On 23 May, 10:10, TimB wrote:
On May 22, 6:15 pm, Arthur Figgis wrote:





wrote:
If poor airports are capable of wrecking an economy then the US is
screwed. In my experience any foreigner is made to feel entirely
unwelcome and treated with intense suspicion as you enter the country,
thanks to those nice chaps at the Department of Homeland Security. *I
don't think it's dawned on the US government how much that's going to
put people off studying or working in the states, which over the
medium term is going to do some pretty nasty things to its economy

Chap I know is off to Boston or somewhere on business next week, and
reckons he was entirely unwelcome and treated with intense suspicion
just getting to the stage of the visa interview, never mind actually
going...

--
Arthur Figgis * * * * * * * Surrey, UK

Funnily enough, a chap I know went to Boston a couple of months ago,
for a six-month fellowship at Harvard. Couldn't get a visa appointment
in London within any reasonable time-scale so had to fly to Belfast
and stay overnight. The interview took about two minutes. So a total
waste of time, money and carbon emissions (this is a guy who cycles/
trains everywhere and doesn't have a car, so was annoyed by this) -
but at the end of the day, once he got through all the bureaucratic
obstructionism, he was welcomed with open arms. So, a bit of both.
*They risk affecting their universities as well as the economy.


Over the long term, the universities are the economy - one of the
reasons the US has done so well over the last century is the amount
poured into practical academic research. The fact that Harvard and
Stanford attract bright people from all over the world has done
wonders for the US economy. The fact that most European universities
don't is one of the reasons Europe's a mess.

Whoever said that the US authorities don't care about any of this is
right. But give it twenty years and they'll wish they had.

Jonn