I remember a question I asked at the beginning of political science class many years ago.
“Some politicians say that we should save money by cutting foreign aid and saving the money here?”
What I did not anticipate was the professor would take the next hour’s lecture to answer the question.
It was the 1991, during the first Gulf War.
His answer, to summarize 50 minutes of lecture, was this:
With the exception of Egypt and Israel, the U.S. spent less money annually on foreign aid than one day of military operations during Operation Desert Storm.
He went on:
The greatest bang for our buck in foreign aid was our willingness to educate foreign born students. The students either settle here, or go back to their countries and apply the lessons and education they learn here.
Further, it costs little to nothing add one more student to a classroom.
Fast forward to today where the Republican xenophobes like Ted Cruz want to close the U.S. to Muslims. Instead, imagine hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugee kids being educated in the US and then returning at some point to rebuild Syria and the Middle East. Imagine a generation of Middle Easterners who grew up learning our values of working together, openness, cooperation, the value of life, ect….. These sound like principles ISIS is fighting against. Why is the GOP and candidates like Ted Cruz on the side of ISIS?
In today’s connected internet world, the fact that someone living in the Middle East has a relative living successfully in the U.S. can change attitudes at home. How can you “hate” a country your family members live well in?
Former US Secretary of Defense William Perry wrote in the forward of the report In America's Interest, Welcoming International Students (Jan. 2003)
“In America’s Interest: Welcoming International Students makes a compelling case for the importance of continued — indeed, enhanced — U.S. openness to international students as integral to America’s security in today’s world.
Central to the framework of the report is the conviction that educating the world’s future leaders is part of the solution to terrorism, not part of the problem. Educational exchanges are part of what Harvard scholar Joseph Nye has called “soft power.” They depend on an openness to the world that may seem at first glance to be incompatible with today’s security imperatives. But in fact, openness to these students is as much of a necessity for our safety as is greater scrutiny to identify those few who harbor harmful intentions.
Welcoming international students to our nation constitutes a crucial long term investment in American leadership and security. Such openness has long been a bulwark of U.S. foreign policy and is a proven means to fight against the uninformed stereotypes, fear, and ignorance that are at the heart of the crisis we face today. I highly commend the report’s recommendations and urge the U.S. government, higher education, and the business communities to take the
necessary steps to enhance U.S. openness to international students.”
The GOP leaders want to close the U.S. off to non-Christians. Is it because outsiders too see through GOP bullshit? Any rhetoric stating the GOP wants tougher standards to get into the country is meant to deflect from their bigotry of Islam. How about a 5 year refugee process filled with waterboarding and torture instead of the current 2 years? It’s absurd but probably favored by a majority of GOP voters.
What the US does best is educate foreign born people. These people live for a while in the US and have an option of sharing our values and education with their home countries. They take these values and share them with the world regardless. Education is the U.S.’s greatest export.