Anonymous asked:
theunitofcaring answered:
I think grad schools should accept the best students for their programs. I think taking less qualified students because by random accident they were born in the country, instead of people who are actively choosing to spend their lives in this country, does not strengthen the country, it weakens it.
And I think that the costs imposed by suddenly yanking the rug out from under someone who has been here five years are unacceptably high, and that if we decided to go full racist xenophobes we should at least be racist xenophobes with some semblance of trustworthiness and integrity by making the ban one on evaluating or accepting future students, instead of stranding people who have already built lives here.
Doing it this way is not just horrible, it is demonstrating a willingness to be gratuitously horrible on a whim, and one of its consequences is that no one should ever again expect that the U.S. government will behave consistently or make it possible to make long-term plans that involve travel into or out of the country. And the cost imposed by that expectation is extraordinarily high. If you care about financial outlooks more than the lives of people stranded in foreign countries away from their newborn children (yes, I personally know of a case of that), you might care that lots of companies have frantically recalled departments of overseas workers lest they later not be able to return to the country, and that they’ve said research and development and their success as businesses will be damaged by the necessity of coping with an immigration system that is suddenly bucking wildly at the whims of an appallingly ignorant corrupt cronyist.
But mostly it’s just that if you think where people are born should decide what rights they have, then we’re fundamentally on a very different page about everything.
Also, Iranian students aren’t taking slots from American ones.
Those slots don’t belong to American students, they belong to American universities. American universities that, demonstrably, would like to attract students from all over the world.
Kind of nice summary of nationalism, here. Declare ownership of other people’s stuff, get angry at foreign people for “stealing” stuff you never owned from you.
1. Are those students staying in America after graduation?
2. Are their costs being, in any way, offset by US government spending, even indirectly?
3. Isn’t this position by default against any form of wealth redistribution, since that would be “declaring ownership of other people’s stuff”?
1. Some are, some aren’t. What’s it matter?
2. Yes, of course. And by the same token their money and their labour add to America’s wealth. I figure the balance probably comes out positively on both sides; if it doesn’t then that’s an issue to address. But not like this.
3. No. Wealth redistribution works partly by donation and partly by taxation. Obviously donation’s not declaring ownership of other people’s stuff, and taxation is a cost that we accept by making use of public resources. To be honest, though, I’m not sure what this has to do with the issue at hand.
1. How much it matters depends on 2.
2. Quite frankly I do not trust that the pro crowd on this issue actually cares whether it’s net positive for America, much less America’s tax revenues.
I agree that this was not well-handled, but considering that any opposition at all has been labeled as racist xenophobia over the years, I don’t see what incentive the anti side on this issue have to make concessions since concessions won’t get them anything.
The fundamental thing to understand about Nationalism is that nations are the roughly the largest projects where the benefits still mostly accrue to the participants (and their families). That actually has to be enforced somewhat in order to hold and convince people to cooperate on the project over the long term. Otherwise the optimal local strategy is to extract as much value as feasible and leave, since one and one’s descendants do not need to live with the consequences.
Nations still very much exist and very much are relevant. Cultures are different and cultures matter, which is why everyone is constantly fighting so hard to change the culture in their desired directions. Cynical foreign governments routinely act to undermine their competitors, so you can’t afford to be a doormat on the national level.
3. I’m probing for inconsistencies and expected to find them based on the behavior of most people on their immigration positions. Do you support Basic Income or any form of state-sponsored welfare at all? Because your language suggests a general rather than specific claim of this kind. Limiting it to a specific claim would require special justification. (For instance, arguing that the necessity of generating the wealth in the first place requires it.)
Now, it’s true that America has something to gain from foreign nationals coming to study here - specifically, the exportation of American values, which contributes to global American dominance, which is in the interests of both Americans and the world economy (much like keeping the sea lanes open). That’s the cynical Nationalist view of this and the one I actually support.
The thing is, what the anon is really asking is something along the lines of “I’m supposed to commit to the nation, but are the elites of the nation willing to commit to me?” And a nation only works if enough people cooperate.
Anti-Nationalists don’t even seem to realize this, which is why they get blindsided by people like Orange Capitalism Man.
