Do Not Enter

The
US government is doing its best to drive the Dowbrigade back into international
exile. In addition
to dismaying us with Orwellian distortions of reality and scaring the
shit out of us with dire predictions of terroristic disaster, they are
scaring away our professional bread and butter – the teeming masses of
foreign students yearning to be educated…

Foreign
students contribute $13 billion to the American economy annually. But
this year
brought clear
signs that the United States’ overwhelming dominance of international
higher education may be ending.

Some of the American decline, experts agree, is due
to post-Sept. 11 delays in processing student visas, which have discouraged
thousands of students, not only from the Middle East but also from dozens
of other nations, from enrolling in the United States. American educators
and even some foreign ones say the visa difficulties are helping foreign
schools increase their share of the market.

"International students say it’s not worth queuing
up for two days outside the U.S. consulate in whatever country they
are in to get a visa when they can
go to the U.K. so much more easily. Now Australia, the U.K., Ireland, New
Zealand and Canada are competing for that dollar, and our lives have been
made easier because of the difficulties that students are having getting
into the
U.S."

In addition to the increasing competition from Anglophone
nations, we are up against an increasingly diverse and functional virtual
offerings and, more recently,the creation of tiny intensive English towns
built as English-only
zones for teaching the language to young Koreans
and
Japanese
without exposing them to the physical danger and corroding cultural influences
of the US. We may have to establish one of these private idiomatic fiefdoms
ourselves, perhaps in Thailand or some scenic South Seas island…

article from the New York Times