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> Americans don't want people visiting, working, or studying on their shores.

This is utterly false and unfair. Please don't lump the entire US population with a few ignorant morons who have not seen the world five miles outside their home town. A quick look at our universities is proof enough that what you are saying is incorrect. The last time I visited MIT it almost felt like I was outside the US.

At the same time, though, foreigners are discouraged from studying certain topics. The security engineering group at my school lost a student a few years ago, because he was Chinese and the US government would not allow him to reenter the country due to his thesis topic (computer security). It took an assurance from the school that he would not be permitted to do any further work with his adviser and that he would switch research topics for him to be permitted entry to this country.

The incredible stupidity here is that there is no classified research done by that group, nor by my own research group (cryptography). Everything is published in publicly available conferences and journals.

Case in point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_foreign-bo...

Nothing like real data. The US has over three times more immigrants than any other country.

I should also note it is my belief --my belief-- that most people in the US, outside of certain groups, are for LEGAL immigration. Don't come here illegally or with a student visa and then cry foul if not welcomed.

EDIT: the reference to student visas is about using them illegally to get in and then stay. It is NOT about not allowing students with proper visas to come in and study.

What's this about a student visa?

A student visa is a completely legal way of entering the US.

PS. Post the Boston bombings the immigration officials at the port of entry are required to verify valid student status before letting students (F1 visa holders) into the US. This means the chances of people entering the country illegally through a student visa are slim to none.

It's fairly common to come in on a "Student" visa to study at a community college or take night courses while also holding a full-time job. It's also common to skip the facade entirely - Use visa to gain entry, take job on forged credentials, stay past expiration. The student visa does allow the holder to work, but it is intended to be secondary to the education, and history has shown that it is not.

This is not as easy you make it sound. First, when entering the US, the immigration officials verify whether student status is valid using the SEVIS database. Second, all changes to student status must be reported to the SEVIS database by the school. If the school finds out that a student is doing unauthorized work, or if they find that the student's academic progress is unsatisfactory (likely if they are working full-time) they are required to terminate student status and report this to SEVIS.

The generic issue of using forged credentials to get an unauthorized job is applicable to any visa. And if I wanted to overstay my visa, it would be dumb of me to choose a visa that was as carefully tracked and monitored as as the F1 visa.

I don't think someone who went JHU, and was planning on joining MSR, would be, to not put too fine a point, the kind of person you're alluding to.

I am talking about using a student visa to get in and then stay and work permanently and not study. In other words, using the visa fraudulently. If you want to stay and work go through the proper legal process and get a resident visa.

Again, legal immigration.

Overstaying on an F1 visa is quite hard because the school is required to report all changes in academic status through the SEVIS database.

If you want to stay and work go through the proper legal process and get a resident visa.

F1 students are allowed to work 20 hours a week when the school is in session and 40 hours a week during the summer.

> The US has over three times more immigrants than any other country.

Which is completely irrelevant because the US is hundreds of times larger than many countries.

That's why we use percentages.

The claim is that Americans don't want anyone to come here. That is utterly false and it is fully supported by this data. Your point might have been valid if the topic at hand were different.

So...

    10000 Americans love pizza
    15000 Americans hate pizza
    10 Chileans love pizza
    15 Chileans hae pizza
    
    America loves (and hates) pizza 1000 times more than Chile?

Still absolutely irrelevant as it pertains to the issue being discussed.

And, if I chose to play your game, according to the same page approximately 12% of our population are immigrants. And this is very much on par and well above most European countries. And, after eliminating the top layer on that list, all of which are corner cases (i.e. Vatican City) the US and a number of European countries are in the top ten countries in terms of the percentage of immigrants as related to total country population.

So, at this point, I have no clue what your problem might be with this other than to imagine that you are just looking for a way to claim that Americans hate immigrants, which is simply not true any way you care to look at it.

> Nothing like real data. The US has over three times more immigrants than any other country.

That doesn't take into account the population of the US. Relative to other countries, the US does have lots of foreign-born population, but is far from being the one with more immigrants.

People who make this kind of argument are often the same who say "Sweden is much more homogenous; you can't compare apples to oranges like that" whenever some success story about welfare, healthcare, democracy, or something else is used to contrast against the U.S., despite the fact that that very same page shows that Sweden has the same number of immigrants as a percentage of the population that the U.S. does.

Not to dispute your point, but the number should really be normalized by population.

EDIT: If you click on "Immigrants as percentage of national population", you'll realize that the US is one of the lowest in developed countries. So I guess I am disputing your point.

What?

The US is ahead of Germany, France, Spain, United Kingdom, Russia, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, Finland, South Korea, Japan, Sweden, and so on, but you claim it is one of the lowest in developed countries?? Twisting the facts much?

this data is not for last 10 years. US was open.

the us data is from 2009. Pretty sure that's less than 10 years.

Cambridge isn't exactly representative, either of americans' attitudes towards immigration nor of the immigrants themselves.

Obviously. The thing about America right now is that there's no one city or even state that is representative of the country. The country is experiencing a cultural and political deadlock which can sort of be generalized to a divide between the coasts and the south. If you live in Cambridge or SV or NYC you get angered by issues presented in the OP, why shouldn't this brilliant student be allowed into the country? That's not my America.

Then immediately someone responds that where we live is not representative of America. Though let me remind you, if you believe the "real" America is the people in Alabama or the bureaucrats creating asinine policies that keep out brilliant foreign students, think about how much worse things would be without those of us in places like Cambridge to actually speak up and vote for candidates like Elizabeth Warren and say we don't like the way the other side is trying to run the country.

You don't have to leave the coasts. Just head over to Herndon in the suburbs of D.C. (http://www.voanews.com/content/illegal-immigration-reform-he...).

You don't get to say that "your America" does not include the rest of the country, not unless you're willing to take up arms and defend Boston as a sovereign entity against foreign invasion.

I don't think you even have to leave the coasts. Just go sit in the bleachers at a Red Sox game.

At Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan the story is pretty similar, and we aren't exactly the best known college worldwide.

Universities in general are far to the left of mainstream on these issues.

Except universities don't set immigration policy. The claim by the post I responded to was, to boil it down, that Americans don't want immigration. Universities are just on easy data point to reach for.

> This is utterly false and unfair. Please don't lump the entire US population with a few ignorant morons who have not seen the world five miles outside their home town. A quick look at our universities is proof enough that what you are saying is incorrect. The last time I visited MIT it almost felt like I was outside the US.

If anything I've been surprised at how consistently keen Americans are for high-skill immigration.

it is part of our evil plot. intellectual gravity as it were.

people in the middle (of the country) just don't get that economics are not zero sum. how empowered smart people tend to make more money, even if that means that they have to invent more money to make.

While I agree with you on principle, the number of anti-immigration xenophobes is much greater than "a few ignorant morons". A few ignorant morons would not be able to elect so many congressmen over such a long period of time to support their agenda. Places like MIT hold the true minority opinion.

Many European nations also have extremely loud but -- in comparison to the rest of their population/government -- small groups with extreme anti-immigration/"nationalist" stances. Some of them even get significant media coverage, or have control of a major news outlet or two.

Rather, they are louder.

Unfortunately, the "few ignorant morons" are usually in significant position of influence that can have wide spread impacts. It is even worse when these "morons" starts to become paranoid and developed a knee jerking reaction to their paranoia.

Accompany one of them for an immigration hearing sometime. You'll realize how wrong you are.

The worst one I know of was when they wouldn't let Nelson Mandela into the country because some computer had flagged him as having ties to terrorist groups. Condoleezza Rice personally went to the airport to wave him through security. She was so mad, she might have single-handedly taken the teeth out of that system.

Edit: more info, and some evidence that I was right :) http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-04-30-watchli...

The reason Nelson Mandela and the whole ANC party who fought apartheid were on the no fly list is because they were labelled as a terrorist group. Nobody bothered to adjust this until a couple of embarrassing moments like this. It is kind of funny that the apartheid government were never denied entry to any country, yet the people fighting an oppressive government were labelled as terrorist. It is also surprising that the countries that helped the ANC were so called communist countries, the world seems more like the Soprano's than countries guided by principles, love and life.

...the people fighting an oppressive government were labelled as terrorist...

Not surprising at all.

Dig into the history of the ANC a little. Specifically, look for Umkhonto we Sizwe after the Sharpeville massacre in 1960.

While in no way [edit] trivialising the abhorrent and often vicious apartheid regime of the time, the ANC (and Mandela) haven't exactly been angles, either.

>the ANC (and Mandela) haven't exactly been angles, either.

On the contrary, one could say they were a bit... acute.

Now you're just being obtuse...

Sorry, it's a reflex!

"Umkhonto we Sizwe" Do you understand how this group came about, what principles it was created on? You should read Nelson Mandela's biography. Also read the essays on pbs from people in the struggle which is very truthful and raw interview scripts. To be honest when Mandela's talks about how he planned stuff and the books he read, kind of reminded me in a way of a startup. He was taking a dying organisation revamping it and positioning it for a win. His elder found him reckless and too arrogant.... honestly you should just read the interviews on the pbs link below, very entertaining, especially for history buffs like me. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/mandela/

Hey, just an FYI, to denigrate means "to criticize," so although I understood what you meant, you might want to reword that (not to be pedantic, I just know that if I misused a word, I'd want someone to tell me).

> Hey, just an FYI, to denigrate means "to criticize"

No, to denigrate means to attack the reputation or importance of another, usually in an unfair manner. It's more negative than mere criticism.

Thanks.

I find the "some computer" comment a bit odd, because Nelson Mandela most certainly did have ties to terrorist groups. He co-founded one.

This is not a swipe against Mandela in any way. It's just an example that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, and how rigid systems can end up giving you politically inconvenient results.

If you make a blanket rule that people with ties to terrorism cannot enter the country, then you can end up "correctly" denying entry to Nobel Peace Prize winners.

Mandela didn't found anything. He started out as a militant leader in Umkhonto we Sizwe (translates as "Spear of the Nation"), which was the military wing of the ANC.

Wikipedia says that Mandela co-founded Umkhonto we Sizwe. I welcome correction if they got it wrong, of course.

We have to assume that the author of the Wikipedia article is more informed than I am. I stand corrected.

Well, we don't have to. But if you say so, I suppose it's the way to bet.

Oh that's true, but I think the problem was still an automated one. No person actually looked at Nelson Mandela's file and decided that he should be denied access to the USA.

I imagine a person probably did look at his file and decide (at least implicitly, as part of labeling him as affiliated with a terror group) that he shouldn't be admitted to the USA. Of course, this happened decades beforehand.

that is no excuse.

I agree, blaming it on "bureaucracy" or "big government" is the least insightful thing someone can add to the conversation.

Of course it's executed by a bureaucracy -- what else would we expect, Batman's going to manage the program? The assumption that it's going to be executed by a bureaucracy should be part of the reasoning when setting policy.

Either this was an expected outcome (in the collateral damage sense or in the "good keep him out" sense), or it should have been and people should have known better.

"But when you get a black mark against you"

There are better, more accurate literary and historical analogies than "black marks". Things like yellow stars, scarlet letters, that kind of thing. aka reason number 235135 not to be proud to be an American.

It's actually good security practice. If the terrorist's find out they got flagged because of X, now they know not to do X any more.

If, by X, you mean "go thru airport security". Luckily our borders are an impermeable wall stronger than the cold war era berlin wall, so there's no alternative method for bad guy to enter the country.

This is the comedy of the whole security theater system. In the old days generals always prepared to refight the last war, in the fatherland security era its about the same concept. The next attack will not come from a properly documented airline passenger, it'll come from "rio grande swimmer number 50 million and one".

May as well just let them fly even if we know they're bad guys, if they're going to get here anyway, one way or another, at least we'll make a profit off the ticket and its easier to track their actions at an airport than some desert out west.

Even worse, they're better off letting all the bad guys thru to boost budgets, and stop only good guys because its safer/less confrontational and makes good theater. If I know that, they probably figured it out a long time earlier, and almost surely implemented it.

Its also a bad tactical move. Lets say he was in fact a bad guy. The obvious standing order for a bad guy would be if you get caught, yet are not drone attacked or sent to the concentration camp in cuba, then being busted should be the immediate signal to enter our completely porous and open borders via non-traditional routes, and "do your thing" since you're obviously of no further use undercover. The mere fact this dude did nothing for over a year using this logic proves his innocence. If he was a bad guy then he would have "sneaked" in, gotten on campus as quickly as possible while his intel is still current, and (done something tragic)

It's actually bad security practice, because terrorists do not exist. I mean, there are so few of them that they are basically irrelevant. Yes, every few years a terrorist event will occur somewhere in a western country, and that is quite unfortunate. However it is very minor and I don't believe it is worth the effort to fight it with a significant part of the nation's budget. Even less so to restrict civil liberties.

This whole narrative that there is a prevalent terrorist threat against our western countries is both a product of irrational fear and general government megalomania. I'm not even sure there's malevolence behind it.

Osama Bin Laden really won the very first time the terms "War on terror" were pronounced - I don't think he could ever have dreamed of such a wide and lasting success

It's only a good practice if X is very, very highly correlated with (and only with) being a terrorist.

It's not really that great security practice if you're missing a ton of real terrorists who don't do X, and you're catching a lot of non-terrorists who do do X, and no one can figure out what's going on since no one knows what X is. That's not protecting our methods; at that point, it's really just picking people out randomly.

We must always remember how rare terrorists are, and what that means for any test you apply to a person.

You have a test that flags terrorists 99% of the time, and also flags innocent people 1% of the time. The test flags a person. What are the odds that this person is a terrorist?

Answer: roughly one in a million, depending exactly on the terrorist:non-terrorist ratio in your sample population. Since there are millions of normal people for each terrorist, a small false positive rate still grabs so many people as to make the test nearly useless.

And of course it goes well beyond this. Since actual terrorists are so rare, you can never confidently state that a test will flag terrorists 99% of the time. You can easily measure the false positive rate, but it's basically impossible to measure the true positive rate with any accuracy. You can guess and extrapolate, but when it comes to actually measuring performance in the real world, you'll have a very difficult time distinguishing between a test that flags 99% of terrorists, and a test that flags 1% of terrorists.

The fellow had been in the country for years. If he hadn't crossed the border he would now have his PhD, and would be doing what he had been doing before. No one is safer because they turned him away at the border.

It's either a false positive (that's most likely, considering how few terrorists there actually are), or a subtle hint to discourage his associates from ... doing things.

At least he has the PhD now. Imagine if academia were academia and his school insisted on having viva in person.

It also has the unfortunate side effect of leaving innocent people completely confused when they get flagged, because they have no idea what they did wrong nor any way to defend themselves. America is not supposed to be a country where people are punished for mysterious reasons, not even foreigners.

> If the terrorist's find out they got flagged because of X

What terrorists? Good security practice is making a system that is usable, because otherwise the best practice would be to seal the boarder completely.

a bit like a government. If it find that doing X is frown upon by its citizen, it better hide it before the citizens make it stop doing X any more.

edit: this is obviously false, since by taking the monopole of violence, the government also has to drop some barbaric practices. And this is all due process and defense rights are about, limitations of the government power. Call it unfair, but drones are unfair too.

Surely we want them to stop doing bad things? :p

Yes, but this will stop them from doing EASY TO CATCH bad things. It's like anti-bacterial soap. Think about how badass that 0.1% that ISN'T killed is.

Ignoring that whooshing noise, so we're breeding a race of super-terrorists? Nice.

"if people get denied for normal stuff (overstaying, violating their visas, etc) they're told and can at least fight it a little."

I think this is true when the person is in the country but when they're not they can't enter when it's being worked out, even if there are no security issues. (but I'm a US citizen and don't have any direct experience)

I am not US citizen but visa policy is virtually same for any issuing country. Getting visa (any kind) is privilege not right. Government has full discretionary right to refuse entry to anybody whom is not citizen.

Not saying it is fair system but it is what it is. Except full open border policy I don't see how you can fix system.

Every year I meet more expats working or studying here from 6 months to several years in order to build skills to take back home. Since I live close to JHU, most of them are scientists.

But yes, an economic depression causes political pressure on immigrants due to the lack of work/school for native citizens.