As the dean of an institution where each year’s incoming class of 900 MBA students contains about 350 people from abroad, I have watched with concern the reports of declining interest among foreigners applying to US universities. A survey by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers found that 40 per cent of schools saw a drop in foreign applicants for the next academic year.
I think about these numbers not only in my role as a dean but as someone who faced the same decision these students need to make, albeit in times when tensions around immigration were far less palpable. Born and raised in India, I came to the US for graduate school in the early 1980s, became a citizen and have lived here ever since. Over the past year my immigrant friends and I have been asking ourselves: if we were 30 years younger and considering coming to America today, what would we do?
我思索这些数字时，不只以我身为院长的角色，而且是作为当年同样面对着这些学生需要做出的选择的人，尽管那时围绕移民的紧张远没有那么明显。我在印度出生和长大，在上世纪80年代初来美国读研究生，之后成为美国公民并一直生活在这里。过去一年里，我和我的移民朋友们在问自己一个问题：如果我们年轻30岁，现在考虑来美国，我们会怎么做？We understand why President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration tone has found an audience. The threat felt by US workers due to competition from lower-wage earners in other countries is understandable. Add in recent episodes of global terrorism, and isolationism appears appealing — the same way Brexit appealed to some British voters.
我们理解美国总统唐纳德?特朗普(Donald Trump)的反移民论调为何能找到受众。对于其他国家低收入劳工的竞争，美国工人感受到威胁是可以理解的。再加上近期的全球恐怖主义袭击事件，这一切都让孤立主义显得颇具吸引力——就像英国退欧吸引某些英国选民一样。