Over the next couple of decades, policies and bureaucracy like this are going to lead to the US losing the massive lead it has worldwide with regards to entrepreneurship and wealth creation.
I've never understood why as a country we are willing to pay for the education of international students (through public universities), but then make it exceedingly difficult for many of them to stay in the country after school. These are highly-skilled people who want to work here, start companies here, and pay a huge amount of taxes here.
I'm sure Dartmouth will get right on it and get one of the eleventy billion diversity officers and assistant deans of such and such on the case, if they can be diverted from the urgent task of putting the crippled remains of the Greek system on double-secret probation for organizing a Cinco de Mayo or Kentucky Derby party.
I understand the feeling, but the site guidelines ask you not to reply to egregious comments (or comment on them at the top level, which is the same thing but worse). In other words: please don't feed the trolls. We've banned the account, but the damage that comment caused has now spilled over the entire thread.
If you flag the bad comment, that alerts moderators. In egregious cases, email hn@ycombinator.com so we can look at it sooner. But starting a new off-topic subthread about how shitty a shitty comment was merely makes the thread worse, so please don't.
The principle still applies though. It's a swerve into a generic controversy to which people's responses will be indignant and predictable. There's no curiosity in such discussion, and therefore it's off topic for HN.
i don't understand what kind of curiosity an article like this could inspire at all. if you allow these kind of controversial articles you might as well allow the ensuing partisan debate.
I understand why you'd say that, but the suggestion doesn't generalize. Even if we exclude articles like this one, there will still be many other articles with controversial and political overlap. Excluding them all isn't an option, and neither is allowing "ensuing partisan debate" to burn wild.
I wrote about this recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20013092. If you read that and still think there's something I haven't addressed, I'd be curious to hear what it is.
When I consider how much people hate Facebook, and my own sense that they don't really "do anything", it seems like there are an infinite number of better existing and potential enterprises someone could work for (or create). In that light, it seems churlish to focus on whether any benefits are distributed equitably. Maybe it's all garbage, so people should have the self-respect not to fight over it?
This sort of phrasing ("throw away their values") to me has the connotation that normal people have an exhaustive, complex, and perfectly logical system of "values" which guide them like a million-line computer program until they reach a breaking point for some unclear reason.
Which I'm describing in a way that sounds ridiculous, because I think it is. It's ridiculous squared to imply that I (or anyone) can infer how someone else's putative system of values works.
I have a distaste for Facebook, although I still use it, kind of like I would for an unpleasant person at work. But that has nothing to do with principles, which I don't admit to having.
If Americans want these high paying jobs then they need to suck it up and study hard core STEM subjects instead of “following their passion” into random fields that pay no money. None of these hiring companies care which country you’re from (in fact it’s probably cheaper to hire American citizens).
You're on a soccer team. You object to your teammates refusing to let the fans or the opposing team have a chance to kick the ball. You see this as being spiteful, since everybody should be able to share the experience of kicking the ball. Meanwhile, your teammates are muttering about how you are disloyal and really don't belong on the team. They want to succeed together, even if that means excluding the fans and the opposing team.
Being drafted by birth doesn't change the fact that your peers expect you to support the team. They want to win, as a team, without compromise.
George Washington didn't share ammunition with the British, even though it would have been a kind gesture. Was he spiteful for not sharing? How about Truman refusing to share nuclear weapons with the rest of the world?
I'm guessing the campaign promise to "win bigly" didn't resonate with you, but lots of people loved it.
I suspect you do have an enemy. It might be rural people, southerners, Christians, or people who want to win bigly.
Evolution made humans behave this way. People who supported their tribe against the neighboring tribes got to leave more offspring. Even those killed in battle effectively got more offspring, due to DNA shared with close relatives who benefited from winning the wars.
> I suspect you do have an enemy. It might be rural people, southerners, Christians, or people who want to win bigly.
I am not at war with any of those people, although I might disagree with them and oppose their policies. There's a difference between an enemy and someone we disagree with.
This is more like a professional soccer team objecting to someone far better coming into the team because it'll disrupt one of their roles and the team rallies around that individual. Loyal? Sure. Probably means the team is going to be worse in the long run for it.
analogy doesn't fit because there's no analogy for immigrants in sports. if the kid lands a job at fb and immigrates permanently he increases the tax base. now you might say that he's taking a spot from an american but i thought america was a meritocracy? if this kid is better than all of the americans competing for that spot then so be it - the americans should work harder.
That would be extremist meritocracy. Just like capitalism doesn't mean you can sell cocaine and communism does't mean you have to lease your underwear from the government, meritocracy doesn't mean everybody gets to be on the team. To the extent that there is meritocracy, it exists to benefit the team -- that is, the existing team.
We do in fact see complaints about this in sports, particularly with national teams. People want their chance at stardom, which is reduced if shared with the entire rest of the world.
And of course the "americans" they're talking about are descended from immigrants themselves, because you can be sure they're not saying that the jobs should go to indigenous people.
'Continuation' is inaccurate - your country's historic immigration practices began with "free White persons of good character" [1], and were effectively 'whites only' until 1965 [2]. But the 'nation of immigrants' rhetoric omits this.
Those are the practices they probably benefited from.
Play the victim? From the post, it sounds like this person legitimately is the victim of a technicality and lack of personal oversight from university staff.
I've never understood why as a country we are willing to pay for the education of international students (through public universities), but then make it exceedingly difficult for many of them to stay in the country after school. These are highly-skilled people who want to work here, start companies here, and pay a huge amount of taxes here.