Major U.S. cancer center ousts ‘Asian’ researchers after NIH flags foreign ties
sciencemag.org
sciencemag.org
Honestly still today, for some critial jobs, I do not understand companies not hiring local people (whatever nationality) with their friends and whole family (parents, cousins, etc) in the country. The cost of treason is higher (if they need to escape the country). It is not bullet proof, but it mitigates the risk.
But it looks like banks have a short memory (This guy was a sysadmin): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herv%C3%A9_Falciani
Amusingly they were happy to hire on connected people in less friendly nations when operating overseas.
I think the citizen thing was reasonable, credit check maybe not.
Credit checks are extremely smart. People who are financially vulnerable are high risk.
What you are saying maybe true for very high profile breaches - but for most firms, the "has a high degree of debt to income ratio" is a decent signal to decide if that person may have reasons to be vulnerable to bribery.
As far as financal status goes I'm not sure how good an indicator this is, for say a support role where you may or may not interact with a bank.
https://mavenroundtable.io/theintellectualist/news/wsj-kushn...
The guy's family has a massive debt. He was denied security clearance because that debt makes him a big risk. His party somehow push it through (politicians, sigh) and now he has been bailed out by the Saudi regime (iirc he's foreign secretary to Saudi Arabia or something - the top politician responsible for that country).
In potentially sensitive or powerful positions it's only prudent to look at how susceptible someone is to being influenced. The news is full of stories of people committing fraud to pay for gambling debts. Treason isn't exactly far off of that..
1) People with financial difficulties who would be more prone to take small amounts on a regular basis to "round out" their income difficulties. 2) People who, even though financially secure or well off, if given the opportunity for a large score, would be tempted to take it.
There are different approaches for dealing with both, with some overlap. Limiting the possibility for any fraud by limiting access, requiring multiple approvals, etc. helps negate both groups' potential for fraud. Credit checks help to eliminate only the first group's potential.
Bad credit, can't get job... can't get job, can't improve credit...
(they used to give away credit cards to college students working part time).
It might also show that someone has a medical condition that wound up expensive, which can happen despite medical insurance.
Many of these things do not mean that you'll not do your job as promised nor that you will steal money from the company.
When I was buying my house, I was building up and paying off ~$500 across 4 credit cards (one for Home Depot, one for Uber, etc.) I paid them down to $0 every month.
I'd consider that behavior to be financially smart. I got discounts of 5% on all those purchases because of the perks of the cards.
I was shocked by the score the bank had given me, since I do monitor my credit. They told me I had to stop using all those cards. I did, and my score went up 100 points instantly.
If you have a $50k limit and spend $2k/month, paying off in full, it doesn't really impact your score much at all. If you have $1k limit and spend $500/month it's a big risk.
You can usually make additional payments during the cycle so it doesn't impact your utilization. Whenever I make a larger purchase I just login and pay it off in full right away so it doesn't ding me.
edit: clarification
For example, in your example what happens to those born in say, Puerto Rico? Are they barred from running for president because they weren't born in the US?
Switzerland is a small village, so if you break the law, everybody will know it. So locals tend to respect the law (social pressure).
Today a company would be bbqed in the news paper for such a heavy policy.
Instead we let big pharma do it and charge a massive markup to fund their yachts eh?
You're right it wasn't hysteria, it was literal robbery. The white farmers were literally waiting to steal everything the Japanese left behind in California.
Incidentally, Boeing was forbidden by the federal government from discriminating against those African-American workers, as they might well have in an earlier era. The Fair Employment Practice Committee which forbade discrimination against these African-American workers was created to implement FDR's Executive Order 8802. That executive order was motivated in no small part by FDR observing American defense companies discriminating against German-Americans and Italian-Americans, which he considered to be a threat to the war effort. This executive order was one of the first times the federal government ever took any action against racial or ethnic discrimination in the workplace.
Strangely the Wikipedia page for the FEPC suggests it was motivated to help "African-Americans and other minorities", while the Wikipedia page for Executive Order 8802 emphasizes that it was discrimination of German-Americans and Italian-Americans which motivated FDR. (I'm more inclined to believe the later, but either way it certainly had the effect of helping the African-American community find work in the defense industry.)
>"Shortly after the Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor, some 1,260 German nationals were detained and arrested, as the government had been watching them.[26] Of the 254 persons not of Japanese ancestry evicted from coastal areas, the majority were ethnic German.[27] During WWII, German nationals and German Americans in the US were detained and/or evicted from coastal areas on an individual basis. Although the War Department (now the Department of Defense) considered mass expulsion of ethnic Germans and ethnic Italians from the East or West coast areas for reasons of military security, it did not follow through with this. The numbers of people involved would have been overwhelming to manage.[28]"
> "In the 1940 US census, some 1,237,000 persons identified as being of German birth; 5 million persons had both parents born in Germany; and 6 million persons had at least one parent born in Germany.[25] German immigrants had not been prohibited from becoming naturalized United States citizens and many did so. The large number of German Americans of recent connection to Germany, and their resulting political and economical influence, have been considered the reason they were spared large-scale relocation and internment. "
Note also that in Hawaii, out of 150,000 Japanese-Americans, less than 2,000 were interned. In Hawaii Japanese-Americans were too numerous to mass-intern, as German-Americans were too numerous to mass-intern across America. However across the west-coast of mainland America, where the relative size of their population was much smaller, mass-interment of Japanese-Americas was considered practical and therefore enacted.
Another factor to consider is that America had already had a war with Germany, not many years before, so the loyalties of most German-Americans had already past muster in the eyes of many. Japan was considered a new unknown quantity. During WWI, anti-German sentiment across America was much stronger than it was during the subsequent war:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-German_sentiment#United_S...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_language_in_the_United_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Defense_of_Internment
There was also some rhetoric explicitly referencing interment (in a positive way) during the 2016 presidential campaign.
And to remind, the Korematsu decision - which, essentially, made it all legal - wasn't overturned until last year, either.
So it's not exactly ancient history.
We invaded a whole country (Afghanistan), sent many to places like Guantanamo Bay, and bombed them throughout Africa and the Middle East. What more do you want?
No that doesn't matter anymore even though the people that lived through it are still alive.
No that doesn't matter despite people in politics literally raising the specter of doing it again and in some cases, directly suggesting and defending it as a future potential action.
We're totally reaching when we bring it again.
As an ethic Indian, I'm kinda offended when all Asians are just lumped together as I believe it promotes general racism and bias against anyone from that continent.
Despite the fact that I know India is in Asia, I don’t think of people from India as Asians.
Incidentally, Israel is also in Asia, but I don’t consider Israelis to be Asian either.
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-continent-is-israel...
The Turkish Straits. Are you referring to the more northern border? I assumed it was the Ural Mountains, but it’s more complicated than that and has an interesting history. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundaries_between_the_conti...
The Census Bureau determines ethnicity and race within America for legal purposes (including employment)
Asians are people from 'the far east' 'southeast asia' and 'india'
https://www.census.gov/mso/www/training/pdf/race-ethnicity-o...
BY NO MEANS am I defending this, I believe much of our race 'stuff' is indefensibly stupid and unscientific from biological, historical, and sociological perspectives, and the American idea of "Asian" is one of the worst concepts of all.
The census may use different groupings.
My theory is that this comes from restaurant culture. There is 'asian food', e.g. 'stuff with rice' and there is 'indian food', e.g. 'stuff with curry'.
E.g. https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/53636/online-phy...
SE Asia is "souther" than "South Asia" (which is still in the northern hemisphere)
Not specifying the country really sounds like a diversion most of the time (and it's rare that "Asian" could be an useful generalization).
Historically most Asians in the US were from East Asia and later SEA so the label tends to evoke those groups. Lacking familiarity, it may also be harder for many Americans to easily discriminate (lol?) between East Indians and other non-white/non-Asian groups.
Still there are plenty of people that do include Indians as "Asian" in the US, it's hardly a universal standard to exclude them as a lot of comments here seem to think.
I don't think it's automatically bigotry to refer to people this way. "Western European" and "South American" are less controversial examples.
I believe because that's the official statement.
Employers and academic institutions are required by law to categorize employees/researchers/students into these racial categories.
> Cancer center officials have not named any of the five researchers. MD Anderson President Peter Pisters says all are “Asian”; Science has confirmed that three are ethnically Chinese.
As it is, Indian diversity is already lumped together into one nation. No one says European cuisine, European language, European culture etc when referring to something specific.
As a person from India, who lived more than a decade in the USA, I took quite some time to realize the following:
- We are not Asians even though India is in Asia. Asians are those who have the "oriental facial features".
- We are not Indians, because generally native Americans are referred to as Indians, and I realized only later that if I mention "native Americans" when someone refers to them as Indians, can be a little incorrect (politically) based on who says that.
- We are all "South Asians" when a terror attack occurs in developed countries (especially European counties).
- When there's something specifically negative pointed out about India, then it's clearly "Indians" and "India" (this point is limited to celebs and US/Eu media, not the general population that I have come across).
people if USA are used to be called Americans and not "USAians". I guess it's the same attitude towards other countries that leads to such usage of terms.
For example, I generally wouldn't refer to someone from India as "Asian".
Sure, the Han make up 90%+ of the population (and in that sense you could call China homogeneous), but I struggle to say that Han == Han when it comes to the overwhelming diversity of the country.
Weird jokes aside, I cannot not think asia = china,japan,tibet,koreas,vietnam,laos,thailand ..
In my brain, the rest is ~elsewhere
Imagine calling Canadians and Mexicans “American” because of the continent.
† If you’re annoyed by being lumped under “Westerner” you might be able to relate.
I've seen "North American" used like that pretty often, actually.
> If you’re annoyed by being lumped under “Westerner” you might be able to relate.
I'm not. Should I be? It makes sense.
I agree that "Asian" doesn't make sense in the way the West tends to use it. "East Asian" is somewhat better, though still not 100% geographically accurate. But then "Westerner" isn't really accurate either; it's just the best commonly-accepted term for a useful concept.
This sounds like really boring stuff that the scientists may not even have known that they weren't allowed to do.
Of course this is something that is rarely punished because in most cases there's no way for the authorities to know. Too bad for these folks that they seemed to be under investigation.
The level of paranoia around proposals is much higher than, say, peer reviews for conferences or journal papers, where sometimes a paper might be given to a grad student to take a look at.