Our government obviously has something against immigrants, and the whole thing does not make any sense to me. Clearly, the current government is a nationalist government, and they think that is a good thing. I think it’s a terrible mistake, which sets the United States back in the world intellectually and scientifically, and it does damage that it will take decades to repair.

I am not going to talk about agricultural workers for now, service workers, and all those “low income” workers that we depend on every day for the goods we consume and the services we hire. I am not going to talk about the moral abomination of separating children from their parents and putting them in cages.

I am talking about revoking student visas from foreign students if they are only taking online courses during the pandemic. What good could that possibly accomplish other than looking good for a political base that apparently does not understand the foundation of our scientific community and our tech economy.

Do they know that 29% of all Medical Doctors in the United States are foreign born? Have they noticed that just about every emergency room physician interviewed on television during this pandemic appears to be foreign born? We need these doctors. We could use twice as many of them right now.

Do they realize that 79% (yes, 79%) of all Ph.D. candidates in Computer Science studying in the United States are foreigners (as of 2015)?

Do they realize that 75% of all Ph.D. candidates in Industrial Engineering are foreigners?

Do they realize that we need highly educated people in this country if we want to remain competitive in biomedical sciences – like inventing vaccines?

Do they realize that we need computer scientists for the economy of the future if we want to remain at the top of this field?

Our government does not appear to know what it is doing, and the only thing I can think of is that it’s systematically trying to dumb down America as fast as it can.

It seems to be working.