Coming to America?

Topic: Things I do not understand. SIGH.

I have questions.

First: Do you think $43.8 billion dollars is a lot of money?

Second: Do you think 378,000 jobs is a lot of jobs?

I do.

The $43.8 billion is the amount foreigners pay to come here for college and grad school, and the 378,000 jobs are the number supported by those students. In fact, one job is created/supported for every 3 foreign students. More info here. That’s more money than the country makes exporting soybeans. Source.

And yes, education counts as an “export” even though the product is geographically HERE, but it’s paid for with foreign dollars. (Yeah, read it through again, and think about it, it was surprising to me, too, that education would be one of our exports.) And that is before we get to the actual benefits of well-educated people who might stay here after graduation and contribute to, oh I dunno, science and medicine, to name just two.

You know what we (historically) made a lot of foreign dollars on, that also supported a lot of jobs? Hotels/motels/resorts, restaurants, theme parks, air travel, rental cars, gasoline, you know, TOURISM.

In 2024, more than 72 million people came to visit the USA. In 2023, they spent $213.1 billion on travel and tourism-related activities.

I’m thinking about the FIFA World Cup¹ in 2026 and the Summer Olympics in 2028. Not to mention other sporting events, conferences, and the like that bring people to the US every year. (Links in the preceding sentence are for 2025 events.)

It behooves any thinking human to understand that being welcoming to foreigner students and other visitors is a good idea, just strictly on economic grounds.

I’m no economist, but I know a little². And I know that when people spend money on things like education and tourism, THAT IS GOOD. When we look at the “balance of trade”, it’s not just goods, it’s services, not just tourism, which is easy to see, but more opaque things, like tech. These data are missing from VonShitzenpants view of data.

But back to the original question - why wouldn’t we want to make people feel welcome here? Color me confused.

And again - if you were an athlete, would you want to participate in the World Cup or the Olympics? Would you want to try and clear customs? If you were a fan, would you want to spend your hard earned money to come to a place where you’d likely be abused, and potentially be turned away when you tried to enter the country? Would you want to be a student here if your ability to speak and write was restricted?

It doesn’t make any sense.

While I vehemently disagree, I UNDERSTAND why the fascist regime wants to get rid of immigrants. It’s not just that they hate this:

It’s that they are racists, opposed to bilingualism (which falls under “learning”, which they strenuously oppose), and want the overall population distribution to return to 1850 where about 85% of the population was white, most blacks were slaves, and they ignored Native Americans. Full data set.

So it makes sense — they’re looking for population percentage numbers³.

But visitors? The MAGA crowd is mercenary in their quest for more money for the rich. Somehow they don’t understand that money spent here is important not just for tax revenues, but for jobs (for Americans) and multiplier effects on the overall economy.

We know Shitler and his minions hate poor people, and want them all dead. I don’t even need a source for that, it’s in each and every single thing the fascist regime does. But tourists aren’t poor. So I’m stymied at why they are unwelcome. And unwelcome they are - not just the clearing customs problems, but also cuts to National Parks, museums, the arts, and other attractions that would interest tourists have already been put in place.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s clear why the cuts are happening. National Parks? Clear out the people so those lands can be drilled on, stripped of anything valuable, and ruined because they like killing things. Museums? They want to whitewash history. Think about what happened in Poland. Quote that explains it all from the link:

The government can more easily — and in a shorter period of time — impose its ideas. It’s possible to prepare a new exhibition in a year, an exhibition that could reflect the views of the Trump administration on some vital aspects of history, and it’s easy for them to point to it and say, “This is what we achieved.”

The arts? Dis be personal. VonShitzenpants hates the artists from all fields, especially movies and TV, that have shunned him over the years. And he smarts from things like being permanently banned from the Met Gala. Source.

All so counterproductive to the United States being part of the world at large. And since those imbeciles don’t think things through, they don’t understand how isolating they will make the whole country.

So like I said - I just don’t understand. Looking for someone to provide clarity.

I also don’t understand what’s going on with the budget negotiations - so my confusion will be on display in tomorrow’s post.

1. In learning about FIFA - I came across these city posters. Worth a look, very artistic.

2. I took an intro econ course taught by the amazing Paul Samuelson at MIT.

3. No, they didn’t calculate what happens when there are fewer total people to contribute to the economy.