The foreign-born population in the U.S. was around 5% when tech giants like Apple, Microsoft, HP, and Intel were founded. And most of the immigration to the U.S. up to that point was low-skill immigration, with ad-hoc measures to take skilled immigrants here and there. That approach worked fine to develop the U.S. into a leading technological power.
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.
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
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.
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.
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).
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?
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?
Then they defunded their projects, even projects that had already been funded 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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?