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This comment seems slightly overwrought and racist to me, specially this part, "US citizens who walked into a college STEM course saw the TA and half of the stu

This comment seems slightly overwrought and racist to me, specially this part, "US citizens who walked into a college STEM course saw the TA and half of the students from Asia or India, turned, and walked out." -- Really? I don't see an option to downvote here, but if I could, I would definitely do that for this.

eru 14y ago
You need more karma to downvote. Otherwise, it seems to me more like graycat is describing racism, but you can't tell greycat would support it based on that comment.
- graycat 14y ago
  I'll put it to you this way: I'm of Western European descent, England and Germany. Still, no way do I want the US Federal Government to flood US STEM classes with students from England and Germany. This view is not racism. Here is one thing it really is: The US is getting badly hurt in the world economy. The real unemployment rate is ballpark 20%. The US is creating boom times in several other countries. Well, one way for the US to help itself is for the US to continue to have a great college and university system and, then, keep those educations for US citizens. That is, US citizens are paying for those institutions and, thus, should be able to 'keep' the 'intellectual property' and other advantages inside the US. So, it is now strongly in the interest of US citizens to move not to let any foreign students in US colleges or universities. It is in the interest of US tax payers to pay to educate the US but not the world that wants to compete with the US economy.
  - eru 14y ago
    In contrast, British universities are actually financed by the oversees students. By keeping good education for a select few only, you do not actually help the US absolutely, you just make the other people less well off. (And even the US, but perhaps less so.)
    - graycat 14y ago
      Again, my point is that US citizens Joe and Mary pay taxes, state and federal. Those taxes are used in part to support US higher education: The state taxes support institutions in the state of Joe and Mary. The federal taxes provide support of various kinds and essentially all the research at US research universities. Joe and Mary have children and want them to get good higher educations and, then, good jobs for good careers. But the children still have to pay to go to college. What they pay for a state school is high; for a private school, higher. So, commonly such US children skip some or all of college. Then wonder of wonders, presto, in US higher education paid for partly by Joe and Mary, there are foreign students in seats the children of Joe and Mary could not afford to occupy. And the foreign student only paid at most 1/3rd of the cost of the education, not nearly the full cost. For undergraduate school, a big question is how can a student from a poor country afford the cost of a US education? For graduate students, the US NSF has arranged that there will be STEM graduate students, US or foreign. Here Joe and Mary have a very good reason to feel ripped off. Why does the US do this? Because some powerful people in the US want to flood US STEM fields with enough students to lower labor rates in those fields. So, the policy is to tax Joe and Mary and use their money to support foreign STEM students. Then when those students enter the US labor market, which some do, they compete with the children of Joe and Mary. Again Joe and Mary feel ripped off. There are many excuses given for supporting foreigners in STEM fields. One of the excuses is that the foreign students are better at creating jobs in the US and, thus, help the children of Joe and Mary get jobs. That's saying that the US, with 330 million people, with universities that dominate the list of the best universities in the world, that dominates the Nobel prizes and the publications at the best research journals, etc., somehow is short on people to start businesses. Nonsense. Especially nonsense to the US NSF that set up a group to do calculations on how many foreign students would have to be imported to drive down the cost of STEM labor. The whole point was just to drive down the cost of STEM labor. So, it's no surprise that the cost of STEM labor went down. And the income of the children of Joe and Mary went down if those children were in STEM fields. "By keeping good education for a select few only" The US does no such thing: There are 330 million people in the US. All or nearly all the states have state colleges and universities. And there are private universities -- Harvard, Stanford, etc. The best students can go on scholarships. Otherwise students who can get admitted can get financial aid if they need it. Still, often the cost to the student and/or their family is high. But college education is the US is not limited to "the select few" US citizens and would not be if US universities cut way back on foreign students. The US is hurting: The reasons are, too many foreign wars, too many foreign military bases, the disaster of the US inflation caused by the Viet Nam war that, then, caused the S&L crisis and likely enabled OPEC, the disaster of the housing bubble from efforts to 'spread the home ownership around', and, heavily, the idea of the US State Department that for 'world peace' the US should pursue 'world trade' by which lower paid US jobs would go to Japan, Mexico, Canada, Taiwan, South Korea, India, Pakistan, and now China. So, the US has a real unemployment rate of about 20%, and real incomes have hardly increased since the Viet Nam war in about 1960. In the 1950s, Detroit had a license to print money and looked like a dream town. Now Detroit looks like a bombed out WWII city. Much of US metal manufacturing in the US Midwest has gone out of business. Textiles in the Carolinas have gone. GE got seriously hurt by Japan. The heirs of Sam Walton have done well by importing products from China. Maybe Microsoft has done well exporting software to China, although there is the issue of China not paying for the software. And now China has decided to move to Linux as their national operating system. Likely Intel has done well selling chips, but they are close to having their products copied in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and Germany. And likely China would like to do the same. When a US citizen buys an imported product, often they are paying twice, once for the product directly and once more for the 'safety net' for the US worker who lost his job making such products. The US is one of the few countries in the world that throws open its markets to foreign countries. Again, the State Department, the Walton heirs, Microsoft, etc. like the situation, but nearly all the rest of the US is suffering. People are dying, literally. The US has to do much better competing in the world economy, and for this the US must quit giving away its markets, businesses, technology, intellectual property, and educations.
graycat 14y ago
It's not "racist". It's just that the US citizens quickly saw that they didn't 'fit in'. So, they became afraid, rightly so, that somehow it was a game that promised not to be good for US citizens. And that fear was correct. The US citizens just saw that they didn't fit in and turned, which is just what they should have done. There are lots of situations where a person might not fit in, and racism need have nothing to do with it. Or, where were all the other US citizens that one would expect would be the TA and the students? Were they all racists? Or did they just see or sense something wrong? There was something wrong, very wrong: The labor supply was being manipulated in DC. It was a rigged game and not what it looked like superficially. When see such a situation, don't ignore the obvious and wait 20 years to discover the details of how DC rigged the game and, instead, just sense that something's wrong and leave. I saw situations where the division was really clear: Essentially all the worker bees were from India or Asia, and essentially all the managers were US citizens, white of Western European descent. In that situation, got to be from Asia or India to apply for a slot even as a worker bee -- US citizens of Western European descent need not apply. Period. Look, set aside your PC sensitivities for a second and look at some simple reality: A big theme in the US from Alexis de Tocqueville on is for the US to create an identifiable, exploited underclass. That's what's going on here. Given that such an exploited underclass has been created, then other people don't 'fit in' and will not be welcome, especially by the higher ups. Again, it's not racism, especially on the part of the guy who sees that he doesn't fit in, turns, and walks; instead, it's reality.
- tomkarlo 14y ago
  How could someone "see" the citizenships of the non-white students? And that's not racist?
  - graycat 14y ago
    Easy: The culture of a country, as far as I can tell, any country, takes a lot of time, years, mostly decades, and effort to learn. In any country, someone who recently arrived, to natives, obviously has not been there very long. It's easy enough in the US to spot people recently from Canada, Mexico, England, France, Italy, Germany, and Australia; spotting people recently from India and Taiwan is much easier. So, when the people clearly have not been in the US long enough to become US citizens, then that is easy to tell. Does that answer your question?

eru 14y ago

You need more karma to downvote. Otherwise, it seems to me more like graycat is describing racism, but you can't tell greycat would support it based on that comment.

graycat 14y ago
I'll put it to you this way: I'm of Western European descent, England and Germany. Still, no way do I want the US Federal Government to flood US STEM classes with students from England and Germany. This view is not racism. Here is one thing it really is: The US is getting badly hurt in the world economy. The real unemployment rate is ballpark 20%. The US is creating boom times in several other countries. Well, one way for the US to help itself is for the US to continue to have a great college and university system and, then, keep those educations for US citizens. That is, US citizens are paying for those institutions and, thus, should be able to 'keep' the 'intellectual property' and other advantages inside the US. So, it is now strongly in the interest of US citizens to move not to let any foreign students in US colleges or universities. It is in the interest of US tax payers to pay to educate the US but not the world that wants to compete with the US economy.
- eru 14y ago
  In contrast, British universities are actually financed by the oversees students. By keeping good education for a select few only, you do not actually help the US absolutely, you just make the other people less well off. (And even the US, but perhaps less so.)
  - graycat 14y ago
    Again, my point is that US citizens Joe and Mary pay taxes, state and federal. Those taxes are used in part to support US higher education: The state taxes support institutions in the state of Joe and Mary. The federal taxes provide support of various kinds and essentially all the research at US research universities. Joe and Mary have children and want them to get good higher educations and, then, good jobs for good careers. But the children still have to pay to go to college. What they pay for a state school is high; for a private school, higher. So, commonly such US children skip some or all of college. Then wonder of wonders, presto, in US higher education paid for partly by Joe and Mary, there are foreign students in seats the children of Joe and Mary could not afford to occupy. And the foreign student only paid at most 1/3rd of the cost of the education, not nearly the full cost. For undergraduate school, a big question is how can a student from a poor country afford the cost of a US education? For graduate students, the US NSF has arranged that there will be STEM graduate students, US or foreign. Here Joe and Mary have a very good reason to feel ripped off. Why does the US do this? Because some powerful people in the US want to flood US STEM fields with enough students to lower labor rates in those fields. So, the policy is to tax Joe and Mary and use their money to support foreign STEM students. Then when those students enter the US labor market, which some do, they compete with the children of Joe and Mary. Again Joe and Mary feel ripped off. There are many excuses given for supporting foreigners in STEM fields. One of the excuses is that the foreign students are better at creating jobs in the US and, thus, help the children of Joe and Mary get jobs. That's saying that the US, with 330 million people, with universities that dominate the list of the best universities in the world, that dominates the Nobel prizes and the publications at the best research journals, etc., somehow is short on people to start businesses. Nonsense. Especially nonsense to the US NSF that set up a group to do calculations on how many foreign students would have to be imported to drive down the cost of STEM labor. The whole point was just to drive down the cost of STEM labor. So, it's no surprise that the cost of STEM labor went down. And the income of the children of Joe and Mary went down if those children were in STEM fields. "By keeping good education for a select few only" The US does no such thing: There are 330 million people in the US. All or nearly all the states have state colleges and universities. And there are private universities -- Harvard, Stanford, etc. The best students can go on scholarships. Otherwise students who can get admitted can get financial aid if they need it. Still, often the cost to the student and/or their family is high. But college education is the US is not limited to "the select few" US citizens and would not be if US universities cut way back on foreign students. The US is hurting: The reasons are, too many foreign wars, too many foreign military bases, the disaster of the US inflation caused by the Viet Nam war that, then, caused the S&L crisis and likely enabled OPEC, the disaster of the housing bubble from efforts to 'spread the home ownership around', and, heavily, the idea of the US State Department that for 'world peace' the US should pursue 'world trade' by which lower paid US jobs would go to Japan, Mexico, Canada, Taiwan, South Korea, India, Pakistan, and now China. So, the US has a real unemployment rate of about 20%, and real incomes have hardly increased since the Viet Nam war in about 1960. In the 1950s, Detroit had a license to print money and looked like a dream town. Now Detroit looks like a bombed out WWII city. Much of US metal manufacturing in the US Midwest has gone out of business. Textiles in the Carolinas have gone. GE got seriously hurt by Japan. The heirs of Sam Walton have done well by importing products from China. Maybe Microsoft has done well exporting software to China, although there is the issue of China not paying for the software. And now China has decided to move to Linux as their national operating system. Likely Intel has done well selling chips, but they are close to having their products copied in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and Germany. And likely China would like to do the same. When a US citizen buys an imported product, often they are paying twice, once for the product directly and once more for the 'safety net' for the US worker who lost his job making such products. The US is one of the few countries in the world that throws open its markets to foreign countries. Again, the State Department, the Walton heirs, Microsoft, etc. like the situation, but nearly all the rest of the US is suffering. People are dying, literally. The US has to do much better competing in the world economy, and for this the US must quit giving away its markets, businesses, technology, intellectual property, and educations.

graycat 14y ago

It's not "racist". It's just that the US citizens quickly saw that they didn't 'fit in'. So, they became afraid, rightly so, that somehow it was a game that promised not to be good for US citizens. And that fear was correct. The US citizens just saw that they didn't fit in and turned, which is just what they should have done. There are lots of situations where a person might not fit in, and racism need have nothing to do with it. Or, where were all the other US citizens that one would expect would be the TA and the students? Were they all racists? Or did they just see or sense something wrong? There was something wrong, very wrong: The labor supply was being manipulated in DC. It was a rigged game and not what it looked like superficially. When see such a situation, don't ignore the obvious and wait 20 years to discover the details of how DC rigged the game and, instead, just sense that something's wrong and leave. I saw situations where the division was really clear: Essentially all the worker bees were from India or Asia, and essentially all the managers were US citizens, white of Western European descent. In that situation, got to be from Asia or India to apply for a slot even as a worker bee -- US citizens of Western European descent need not apply. Period. Look, set aside your PC sensitivities for a second and look at some simple reality: A big theme in the US from Alexis de Tocqueville on is for the US to create an identifiable, exploited underclass. That's what's going on here. Given that such an exploited underclass has been created, then other people don't 'fit in' and will not be welcome, especially by the higher ups. Again, it's not racism, especially on the part of the guy who sees that he doesn't fit in, turns, and walks; instead, it's reality.

tomkarlo 14y ago
How could someone "see" the citizenships of the non-white students? And that's not racist?
- graycat 14y ago
  Easy: The culture of a country, as far as I can tell, any country, takes a lot of time, years, mostly decades, and effort to learn. In any country, someone who recently arrived, to natives, obviously has not been there very long. It's easy enough in the US to spot people recently from Canada, Mexico, England, France, Italy, Germany, and Australia; spotting people recently from India and Taiwan is much easier. So, when the people clearly have not been in the US long enough to become US citizens, then that is easy to tell. Does that answer your question?