International students (foreigners!) like to bitch and moan about how hard it is for them to get the visas they need to work in this country. I say, tough beans. We Americans were here first, back when the land was, from sea to shining sea, empty of people (and of everything else, except giant blue oxen). We sowed the Great Plains and tamed the Badlands and carved out the path of the winding Colorado, and I don’t want to hear a peep out of anyone trying to steal American jobs and American food from the American mouths of American Americans. America!
Some of you might say, “Aidan, your hypocrisy offends all faculties of logic or reason, as your own father emmigrated to the United States from Ireland.” Well, yes, that’s true. But that happened almost 40 years ago, when the U.S. was still wild and lawless. And I’m sure my dear old da feels bad about being born elsewhere. These international students seem to be proud of their transgression. They celebrate it, though the Woodbridge Society, and student cultural organizations, and the Spee Club, and I don’t like it one bit. Harvard is incredibly generous to offer admission to people with such an odious and misplaced pride in their place of birth (though I suppose once they started taking people from New Jersey, they had to stay consistent).
So here is my call, not for womanish leniency, but for more manful restrictions on the issuance of visas. As much as I support the concept of brain drain—it’s such an extravagance to send those we educate back to their countries of origin, to waste their education among non-American peoples—the very presence of foreigners on our soil (especially that of the wild Canadian hordes) makes my skin crawl. And there’s only one thing that makes my skin stop crawling—apple pie, just like my mom makes (my mom, who is American–way to go, Dad!!!).
