages the ideas and people that appear on the ballot.
rzerowan 18 hours ago [-]
IMHO its mostly been proven that special intrests , corporations hold more influence than the electorate. To that extent that bot wings of the uniparty basically persue the same agenda with very little variation in econ/pol while distarcting everyone with nonstop culture war bs.
Ergo its more feasible to playact at parades thsn it is to have a proper industrial policy for example that would mean hosing Wall Streeet profits to do. so.
10xDev 18 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
2PqboPPmKegvanx 18 hours ago [-]
>automated by SI
calling it SI is the version is equal to the 3 meme from Inglorious Basterds[0]
You made a typo. The term used by practioners of the art and generally understood worldwide is "AI", not "SI"...
sandworm101 18 hours ago [-]
Not any more. Just like the lake/gulf of america, the politically correct term is now "Super Intelligence". Use it or out yourself as an agitator and say goodbye to whatever visa rule, license, grant, tax exemption or government contract underpins your business.
realo 18 hours ago [-]
Fortunately I am Canadian and enjoy my freedom to say "AI" ... like the rest of the world.
sandworm101 10 hours ago [-]
Eh I
Tade0 18 hours ago [-]
Imagine my confusion when people started throwing around the officially accepted, in my native language, abbreviation for artificial intelligence.
thatsabadlook 18 hours ago [-]
You don't think it's in AI companies long term interests to lack human talent to do science or math and destroy the us educational system? Followup do you think AI companies are paying into the current regime?
lifeisloving 18 hours ago [-]
'SI' are we really calling llms this?
10xDev 18 hours ago [-]
We are actively watching SI diverge from strictly relying on human knowledge to now creating its own repository of knowledge (see current math research) while training on synthetic data using RLVR over human curated data and human supervision. I don't think you realise that this trend is only going to continue to the point human language is going to stop being a crutch it relies on, in fact Astra can reason without CoT now.
lifeisloving 6 hours ago [-]
No we aren't. These are stateless functions that have a function signature with some cfg params and ~500k words, and it then output words. Then we loop that ouput and wire them up to computers. There is no agency involved here. Its just a kind of recursive behavior being dressed up as intentionality.
Calling these things agents or entities of any kind when they are in fact just statistical models we wire into back into themselves and into deterministic systems, only serves to sell them as a accountability laundering machines they're going to be sold as.
master-lincoln 18 hours ago [-]
nah, that abbreviation already had a well known meaning in science: the international unit system
Not at all. Trump ordered everyone , during his speech at the United Nations , to use "SI" from now on, instead of "AI". That was one of his important priorities.
If you see someone use "SI" they are sending you a signal. Just politely correct their mistake.
lifeisloving 6 hours ago [-]
Yeah I was kind of trying to confirm if it was a techno fascist maga dog whistle.
causesothere 18 hours ago [-]
No. No one is seriously calling it this. It's virtue signaling.
calvinmorrison 18 hours ago [-]
I love how words are politics. Be it white or Black.
ModernMech 16 hours ago [-]
It’s political because the President said if you don’t use “super intelligence”, you’re considered “THE ENEMY” (his words and emphasis)
calvinmorrison 13 hours ago [-]
such is the nature of shibboleths
fredoliveira 18 hours ago [-]
I don't see the virtue in it?
dpkirchner 18 hours ago [-]
It's not for you, it's for them (the weird folks).
causesothere 16 hours ago [-]
The concept of virtue signaling should probably be renamed to "in-group signaling". The idea is that this person is signaling they support Trump. So, I guess, maybe loyalty is the virtue they are signaling.
The one constant of Trump is he'll fuck anyone over. He's not capable of having buddies, unless you count Epstein.
throw93930443 19 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
rayiner 18 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
alyeska2 17 hours ago [-]
I'm an American who's not insulted by the parent comment, but am tired of your constant weirdly racist anti-immigration posts. Aren't you an immigrant or child of immigrants from Pakistan or India? I recognize your username but forget which exact unique form of hypocritical xenophobia you hold.
The US has benefited massively from having years of the best and brightest from all around the world come to the US to research medicine, engineering and science. It's not about the one guy who's CEO of some tech company, it's about the thousands of graduate students, post docs and researchers doing the actual work to move humanity forward one lab-rat or laser measurement or petri dish at a time.
The 20th century was full of authoritarians attacking the intelligencia. A nation of uneducated peasants is easier to control and exploit. History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.
linuxftw 16 hours ago [-]
The US multination corporations have benefited massively. The common American shares a lower portion of the wealth than ever before. Wealthy foreigners are taking an outsized portion of higher learning seats, and driving up prices. Then they take the white collar jobs. This clearly is keeping downward pressure on the average American economically, more so for the disenfranchised.
With 0 immigration, even sending most of the white collar immigrants back, the US would still be the greatest nation on the planet, except the common American would enjoy more of the spoils. If these immigrants were so valuable, other the countries would be competing hand over fist to bring in as many as possible as quickly as possible, but they're not.
5 hours ago [-]
rayiner 17 hours ago [-]
It’s precisely because I’m an immigrant that I chafe at the narcissism of immigrants who want to overstate our contribution to the U.S. as it exists today. The U.S. was already a fully formed, technologically advanced superpower by the time my family got here in 1989. Desis like me came here because our effort goes a thousand times farther within the system—constitutional, legal, cultural, etc.—that Americans created than it does in the countries we created. We shouldn’t be blowing smoke up our own asses and pretending that we had more to do with it than we did. It’s obnoxious, diminishes the contributions of others, and is contrary to our own interest, because it gives us a false sense of what made America into such a place that we were willing to leave our family behind to come here.
Yes, the U.S. benefited from key foreign talent acquisitions like bringing over German scientists after World War I. The 1952 H-1 Act and some ad hoc programs brought over college professors and people like that. But “mass skilled immigration” in the form of H-1B, OPT, etc., didn’t happen until the early 1990s. We should evaluate these programs on their own terms, not link them into some grandiose fictional narrative. Especially now where AI is going to displace many knowledge workers.
dctoedt 13 hours ago [-]
I think you're underselling the value in that time and place of the "just plain folks" who immigrated here — such as your family and, in earlier generations, mine.
My immigrant ancestors were farmers, ordinary workers, and small-business people. Not one of them had much education. But in the main they had reasonable shares of motivation, family orientation, and work ethic. They had the gumption to leave their various countries and come here where opportunities were greater — just as you said was the case for "desis like [you]."
My people filled a need when they came to the U.S. at various times in the 19th and 20th centuries. I imagine your people did the same. Sure, in purely-economic terms they didn't make the near-term contributions that their descendants have. But life isn't a snapshot, it's a movie.
rayiner 13 hours ago [-]
> But in the main they had reasonable shares of motivation, family orientation, and work ethic.
People are motivated, family-oriented, and hard working everywhere. The farmers in my dad's village in Bangladesh certainly are all those things. But they labor within a society that taxes the productive and honest and periodically destroys any accumulated capital with chaos. An American applying that same labor produces a thousand times as much. The difference isn't the laborer, it's the machine against which he is laboring. That American system is the bequest of America's British and Dutch founders: Anglo law, social and political norms, and civic culture, and Anglo/Dutch views towards markets and commerce. The operating system of the country was largely in place by the early 19th century and it remains the thing most responsible for our present prosperity.
I don't say that to diminish immigrants. Because isn't even really a point about immigration. It's about correctly understanding the source of our own prosperity.
dctoedt 12 hours ago [-]
> That American system is the bequest of America's British and Dutch founders: Anglo law, social and political norms, and civic culture, and Anglo/Dutch views towards markets and commerce. ... It's about correctly understanding the source of our own prosperity.
Now you're overvalorizing what you refer to as Anglo social and political norms. Those norms weren't a monolith — neither were they an unalloyed good.
The Anglos in question famously included enslavers of kidnapped Africans, mainly but not exclusively in the American South. Our whole constitutional system was bastardized to keep those worthies on-side for ratification.
To be sure, the spectrum of Anglo norms included abolition, mainly in the North. But in the South, those norms also included secession and civil war to preserve enslavement as an economic and social system.
IIRC, the enslaver class were largely of English stock — although many white southerners were of Protestant Scots-Irish descent (e.g., John C. Calhoun), and some of Welsh (e.g., Jefferson Davis).
Now let's talk about immigrants' cultural contributions: The residents of some regions of Germany were no slouches commercially. In the U.S., they and Irish Catholics were largely anti-slavery. German immigrants especially were pro-Union; that led to violence against them during the Civil War by Confederates. [0]
(I don't know enough about Dutch contributions to say anything useful about them.)
Bottom line: Let's not fetishize the Anglo-Dutch origins of the American system. The finest crop seeds will be useless without decent soil, water, and light. Seeds don't provide those things. And as summarized above, in our case the seed was far from uniformly good.
I didn't say it was an "unalloyed good." I said that our prosperity is the product of that system. So are many of the bad things about America! Funnily enough, the immigrants who are eager to write themselves into the story of American prosperity never seem to want to take credit for all bad things about America...
I also think you're missing the forest for the trees. You can find many cultures that enslaved people. The Arabs were trading African and European slaves for a thousand years before Europeans showed up to booming slave markets Africans themselves had built. But you can't find any culture that undertook large-scale worldwide efforts to end slavery, or any one that killed hundreds of thousands of their co-ethnics to end slavery for other people. Are you aware of any other society that has done that?
dctoedt 10 hours ago [-]
> you're [sic] criticism overlooks the most important part.
I wasn't trying to present a balanced assessment of Anglo culture, which has clearly been a world leader in many, many respects. I was reacting to your seeming insistence — which appears to be getting more pronounced — that immigrants should embrace Anglo culture as superior to their own.
There are good- and bad elements in every culture. Cafeteria-style cultural mixing is how progress happens (modulo intellectual-property law).
rayiner 9 hours ago [-]
> I was reacting to your seeming insistence — which appears to be getting more pronounced — that immigrants should embrace Anglo culture as superior to their own.
Of course they should: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/oWbNUcOenzU. I didn't know this was debatable. When people say "assimilate into American culture," they mean Anglo-American culture--like the Germans did.
Your theory that Americans can absorb the best elements from different cultures doesn't work in practice. For such evolutionary mechanisms to work, you need a fitness function that reflects which combinations are better. But people have an irrational sentimental attachment to their own culture and co-ethnics. They will stick with things that clearly don't perform rather than adopt things that clearly perform better.
Which circles back to my original point! That's why it's so important to understand why it is that our effort here in America goes so much farther than the same level of effort in our country run according to our cultural norms.
boelboel 8 hours ago [-]
Did German Americans really assimilate? They speak english nowadays and love America but when you look at the norms of Americans it seems like there's more of a mix of the two than just 'anglo american' culture. How people spend their sunday, the drinking of beer, some American food, school system in many ways, parts of the military, some sports (bowling and gymnastics) and the whole sporting club culture (not just for the elite) one can't really say they became Anglo Americans especially in regions where you have many of them (e.g the midwest)
rayiner 1 hours ago [-]
I mean not really, but I'm using a relative scale. I count them because they're about as similar to Anglos as the Anglo subgroups (Yankees, Southerners, Appalachians) are to each other. Most importantly they have generic American identity--they don't specially identify with or have special affinity for other German Americans. In that respect they're more like Anglos and different from most of the immigrant groups that came after them.
ModernMech 5 hours ago [-]
The Amish are descendants of German immigrants, who refuse to this day to assimilate. And that is now an intrinsic part of American culture.
hollerith 4 hours ago [-]
But the Amish are different because of a religion not shared by most German immigrants.
This difference in religion has a huge effect. We know that because the average Amish person is much farther away in culture from the average German living in Germany than the average non-German-ancestry American is.
5 hours ago [-]
dctoedt 9 hours ago [-]
Historically, assimilation into American culture tends to happen over two to three generations.
• One pair of my grandparents were immigrants. Grandpa built a business but to the end of his life his English was tough to understand. Grandma hardly spoke English at all. They lived in a neighborhood surrounded by other immigrants from their home country.
• Their kids — my mom and her siblings — grew up speaking English at school and with each other (apart from when they switched to cut us kids out of the conversation) but not with their parents.
• Their many grandkids — my generation — grew up speaking only English. AFAIK, only one of us knows any of our grandparents' language at all (she took it in school IIRC).
• I also speak neither German nor Irish Gaelic, the languages of my immigrant ancestors on my dad's side of the family. And for practical purposes my own kids speak only English. (My grandkids aren't yet old enough to talk.)
I've repeatedly seen the same phenomenon here in Texas. Example: I have nephews whose great-grandparents on the other side of the family were Mexican immigrants. My nephews speak zero Spanish (AFAIK) and are as American as anyone.
I've read that this is a widespread phenomenon among immigrants from every country.
So: Patience — assimilation into American culture will happen.
rayiner 1 hours ago [-]
> Historically, assimilation into American culture tends to happen over two to three generations.
Here's a book with evidence of how that's not true. https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0BCKYZ1VY/geneexpre.... Americans with European ancestry display variations in attitudes that are still strongly correlated with those of their countries of origin.
> I've read that this is a widespread phenomenon among immigrants from every country.
People think "speaking English" and "wearing jeans" is assimilation. But that's superficial stuff. How many groups assimilated into WASP austerity or self-deprecation? Not very many. I live in Annapolis and it's trivially easy to tell the various European-American groups apart if more than a few of the same type are congregated together (e.g. church gatherings).
dalyons 17 hours ago [-]
Coincidentally the mid 90s was when the US GDP really started to outpace the EU
Yes, a Syrian immigrant who made it through the very strict immigration filters we had in place in the 1950s. (Also an odd example because Jobs had no contact with his father and was raised and socialized entirely by his American mother.)
tzs 15 hours ago [-]
> U.S. didn't have OPT until 1992!
...which was created to streamline somewhat similar rules that had been in place since 1947.
rayiner 15 hours ago [-]
The post-1990 program is very different in scope. The 1947 rules provided for a six-month work eligibility that was granted to very few people: https://thepienews.com/us-launches-re-evaluation-of-opt/. Today, OPT is three years and granted to 300,000 people.
hn_submit 18 hours ago [-]
IMHO it would be better to limit their stay to 4 years after which they need to exit the country for 3 months to prevent them applying for citizenship. After those three months they can apply for an extension for another 4 years.
tristancao 18 hours ago [-]
F-1 visas are categorized as non-immigrant visas. No amount of years in the U.S. would make them eligible for citizenship.
18 hours ago [-]
Gigioingiro 19 hours ago [-]
US keep pursuing this political agenda that goes against the whole foundation of the country rise as world superpower. I wonder how long it needs to last before Europe starts to roll serious academic policy that attracts the orphaned talent refused by US.
The Netherlands started well with the Tulip Fund but a systematic effort is needed. Korea is expanding his VISA grants for AI or tech top talents. Its the first time in decades where top world talent does not point altogether towards US and will be interesting to see which policy from other countries will reveal to be more effective. It's a tight window to take advantage of before the change in US administration so an economical effort in a short time period is required.
sajithdilshan 19 hours ago [-]
I don't think this would negatively affect the crème de la crème, they would even have a high demand in US companies especially in STEM fields with higher salaries after finishing the studies.
US is popular for higher studies for students all around the world not only because of the opportunities, but also English being the language for studies. I'm not sure how it works in EU countries. Does Netherland or South Korea offers degree programs completely in English?
iamniels 19 hours ago [-]
> Netherland
Yeah, all higher studies and institutions are in English and you can get around in public with just English. Most expats will rarely hear or need Dutch (The language of The Netherlands).
oersted 18 hours ago [-]
> Most expats will rarely hear or need Dutch
That is an overstatement. Dutch is the primary language everywhere like the native language of any country. It is true that in major cities most people speak excellent English and you can definitely manage easily without speaking Dutch.
But Dutch is spoken absolutely everywhere and most signage is only in Dutch. Also, as soon as you get a bit outside of the big cities, you find many people with a middling level of English, similar to most other countries in Europe. Even in cities, many working class people and actually most immigrants from non English speaking countries only speak Dutch.
sajithdilshan 18 hours ago [-]
How about the language usage at workplace after graduation? Would one have to learn Dutch or still continue everything with English?
Also is it easy to get a job after graduation in Netherlands in STEM field? As an example if someone graduated in medicine (doctor, nurse, etc.) then wouldn’t proficiency in Dutch be mandatory to work?
boelboel 18 hours ago [-]
It's probably not that big of a problem in the absolute top companies but once you go anywhere else they'll prefer Dutch natives and you'll face hurdles trying to get promotions. This is a big reason why expats end up leaving the country. It also causes resentment from both sides in daily life.
sajithdilshan 17 hours ago [-]
That’s what I thought as well. Also, in US one could start work in New York after graduation and if a better job offer comes they can move around the country in different states where as in EU, you graduate and start working in Netherland and assume one learns Dutch, then they are restricted to Netherland in terms of language if they get a job offer in another EU country like Italy or Germany or France, then they would have to learn that languages as well I guess
boelboel 16 hours ago [-]
Yeah it's not great, I don't think it's hopeless everywhere but if you got the ability to work in the UK it prevents most these problems. English language really benefits some countries.
manvillej 18 hours ago [-]
Most Dutch will only speak English to non-Dutch. Which is really annoying if you’re there trying to learn Dutch
fifilura 18 hours ago [-]
Same in Sweden, welcome!
Gigioingiro 17 hours ago [-]
Every top university worldwide open to international talent offers the programs in English, from South Korea to Europe, Singapore etc. The challenge would have to keep the talents in country after the university, and language barrier, especially in South Korea plays a role. But US administration is making also harder for companies to hire international talents, and many of those have in any case offices in Europe to avoid the issue. In any case the silicon valley and industrial/tech hubs have historically born around university excellence campus, which is what the US policy is currently degrading. In Europe, beside the UK, there are at least Zurich ETH and TU Delft that have the potential to growth enormously by taking advantage of that.
dingaling911 19 hours ago [-]
US rise as a world superpower was luck as opposed to something deliberate, just like most rises are.
causesothere 18 hours ago [-]
Luck? They killed 95% of the existing inhabitants, used a huge agricultural, mining, and forestry base to spread productivity, built national infrastructure with enslaved and indentured labor. They stayed out of two crippling wars as long as they possibly could, and ultimately were the only major power that was able to mostly avoid damage from the war.
After which they invited the best scientists from the axis to come build things for them. They then used their position to topple governments around the world for their companies, annex territory (see: Hawaii), and press their interests globally.
What about these steps is luck? Evil, sure, but luck?
dingaling911 7 hours ago [-]
Luck means things just happened to work out not that they didn’t take steps. Luck means the same thing somewhere else wouldn’t work. That’s the way I’m using it.
stackskipton 15 hours ago [-]
2 World Wars broke out that had impacts on us, it left a ton of our peers completely devastated and we were not. UK did not end food rationing until 1954. By that time, US was building suburbs out, sending a ton of GI to higher education and Marshall plan had our completely functioning factories turning out goods by metric tons an hour.
gsky 16 hours ago [-]
You missed reserved currency advantage
Iolaum 18 hours ago [-]
It's not luck it's starting conditions. People have written books about the benefits of geography and natural resources.
Gigioingiro 17 hours ago [-]
So can you please explain me the rise of Switzerland, Singapore and South Korea? No natural resources, no energy independency, small countries surrounded by enemies. And why Russia that has all the natural resources of the world is such a failed state? Starting conditions are something that was valid around 2000 years ago in the civilization and empires rise and fall. Not actual anymore.
boelboel 16 hours ago [-]
I'm not a believer in geographic destiny but the fact that Russia is still relatively rich (compared to e.g. CAR or Uganda) shows that natural resources are quite handy. Switzerland does have quite some hydro energy (potential) and because of its resource poverty many Swiss had to leave the country during the 19th century (and these swiss actually created wealth in many of these places). There's millions of americans with swiss ancestry.
dingaling911 6 hours ago [-]
starting conditions is pretty much the definition of luck.
18 hours ago [-]
19 hours ago [-]
TrackerFF 18 hours ago [-]
At least here in Scandinavia, the US is quite popular for the most ambitious and driven students that are interested in entrepreneurship. They apply to top US schools on either coasts via exchange programs, or a full degree, exactly because the schools are so close to the startup scene. Imposing a $100k fee to hire those, would effectively make such types of graduates very unattractive to startups.
gsky 18 hours ago [-]
Every country should block american big tech to create tech jobs for their people. This fixes americas immigration problem too
petcat 18 hours ago [-]
Nobody will tolerate being forced to use "EU government phone" instead of iPhone or Google Android. They will just revolt against their own government instead.
impossiblefork 17 hours ago [-]
They would actually. But it wouldn't be the "EU government phone". It'd be Jolla, and then competitor after competitor would form.
ZeroGravitas 18 hours ago [-]
Maybe they'll buy a Chinese one, since their iPhone and many of it's components was already built there.
petcat 18 hours ago [-]
The physical hardware is a nearly irrelevant commodity compared to the software and the ecosystem.
gsky 18 hours ago [-]
Most Europeans hate american gov and companies so much. They just need a good alternative to jump the ship.
figmert 18 hours ago [-]
Eh? I'm guessing you've never spoken to a European. Especially since Trump's second term (though not just because of Trump), Europeans generally have a bad view of US tech companies.
petcat 18 hours ago [-]
> never spoken to a European
Irrelevant. The EU is not taking American tech, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon away from 330 million Europeans and replacing it with..nothing? without widespread outrage. In a lot of ways it would cause a societal collapse.
sajithdilshan 18 hours ago [-]
Maybe that’s true in your close people bubble. Don’t generalise it to every European. I’m pretty sure there a big Trump fans base in Poland, Hungary and Germany to name a few.
18 hours ago [-]
rcr-anti 18 hours ago [-]
If memory serves, they've tried this several different ways but keep getting injuncted since it amounts to a tax and not a reasonable processing fee.
arenaninja 18 hours ago [-]
My understanding is that since OPT was created via executive magic instead of Congress the department overseeing the program is woefully understaffed and underfunded. Visa work in the US really is at the intersection of DHS, DOL and DOS at the end of the day. It may be that the executive needs to rethink this for better department communication, collaboration and efficiency and investment is genuinely necessary given the scale of these programs compared to their inception.
braj0 18 hours ago [-]
Ohh so this is a tax but inflation isn't? I don't ever remember voting for an inflation tax. Our government is so corrupt.
fg137 18 hours ago [-]
I have trouble following the logic of this comment
18 hours ago [-]
2PqboPPmKegvanx 18 hours ago [-]
speedrunning brain drain, you spend decades building a moat based on stability and proceed to end decades of work in 24 months.
If the US imposes this charge, they will go somewhere else. Europe, maybe. China, maybe. We won't get the immediate benefit of their work like we do now. This will kill some graduate programs and constrain a lot of others. It is hard to see any positive benefits from this move.
If I were China, I'd move on this aggressively. If I were any country with a strong interest in STEM, I'd do the same. In fact, just the mention of this action should spur a somewhat aggressive response.
999900000999 18 hours ago [-]
China has already been aggressively funding Chinese language education in Africa.
I suggested to a friend of mine that he consider a CS masters in China. He's semi fluent, but lacks a CS background. I imagine he could figure it out though
drivingmenuts 14 hours ago [-]
If I were a younger man and in better health, I’d seriously consider going to China. Obviously, there are some downsides to living there, but I’d like to think I could have overcome them.
ChoGGi 18 hours ago [-]
I remember while growing up hearing talk on the news about brain drain.
Thanks Trump; next do EV cars worldwide.
That felt dirty as a Canadian.
I did also wonder what the Riddler had to do with Canadians going to the States...
up2isomorphism 18 hours ago [-]
Someone argue this is fine since there used to be no OPT long time ago and US is doing fine. But the key is here is NOT if there is OPT or H1B but rather about that 100K cost. It is much better to cancel the OPT/H1B than charge this fee. Because for the former you do not lower the bar, but the latter doesn’t stop the people coming through the program but you only get low tier of talent, which is the least you want in the competitive world. Also it does not reduce spying but rather make it easier.
ubermonkey 19 hours ago [-]
We are committing suicide as a nation.
chinathrow 18 hours ago [-]
Look at their handlers.
18 hours ago [-]
slowmovintarget 18 hours ago [-]
By setting up a jobs market for foreigners but not for Americans, and by allowing corporations to install immigrant intake machines at the expense of Americans? Yes. That's what needs fixing.
I'm in favor of legal immigration. I'm not in favor of H1Bs and the "default" pathway.
If we don't get educated and employed as Americans, then yes, we'll be committing suicide.
If someone's post-graduate work is that important, and that particular individual is so unbelievably critical to that particular post-doc work, then surely the fee would be worth it. If it's not, then advantaging the market for post-docs in America to actual Americans seems like a good thing, something governments are meant to do for their citizens.
Is there a reason the American government shouldn't be allowed to act on behalf of its citizens and must act in favor of everyone else?
thomassmith65 18 hours ago [-]
This comment is an excellent of scarcity mentality* (I can't decide if that's an insult; if it is, I apologize).
It's in America's best interest as a nation to have as large a pool of smart students to choose from as possible. The loser nations are the ones whose brightest minds leave (aka: "brain drain")
If the people of a nation capable of attracting foreign students are resentful about it, the real problem probably lies elsewhere (eg: inequality, economic depression, or broken media environment)
Except we know for a fact that the exact effect the H1B program had on science is to depress the number of Americans hired for post-docs hired for work in American universities.
You can wave around theories, or we can discuss what actually happened with the program. In the 1940s and 50s we had refugees, but we also had an extremely robust academy producing the likes of Feynman, Wheeler, Thorn, Everett and many more. Then we blew that up, because foreign students were cheap virtually indentured servants.
Enter today's world where tech is doing the same. America doesn't have an obligation to favor or subsidize foreign employment. If we had a system producing more Wheelers, Feynmans, and Thorns, it would still be worthwhile to immigrate and work with them, for a full salary. The same goes for tech. I want to attract foreign students and foreign workers to the American system, not to the American subsidy.
bradreaves2 6 hours ago [-]
Academic here.
I assure you that you do not know for a fact that H1-Bs have prevented the US citizens from getting postdocs. Partly because postdocs are hired on J-1, not H1-B.
In any case, postdoc salaries come from research funding, which is basically a fixed pot for the entire country. Salaries for American postdocs would not rise if the labor supply falls. We would just have fewer postdocs and less highly skilled labor.
At the PhD level, if we admitted every American who applies without evaluating their record, we would still need to admit foreign students. Few people want to sign up for that challenge, and it just so happens 95% of all other people are not American citizens.
For tenure track faculty, we hire for fit and quality without regard for nationality. This is a requirement of Federal law, and it makes the country better overall.
Qualified foreigners have no advantage over qualified Americans for academic positions. If you don’t believe me, most state universities have salaries publicly listed for their faculty. You could easily see if foreigners are paid a lower wage.
An argument against foreign students and academics is an argument for a smaller scientific workforce, not a more “American” one.
dalyons 17 hours ago [-]
Keeping highly educated and productive foreigners, whom which another country paid to raise and school, IS America acting on behalf of its citizens. These grads will pay tons of tax, create economic activity, perhaps even new companies. And it cost America zero. It’s an insanely good deal.
ModernMech 18 hours ago [-]
Even if we admitted 100% of qualified American citizens who apply, there wouldn’t be enough filled slots to run the programs and do the research.
Moreover, educating foreigners in America does benefit Americans: we get the research, schools get their foreign tuition dollars, local landlords and business absorb their cost of living expenses, local governments get tax money from them, they have kids and they become Americans. Or, if they go home they have great stories to share about how amazing America was for them, inspiring a new generation to come here and grow our country.
When the American government acts as it does now, all that happens is that economic activity moves somewhere else. There is no void filled by Americans, there’s just a void.
ModernMech 18 hours ago [-]
This government is doing everything they can to make the lives of my students a living hell. First it was the kidnappings and deportations, if that wasn’t enough.
Then they defunded their projects, even projects that had already been under way, so they destroyed a bunch of in-progress research that can’t be restarted.
Then they started fucking with internships, trying to make it so that foreign students can only get an internship if it’s part of the degree program, which most are not.
And of course they completely slowed the document processing down to a snail pace so that students can’t even get to campus on time for the start of the semester.
Now this. Absolutely insane. America had a higher academic system second to none, people came from around the world to attend our schools, made America better, and brought America back to the places they came from in a positive light.
I have one student who fled civil war, he started learning about CS from a country he took refuge in, made his way to America over years, started at a state school and then worked his way up to the graduate level where he busts his ass working in a kitchen every day to be able to afford it. Today he’s publishing papers at top conferences in CS. Every day he is eager to learn and grateful for all opportunities he’s given.
And this government wants to chase that kind of student out of the country.
Meanwhile my American students show up to class and ask me “is this class hard?” And then they drop it once they find out it takes work, like gasp opening a paper book and reading it faints.
It’s going to take decades to repair this damage and I hope all of you here who voted for it (I know there are plenty) understand the damage you caused with your choice. I wish you’ll help fix it because it’s going to take everyone.
999900000999 17 hours ago [-]
International Students made college so much fun, for a kid who grew up poor, causally studying history with a girl from Japan was out of the realm of possiblity.
This was not only free for me, but I got a large cost of living grant on top of tuition itself being free.
Community College was amazing. For international students it's a very easy way to get a visa. The requirements are basically making tuition payments on time.
Well it's over now. Even if the tides shift again you'd have to be silly to risk coming to such an unstable place.
rramadass 18 hours ago [-]
The US is ruining itself by ruining the minds of the current and next generations of students.
I finally realized that this is irrecoverable from, when you all laughed and derided Vivek Ramaswamy for saying it as it is. You have simply been enjoying the fruits of labour of your forbears and immigrants and have no plans to sustain it for the future.
Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG. A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers…. This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken [sic] from slumber before & we can do it again…but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.
Regardless of your political leanings, American culture has been devaluing knowledge, education and everything else to do with them for a while now.
They said a few years ago that Trump and Biden have a chance only if they run against each other.
So it is more nuanced. We will see what the candidates in 2 years look like.
Many of whom suck, but others are just e.g. scared old ladies who got told that God hates abortions after decades of their church not seeming to care.
This has been something that's been foisted upon the American public through its politics, propaganda, media, and other systems for decades. As a result they have been fleeced through the visage of democracy that has been capped and gerrymandered away from them.
We are now in a situation where the entire fate of the country rests on ~250k people who live in some of the poorest, most homogeneous, media-blasted parts of the country.
The will of the American people is deeply influenced by interested parties dumping money into various areas. Rich elite own almost all media and even "democratized" social media is heavily influenced. You can't even use a search engine these days.
Ultimately, the 70% plus "will" of the people is money out of politics, stock bans for elected officials, no foreign wars and universal healthcare. Things both parties unite to curtail
So what alternative or incremental improvement to democracy would you propose? And more importantly, how would you like to get there?
Not to mention that even with a strong leader in both parties, we are on a race to the bottom, each election oscillating between the two parties, each spending lots of money and focus undoing what the other party did. When the two parties had common ground, this was much less of an issue.
In the end, this isn't going to get fixed, the US is going to just keep printing money, blowing up the deficit until the last few countries outside the US who trust us no longer do. We'll be in too many wars, in too many places, with too few friends. End up the same way the USSR was when they were in Afghanistan for too long.
I don't think even if you pulled money out of politics, banned stock trading for elected officials, no foreign wars, universal health care - that we would right the ship. Our problems are fundamental. Our early leaders warned us against a two-party system, trying to show us the problems it would lead to, and we ignored it.
Yes, US will print money to inflate debt until it can no longer do so. Yes, the realignment after it cannot get treasuries sold externalkyexternally, will be painful. But this has happened before (in the world) and will happen again. The country doesn't have to fail in the way of the USSR.
And once the dust settles the long term state will probably be better for many countries, US included. My 2c.
The hopeful part of me thinks that what will emerge from the disorder will be better, just like anything else that survives today that was once part of something else.
calling it SI is the version is equal to the 3 meme from Inglorious Basterds[0]
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/shittymoviedetails/comments/1q0hrdj...
Calling these things agents or entities of any kind when they are in fact just statistical models we wire into back into themselves and into deterministic systems, only serves to sell them as a accountability laundering machines they're going to be sold as.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI
If you see someone use "SI" they are sending you a signal. Just politely correct their mistake.
/s
https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/trump-anyone-sa...
The US has benefited massively from having years of the best and brightest from all around the world come to the US to research medicine, engineering and science. It's not about the one guy who's CEO of some tech company, it's about the thousands of graduate students, post docs and researchers doing the actual work to move humanity forward one lab-rat or laser measurement or petri dish at a time.
The 20th century was full of authoritarians attacking the intelligencia. A nation of uneducated peasants is easier to control and exploit. History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.
With 0 immigration, even sending most of the white collar immigrants back, the US would still be the greatest nation on the planet, except the common American would enjoy more of the spoils. If these immigrants were so valuable, other the countries would be competing hand over fist to bring in as many as possible as quickly as possible, but they're not.
Yes, the U.S. benefited from key foreign talent acquisitions like bringing over German scientists after World War I. The 1952 H-1 Act and some ad hoc programs brought over college professors and people like that. But “mass skilled immigration” in the form of H-1B, OPT, etc., didn’t happen until the early 1990s. We should evaluate these programs on their own terms, not link them into some grandiose fictional narrative. Especially now where AI is going to displace many knowledge workers.
My immigrant ancestors were farmers, ordinary workers, and small-business people. Not one of them had much education. But in the main they had reasonable shares of motivation, family orientation, and work ethic. They had the gumption to leave their various countries and come here where opportunities were greater — just as you said was the case for "desis like [you]."
My people filled a need when they came to the U.S. at various times in the 19th and 20th centuries. I imagine your people did the same. Sure, in purely-economic terms they didn't make the near-term contributions that their descendants have. But life isn't a snapshot, it's a movie.
People are motivated, family-oriented, and hard working everywhere. The farmers in my dad's village in Bangladesh certainly are all those things. But they labor within a society that taxes the productive and honest and periodically destroys any accumulated capital with chaos. An American applying that same labor produces a thousand times as much. The difference isn't the laborer, it's the machine against which he is laboring. That American system is the bequest of America's British and Dutch founders: Anglo law, social and political norms, and civic culture, and Anglo/Dutch views towards markets and commerce. The operating system of the country was largely in place by the early 19th century and it remains the thing most responsible for our present prosperity.
I don't say that to diminish immigrants. Because isn't even really a point about immigration. It's about correctly understanding the source of our own prosperity.
Now you're overvalorizing what you refer to as Anglo social and political norms. Those norms weren't a monolith — neither were they an unalloyed good.
The Anglos in question famously included enslavers of kidnapped Africans, mainly but not exclusively in the American South. Our whole constitutional system was bastardized to keep those worthies on-side for ratification.
To be sure, the spectrum of Anglo norms included abolition, mainly in the North. But in the South, those norms also included secession and civil war to preserve enslavement as an economic and social system.
IIRC, the enslaver class were largely of English stock — although many white southerners were of Protestant Scots-Irish descent (e.g., John C. Calhoun), and some of Welsh (e.g., Jefferson Davis).
Now let's talk about immigrants' cultural contributions: The residents of some regions of Germany were no slouches commercially. In the U.S., they and Irish Catholics were largely anti-slavery. German immigrants especially were pro-Union; that led to violence against them during the Civil War by Confederates. [0]
(I don't know enough about Dutch contributions to say anything useful about them.)
Bottom line: Let's not fetishize the Anglo-Dutch origins of the American system. The finest crop seeds will be useless without decent soil, water, and light. Seeds don't provide those things. And as summarized above, in our case the seed was far from uniformly good.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nueces_massacre
I also think you're missing the forest for the trees. You can find many cultures that enslaved people. The Arabs were trading African and European slaves for a thousand years before Europeans showed up to booming slave markets Africans themselves had built. But you can't find any culture that undertook large-scale worldwide efforts to end slavery, or any one that killed hundreds of thousands of their co-ethnics to end slavery for other people. Are you aware of any other society that has done that?
I wasn't trying to present a balanced assessment of Anglo culture, which has clearly been a world leader in many, many respects. I was reacting to your seeming insistence — which appears to be getting more pronounced — that immigrants should embrace Anglo culture as superior to their own.
There are good- and bad elements in every culture. Cafeteria-style cultural mixing is how progress happens (modulo intellectual-property law).
Of course they should: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/oWbNUcOenzU. I didn't know this was debatable. When people say "assimilate into American culture," they mean Anglo-American culture--like the Germans did.
Your theory that Americans can absorb the best elements from different cultures doesn't work in practice. For such evolutionary mechanisms to work, you need a fitness function that reflects which combinations are better. But people have an irrational sentimental attachment to their own culture and co-ethnics. They will stick with things that clearly don't perform rather than adopt things that clearly perform better.
Which circles back to my original point! That's why it's so important to understand why it is that our effort here in America goes so much farther than the same level of effort in our country run according to our cultural norms.
This difference in religion has a huge effect. We know that because the average Amish person is much farther away in culture from the average German living in Germany than the average non-German-ancestry American is.
• One pair of my grandparents were immigrants. Grandpa built a business but to the end of his life his English was tough to understand. Grandma hardly spoke English at all. They lived in a neighborhood surrounded by other immigrants from their home country.
• Their kids — my mom and her siblings — grew up speaking English at school and with each other (apart from when they switched to cut us kids out of the conversation) but not with their parents.
• Their many grandkids — my generation — grew up speaking only English. AFAIK, only one of us knows any of our grandparents' language at all (she took it in school IIRC).
• I also speak neither German nor Irish Gaelic, the languages of my immigrant ancestors on my dad's side of the family. And for practical purposes my own kids speak only English. (My grandkids aren't yet old enough to talk.)
I've repeatedly seen the same phenomenon here in Texas. Example: I have nephews whose great-grandparents on the other side of the family were Mexican immigrants. My nephews speak zero Spanish (AFAIK) and are as American as anyone.
I've read that this is a widespread phenomenon among immigrants from every country.
So: Patience — assimilation into American culture will happen.
Here's a book with evidence of how that's not true. https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0BCKYZ1VY/geneexpre.... Americans with European ancestry display variations in attitudes that are still strongly correlated with those of their countries of origin.
> I've read that this is a widespread phenomenon among immigrants from every country.
People think "speaking English" and "wearing jeans" is assimilation. But that's superficial stuff. How many groups assimilated into WASP austerity or self-deprecation? Not very many. I live in Annapolis and it's trivially easy to tell the various European-American groups apart if more than a few of the same type are congregated together (e.g. church gatherings).
Founded by the child of a Syrian immigrant?
...which was created to streamline somewhat similar rules that had been in place since 1947.
US is popular for higher studies for students all around the world not only because of the opportunities, but also English being the language for studies. I'm not sure how it works in EU countries. Does Netherland or South Korea offers degree programs completely in English?
Yeah, all higher studies and institutions are in English and you can get around in public with just English. Most expats will rarely hear or need Dutch (The language of The Netherlands).
That is an overstatement. Dutch is the primary language everywhere like the native language of any country. It is true that in major cities most people speak excellent English and you can definitely manage easily without speaking Dutch.
But Dutch is spoken absolutely everywhere and most signage is only in Dutch. Also, as soon as you get a bit outside of the big cities, you find many people with a middling level of English, similar to most other countries in Europe. Even in cities, many working class people and actually most immigrants from non English speaking countries only speak Dutch.
Also is it easy to get a job after graduation in Netherlands in STEM field? As an example if someone graduated in medicine (doctor, nurse, etc.) then wouldn’t proficiency in Dutch be mandatory to work?
After which they invited the best scientists from the axis to come build things for them. They then used their position to topple governments around the world for their companies, annex territory (see: Hawaii), and press their interests globally.
What about these steps is luck? Evil, sure, but luck?
Irrelevant. The EU is not taking American tech, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon away from 330 million Europeans and replacing it with..nothing? without widespread outrage. In a lot of ways it would cause a societal collapse.
If I were China, I'd move on this aggressively. If I were any country with a strong interest in STEM, I'd do the same. In fact, just the mention of this action should spur a somewhat aggressive response.
I suggested to a friend of mine that he consider a CS masters in China. He's semi fluent, but lacks a CS background. I imagine he could figure it out though
Thanks Trump; next do EV cars worldwide.
That felt dirty as a Canadian.
I did also wonder what the Riddler had to do with Canadians going to the States...
I'm in favor of legal immigration. I'm not in favor of H1Bs and the "default" pathway.
If we don't get educated and employed as Americans, then yes, we'll be committing suicide.
If someone's post-graduate work is that important, and that particular individual is so unbelievably critical to that particular post-doc work, then surely the fee would be worth it. If it's not, then advantaging the market for post-docs in America to actual Americans seems like a good thing, something governments are meant to do for their citizens.
Is there a reason the American government shouldn't be allowed to act on behalf of its citizens and must act in favor of everyone else?
It's in America's best interest as a nation to have as large a pool of smart students to choose from as possible. The loser nations are the ones whose brightest minds leave (aka: "brain drain")
If the people of a nation capable of attracting foreign students are resentful about it, the real problem probably lies elsewhere (eg: inequality, economic depression, or broken media environment)
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarcity_(social_psychology)
You can wave around theories, or we can discuss what actually happened with the program. In the 1940s and 50s we had refugees, but we also had an extremely robust academy producing the likes of Feynman, Wheeler, Thorn, Everett and many more. Then we blew that up, because foreign students were cheap virtually indentured servants.
Enter today's world where tech is doing the same. America doesn't have an obligation to favor or subsidize foreign employment. If we had a system producing more Wheelers, Feynmans, and Thorns, it would still be worthwhile to immigrate and work with them, for a full salary. The same goes for tech. I want to attract foreign students and foreign workers to the American system, not to the American subsidy.
I assure you that you do not know for a fact that H1-Bs have prevented the US citizens from getting postdocs. Partly because postdocs are hired on J-1, not H1-B.
In any case, postdoc salaries come from research funding, which is basically a fixed pot for the entire country. Salaries for American postdocs would not rise if the labor supply falls. We would just have fewer postdocs and less highly skilled labor.
At the PhD level, if we admitted every American who applies without evaluating their record, we would still need to admit foreign students. Few people want to sign up for that challenge, and it just so happens 95% of all other people are not American citizens.
For tenure track faculty, we hire for fit and quality without regard for nationality. This is a requirement of Federal law, and it makes the country better overall.
Qualified foreigners have no advantage over qualified Americans for academic positions. If you don’t believe me, most state universities have salaries publicly listed for their faculty. You could easily see if foreigners are paid a lower wage.
An argument against foreign students and academics is an argument for a smaller scientific workforce, not a more “American” one.
Moreover, educating foreigners in America does benefit Americans: we get the research, schools get their foreign tuition dollars, local landlords and business absorb their cost of living expenses, local governments get tax money from them, they have kids and they become Americans. Or, if they go home they have great stories to share about how amazing America was for them, inspiring a new generation to come here and grow our country.
When the American government acts as it does now, all that happens is that economic activity moves somewhere else. There is no void filled by Americans, there’s just a void.
Then they defunded their projects, even projects that had already been under way, so they destroyed a bunch of in-progress research that can’t be restarted.
Then they started fucking with internships, trying to make it so that foreign students can only get an internship if it’s part of the degree program, which most are not.
And of course they completely slowed the document processing down to a snail pace so that students can’t even get to campus on time for the start of the semester.
Now this. Absolutely insane. America had a higher academic system second to none, people came from around the world to attend our schools, made America better, and brought America back to the places they came from in a positive light.
I have one student who fled civil war, he started learning about CS from a country he took refuge in, made his way to America over years, started at a state school and then worked his way up to the graduate level where he busts his ass working in a kitchen every day to be able to afford it. Today he’s publishing papers at top conferences in CS. Every day he is eager to learn and grateful for all opportunities he’s given.
And this government wants to chase that kind of student out of the country.
Meanwhile my American students show up to class and ask me “is this class hard?” And then they drop it once they find out it takes work, like gasp opening a paper book and reading it faints.
It’s going to take decades to repair this damage and I hope all of you here who voted for it (I know there are plenty) understand the damage you caused with your choice. I wish you’ll help fix it because it’s going to take everyone.
This was not only free for me, but I got a large cost of living grant on top of tuition itself being free.
Community College was amazing. For international students it's a very easy way to get a visa. The requirements are basically making tuition payments on time.
Well it's over now. Even if the tides shift again you'd have to be silly to risk coming to such an unstable place.
I finally realized that this is irrecoverable from, when you all laughed and derided Vivek Ramaswamy for saying it as it is. You have simply been enjoying the fruits of labour of your forbears and immigrants and have no plans to sustain it for the future.
From Ramaswamy nailed the education challenge - https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/ramaswamy-n...
Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG. A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers…. This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken [sic] from slumber before & we can do it again…but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.
Regardless of your political leanings, American culture has been devaluing knowledge, education and everything else to do with them for a while now.