Category Archives: May You Live In Interesting Times

Those Immigrants Aren’t Going Away

No matter if the United States votes in a Trump or a Biden, those immigrants highlighted in our media feeds—scaling the wall, crossing the desert, detained at the border, massed in a border facility—aren’t going away.

Writes Bloomberg columnist Max Hastings: “Whereas in 2000 there were estimated to be 150 million migrants — people living outside their country of birth — today the figure is 272 million and rising. In 1970, there were fewer than 10 million migrants in the U.S., which is overwhelmingly the global destination of choice; today there are 44 million. In Europe, there are 82 million migrants, representing a 10% rise since 2015.” (“Immigration Is the Wealthy World’s Challenge of the Century,” April 11, 2021)

If you are threatened by war, crime, or starvation, you will search for any avenue offering escape. You may climb a wall, risk drowning at sea, or pay a smuggler who stuffs you into an overloaded truck where you risk smothering.

What is ironic is the need of developed countries for migrants. They need them for jobs, for new ideas, and for shoring up their shrinking birth rates. Immigration has been a part of renewal since the beginning of recorded history.

But as Hastings says: “Everyone but the most fervent libertarians, however, recognizes that the Western democracies would be overwhelmed if all those who wish to live among us should come to do so.”

Hastings believes the United States is fortunate in that migrant-sending countries in the Western Hemisphere are more susceptible to help at the source. That is, with economic aid for smaller populations.

However, the take home point from the article is the need to address the sources of migration—the dysfunctional governments, the wars, the famines caused by climate change, for example.

Obviously, these problems were a long time in the making and will not be remedied by band-aid solutions.

We may derive some hope, however, by remembering that the Cold War, threatening global nuclear disaster, was averted by unusual global cooperation. These efforts included NATO and humanitarian aid and, through all those tense years, continued talks between supposed adversaries like the United States and the Soviet Union.

Averting a devastating major war called for tremendous cooperative efforts. Solutions to the global migration crisis will demand no less.

Democracy Is Not a Given

For a while, in the glory days of the late 1980’s and early 90’s, we thought democracy was a given. The Soviet Union vanished. The democracies of the world appeared ascendant. Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait was repulsed by a U.S. led multi-national military force.

That was a long time ago. To those under thirty years of age, it’s not even a memory. We’re mired in Afghanistan, stymied in the Middle East, dealing with China’s rise.

On top of that, even the United States, supposedly the lynchpin of democracy, experienced an attempt to overcome an election by mob rule.

Writes Michael J. Abramowitz, president of Freedom House: “Over the past 14 years, my organization, Freedom House, has tracked a steady erosion of political rights and civil liberties around the world. The decline has affected, not just the states that were already repressive . . . but also . . . long-established democracies, including the United States. Our reports show a long-term decline in the vitality of our own democracy, a trend that has become especially pronounced in recent years and undermines our credibility as a champion of human rights globally.” (“Diplomacy and Democracy: Putting Values into Practice,” The Foreign Service Journal, January-February 2021)

How do we overcome the forces that would overwhelm us, even here?

We can support responsible journalism, going beyond Facebook feeds and twitter posts.

We can curb our anger and listen to those with whom we disagree, setting up avenues of civility.

We can continue and even improve our voting presence. Unprecedented voting in the last election overwhelmed several years worth of lies and deceits and endless challenges. We can fight any attempt to limit voting that makes it harder for ordinary working people to vote.

We might even consider changes to our Constitution allowing the election of our president and vice-president by popular vote.

Immigrants: Push and Pull

Vibrant economies need immigrants. The highly skilled have immigrated for centuries, as they continue to do, spreading skills and innovation. The less skilled have contributed workers to harvest crops, begin new businesses, and save money to prepare their children for better lives.

Immigrants can shore up falling birth rates in developed nations. Countries stagnate if the number of births falls below replacement rates, the recent norm in developed societies. A continuing flow of immigrants lessens fallout from the drop in birth rates.

At the same time, immigration can be uneven and inundate some societies, as in various African and Middle Eastern countries and to a lesser extent in developed nations on the fringes. Wars have upset whole societies. Peacekeeping not only prevents bloodshed, but decreases huge migrations of people, desperately fleeing for their lives.

Differences from the past also multiply today’s movements of people. The world’s growing population means more of us are affected by conflicts. In addition, climate change causes drought and less dependable weather patterns. Finally, social media spreads news of better places to live.

Successful immigration results from managing both the push and the pull factors. Most immigrants are not criminals or freeloaders any more than were the immigrating ancestors of many of us.

Developed nations have obligations to lessen the push factors that send boatloads and truckloads searching for a better life. Some of the factors leading desperate people to flee are the result of decisions made by those nations.

For centuries, developing nations were seen merely as sources of raw materials or military outposts with little regard for the country’s citizens. Since the 1800’s, the United States has often supported dictators guilty of gross human rights violations in Central America, for example.

For the sake of righting wrongs as well as for reasons of self-interest, developed nations would be wise to work on both the push and the pull factors fueling immigration.

God’s On Our Side Right?

Growing up in Nashville, Tennessee, in the Cold War years, I don’t recall racism ever being mentioned in my childhood, all-white, Southern Baptist church. Patriotism, however, often was mentioned.

During the church’s two-week Vacation Bible School, during the summer, we children began the day with pledges to the Christian Bible, the Christian flag, and the U.S. flag. We jockeyed to be the one bringing in the U.S. flag. Not so much the other symbols.

This is not to denigrate my church. The love shown me in that congregation, during my childhood and adolescence, is my most priceless possession after my family’s love. And by teaching me about Jesus, my church was laying the path I would follow toward eventually confronting my country’s racism.

I am disturbed, though, by the worship so many American Christians give to their earthly country.

You need to understand that I’ve lived in enough other countries and cultures, including the Middle East, to appreciate the United States. I am proud of good things we have brought to the world—sending aid to nations damaged by war, even to our enemies, for example.

However, I am disturbed by the tendency on the part of some Christians, it seems to me, to equate the United States with Jesus.

“God’s on our side,” someone said, in commenting on how God would choose their political group in the last election.

Really, the truth is that God has the “side.” We’re the ones who do the choosing.

What measures us is how well we choose God’s side, how well we carry out Jesus’ teaching.

Lost: A Good Name

Whatever meaning we gain from the Trump years, the rest of the world has lost a good bit of its faith in America.

Since World War II, the United States had been the country to reckon with. Dictators might rail against us, but they had to take into consideration our condemnation. Allies might curse our pride, but they depended on us.

Now, although our allies may welcome us “back” with the Biden administration, they are never going to trust us as they did before Donald Trump appeared on the scene. If we went off the rails once, it can happen again.

Indeed, I’m not sure we can trust ourselves. The fact that our system would allow the election of one so unsuited to the office of president is, to say the least, unsettling.

Something has gone seriously wrong when Joe Biden, who takes his Christian faith more seriously than any president in years, gained so little of the white evangelical vote.

That Donald Trump was actually followed into a coup attempt calls for a period of reflection and mourning.

The Subversive Dorothy Sayers

Years ago I became a fan of the Lord Peter Wimsey detective stories by Dorothy Sayers. That eventually led me into other writings by Sayers, including The Whimsical Christian, a book of her essays.

I read with interest a recent biography of Sayers by Crystal Downing: Subversive (Christ, Culture, and the Shocking Dorothy L. Sayers.)

Sayers, like many of us, groped her way from the Christianity taught her as a child, through rebellion (she bore a child out of wedlock) toward a thoughtful Christian faith.

She is indeed subversive. She speaks for a reasoned Christianity but not a relative Christianity. That is, she accepts Christianity as God’s unique revelation through his entry into the world in Jesus. Wise people may develop wise religions, but the Christian revelation is unique.

She pointed to the dangers of too much relativism in Britain’s experience with Nazi Germany during the 1930’s, Britain didn’t recognize Hitler’s evil for what it was because of a kind of relativism, she said. Hitler was touted by some as simply a national leader with different ideas.

Writing further in this passage about Sayers, Downing says, “German Christians caught up in religious fervor for the Fuehrer had supplanted ancient dogma about Christ’s sacrifice for the entire world with political dogmatism : a problem that has marred and scarred Christianity through the ages.”

Hard not to see a similarity in the views of some Christians that Donald Trump is God’s man for the hour. A belief in the use of political power for a Christ who disdained political power.

Evangelical Dissent

“This week we watched an insurrection of domestic terrorists, incited and fomented by the President of the United States.”

So spoke Russell Moore on January 11, after a mob broke into the U.S. capitol and sent member of Congress into hiding. In a soul-searching article on his website, Moore, a white evangelical Christian leader, denounced the attacks in no uncertain terms.

Polls and opinion pieces vary as to whether any significant change in 2020 occurred in the white evangelical support for Trump from 2016. However, the questioning of such support has increased. Christianity Today recently ran an interview on the subject of Christian nationalism. (“Christian Nationalism Is Worse Than You Think,” Morgan Lee, January 13, 2021)

Voting numbers for Americans without evangelical beliefs are almost the mirror opposite of their evangelical counterparts, with Biden holding a commanding 56 percent to 33 percent lead over Trump going into the election.

President Trump’s advantage among evangelicals, however, comes primarily from white evangelicals, among whom he led Biden 73 percent to 18 percent. African Americans with evangelical beliefs overwhelmingly planned to vote for Biden (69% to 19%).

(Numbers are from “Evangelical Vote Once Again Split on Ethnic Lines And far fewer plan to vote third-party in 2020, LifeWay finds,” Aaron Earls – Lifeway Research, September 29, 2020.)

Many evangelicals, it is said, are favorable to Trump for one reason: the abortion question, the sanctity of life. But how far does this sanctity of life go? Only to one group of people? What about babies killed with American bombs in Yemen because Trump said Americans needed money from arms sales to Saudi Arabia? What about American children who need health care which Trump would deny by abolishing affordable health care?

What about a Trump who relishes division over against a Biden who yearns for healing?

When any religious group attempts to force its beliefs, even admirable beliefs, by political power, that group almost always ends up being corrupted by that power and losing any moral authority.

Reading JACK While Rioters Rampage

I happened to be reading Marilynne Robinson’s latest novel, Jack, as rioters attacked the U.S. capitol in Washington.

The man, Jack, is the wayward son of a loving family (white) headed by a Christian minister in Iowa. He has appeared briefly in other novels in Robinson’s award winning Gilead series, arriving, then leaving again.

Jack knows his sins, despises himself for them, but seems trapped. He is now further trapped as he and Della, a young colored woman, a teacher, fall in love. This is post World War II in St. Louis, Missouri, when romantic relationships between races are not only forbidden but despised.

I read this novel depicting racism, one of America’s greatest sins, even while a mob of white Americans, some waving Confederate flags, attacked the capitol. They are unable to accept the election of a certain president and vice-president. The president-elect is an older white man. The vice-president elect is a woman of color.

May God show mercy on us and help us find our way to repent of the hatred we have allowed to continually fester within us.

Never Mind Those Scenes from the Capitol . . .

The country managed to overcome the drift toward dictatorship this past election cycle, despite having only 18th century constitutional weapons.

We put up with an election cycle that takes two months to complete, based on how long it took early Americans to travel by horseback to seats of government.

A president who this time lost both the popular vote and the electoral college vote—but still tried to stay in power—was prevented from doing so even by the antiquated system of the electoral college. Despite enormous pressure from the president, enough members of his own party followed their conscience and complied with the law.

We can forever relish those last hours following the attack on the capitol, after senators and representatives had spent tense hours fearing for their lives. They still returned to the task at hand and in the wee hours finished the one remaining task. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were pronounced the next president and vice-president.

Our leaders, it appears, amazingly, are still elected by law.

Now if we could only change those laws to reflect the country as it has become.

Advent by Zoom

A long time ago, last Easter, in fact, we could watch the Easter service streamed live from Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. Indeed, many of our Easter services last spring came to us via our screens.

Places of worship were reacting to the spread of a new sickness, Covid-19. Many closed their physical spaces of worship, as other gathering places did, to prevent contagion.

Back then, this new disturbance seemed more innocent, softened by kindness. Surely, the virus would go away as other viruses had, without causing widespread harm.

But it didn’t. Simple acts to protect oneself and others, like mask wearing, became political statements. Public health took a back seat to a presidential campaign.

And so the virus spread, far more than it should have. And now many Christians are celebrating Advent by Zoom.

Our church has advanced from listening to Sunday services via a link taped earlier by a few, socially distanced individuals to an improved group experience with newer software.

Not the real thing, no, when we held our first Zoom worship, but we could talk and respond in real time. No matter that we still hadn’t worked out all the bugs of congregational response.

It was for some of us a weepy moment.

I can’t imagine what it might be when, God willing, we are again able to meet in person.

The Loner and the Pandemic

No doubt most of us, including myself, an admitted introvert, are craving an end to our pandemic isolation.

For our children, we desperately want to open our schools. We want to bring them back to a classroom, learning under the physical presence of a teacher. We want them to interact with other children. Indeed, one of our most pressing needs, whenever classrooms do return, is dedicated help for those children who lacked the resources for learning away from the classroom.

I suspect, though, that a few children may have learned a bit better at home, with remote supervision. These are the decided introverts, who tend to be distracted in the presence of others.

Even as some workers would like to continue at least some working from home when the pandemic ends, so perhaps would a few children.

This is not a plea for either children or workers to always learn or work in isolation. Children, even inward turning ones, benefit from social interaction.

However, one gain out of this deadly time may be an understanding that we work and learn and grow in different ways with different surroundings.

Perhaps we can encourage varieties of both working and learning.

What if English Loses Out?

English is the language most Americans have been speaking for centuries. Due to many factors, including the country’s success in both war and trade, that language has become a world language.

Immigrants have flocked to this country both to escape persecution and to find jobs. Those jobs have included fruit picking in Washington state, tech jobs at Microsoft, and prestigious teaching jobs in universities.

American students have benefitted for decades as students from other countries have paid full tuition to gain a degree from a U.S. university.

A significant percentage of American winners of the Nobel prizes in physics, chemistry, and medicine have been immigrants to the United States. According to a study cited in Forbes magazine (October 14, 2020), over a third of these prizes since 2000 have been awarded to immigrants to the United States.

But what happens if the United States closes its doors to the immigrants who have contributed so greatly to its success?

Nicholas Ostler has written a history of languages, Empires of the Word. Beyond question, English is at present a world language. But, as Ostler shows, no magical reason exists for the major language of the United States to continue in its current position.

Writes Ostler: “A language does not grow through the assertion of power, but through the creation of a larger human community.”

Americans been slow to realize how much they owe the country’s strength to the foreigners who have contributed to its businesses, its universities, and its influences.

The advantage that Americans enjoy because their major language is a world language is not a given.

Voice of America for Russians—and Americans

A statement by Michael R. Pompeo, U.S. Department of State, on 10 August 2020, expressed regret at Russia’s recent tightening of restrictions on Voice of America:

“The United States is deeply concerned by the recent draft decree published by Russian authorities targeting U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM)-funded entities in Russia. For more than 70 years, Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) have been vital sources of independent news and information for the people of Russia. . . . We remain troubled by the ongoing crackdown on independent press in Russia . . .”

Indeed, Voice of America has always prided itself on providing fact-based independent news for audiences in countries where news is often controlled by the government.

However, our own current U.S. administration appears to take lessons from the very government it has chastised: “On June 4, days after the FSJ [Foreign Service Journal] reported on unprecedented White House attacks on Voice of America, the Senate confirmed documentary film maker Michael Pack as chief executive officer of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees the U.S. Agency for Global Media.”

Pack’s nomination to head the agency overseeing Voice of America has been controversial. Pack has fired seasoned officials of the agency, replacing them with himself and five other individuals. At least one had previously provided “caustic responses to questions about Trump’s disputed decision to withhold military aid from Ukraine.” Some worry that the revered VOA will become a mere voice for Trump propaganda.

The United States will lose a valuable witness for democracy if VOA becomes merely a mouthpiece for a presidential administration rather than a freely reporting news agency. Do we really prefer a propaganda piece like the Soviet Union’s old Pravda?

The Last Time We Gathered.

I saved a church bulletin from the last time my church gathered physically: March 8, 2020. As I write, it’s now early September.

Did we even begin to know in March that half a year later we would still be meeting by Facebook and Zoom?

We thought perhaps until the end of May—then June. But, no, here we are in the beginning of autumn, school starting—whatever that means anymore—we still don’t feel free to physically gather.

Pastor Noel Van Niel sums up our feelings of loss in “The Church Is Other People” in Plough Quarterly, August, 2020. Talking of the church and ministry, he says “we are primarily in the people business . . . . God is to be experienced more fully in community and connection.”

And so we experience this deep sense of loss: “. . . we are left with a desire that cannot be met. An absence that cannot be filled. A yearning that is perpetual.”

Yet, Van Niel says, we may now better understand “those who live in a perpetual state of longing for what is denied them—peace, justice, equality, safety—all those whose deepest needs remain unmet.”

Perhaps our own unmet needs prepare us “for an even fuller future than we could have imagined before we had to close our doors.”

We wait with faith and longing for the day when we can gather. Not only those of us who, until the pandemic, were free to gather without fear. We also wait with those who have never been able to gather with complete security.

Democracy for Them but Not Us

For decades, the United States has pushed dictatorships to change. We have encouraged nations to accept a democratic form of government—our form, the best kind, we say.

Read a recent U.S. foreign policy statement concerning the country of Belarus. The people there are demonstrating against a dictator who has ruled the country for 26 years. Declares Mike Pompeo, the U.S. Secretary of State, in an official statement (August 10, 2020): “The United States is deeply concerned about the conduct of the August 9 presidential election in Belarus, which was not free and fair. . . . the Government of Belarus must prove through action its commitment to democratic processes and respect for human rights.”

Yet Pompeo used a U.S. government sponsored trip to Israel as the backdrop for a political speech for Donald Trump at the Republican nominating convention. This action was in direct violation of the Hatch Act, which forbids politically appointed government employees from engaging in political activity while on duty.

But, one official said, with surprising honesty: “No one cares about that.”

In times of deep political divisions, temptations to forgo democracy increase. Write Suzanne Mettler and Robert C. Lieberman: “. . . those who favor a return to earlier boundaries of civic membership and status may be convinced that they must pursue their goals even if democracy is curtailed in the process.” (“The Fragile Republic,” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2020)

Of course, such fraying of democratic institutions leads those with power to seek to retain that power. Write Mettler and Lieberman: “When government responds primarily to the rich, it transforms itself into an oligarchy, which better protects the interests of the wealthy few.”

That’s a good description of what Belarus and Russia and other countries, momentarily freed from the old Soviet Union, have become.

To have democracy, you have to play by the rules of democracy, even when the temptation is to do otherwise. Even in the United States.

Fixing Diplomacy

William J. Burns is one of the most respected retired American diplomats. As a career diplomat, he served in many diplomatic posts, including Moscow. He capped his service by serving as deputy secretary of state under President George W. Bush.

In an interview with World Politics Review (June 10, 2020), he acknowledged the damage done to American diplomacy under President Donald Trump but said diplomacy had been adrift “for decades before that.”

Ambassadorial and department administrative posts given to political supporters has grown for several decades, but has increased under Trump.

As the investigation in Trump’s dealings with Ukraine has shown, inexperienced political appointees can cause serious damage to America’s reputation for leadership.

Unfortunately, Burns said, “It’s going to take a lot longer to fix the institutions of American diplomacy than it’s taken to break them.”

What’s been wrong with Trump’s diplomacy is not so much the direction it has taken with, say China. A push back against that country for certain predatory trade practices was justified, Burns said.

Instead of working with allies in that pursuit and in others, however, Trump attempted to go it alone. The president appears disdainful of such alliances and of the diplomatic efforts it takes to maintain those alliances.

Especially because the U.S. is no longer the only dominant player on the world scene, shoring up alliances is more important than ever.

Also, Burns said, the U.S. needs to look at the global problems, like climate change, that don’t relate to a specific country.

Summing up, Burns said, “The essence of employing enlightened self-interest is to see that our interests are going to be best served if we’re disciplined about our engagement overseas; that we can’t retrench entirely, but nor can we restore the role that we held uniquely in that first quarter-century after the end of the Cold War; that we’re going to need, in our own self-interest, to work with allies and partners, and reshape institutions. And that we still, at least as I look at it in the next couple of decades, have a better hand to play than any of our major rivals.”

Avoiding McCarthy

Eric Rubin, president of the American Foreign Service Association, reflected on the impact of the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1940’s and 50’s on U.S. diplomats. (“Foreign Service Duty,” The Foreign Service Journal, May 2020)

During those beginning years of the Cold War, U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy led an investigation with unsubstantiated claims into supposed Communist infiltration of the State Department. McCarthy was later censored by the Senate. However, ruined careers from the hearings caused American diplomats to be cautious about their reporting and advice, not wanting to be tarred with accusations of being “soft” on communism and seeing their careers ruined.

Rubin quotes from Theodore White’s book In Search of History: Junior diplomats now “knew that prediction of a Communist victory would be equated with hope for a Communist victory. They learned to temper their dispatches of observation in the field with what their political superiors wished to hear.”

Thus, Americans may not have been warned of the dangers of the later Vietnam quagmire as they should have.

The example is a call, Rubin said, “to stay true to our mission and to tell it like is, in service to our country and to our fellow citizens.”

To do so may indeed require courage, even as the politicization of higher State Department offices and other departments of the government have increased in the last few years.

That US/Ukraine Deal

The Ukraine fiasco, leading to President Donald Trump’s impeachment, convinced many corrupt foreign leaders that the United States is just as corrupt as they are.

“It looks like the whole of U.S. politics is for sale . . . It turned out everything depended on money, and all these [Western] values were pure hypocrisy.”

The quote is from “The Rise of Strategic Corruption; How States Weaponize Graft.” (Zelikow, Philip; Edelman, Eric; Harrison, Kristofer; Gventer, Celeste Ward; Foreign Affairs; July/August 2020)

In 2018, two naturalized Americans with ties to Ukraine, plus former New York mayor Rudy Giulani and two Ukrainian officials, began a campaign to smear Marie Yavanovitch, U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. The ambassador was attempting to warn the U.S. about corruption in Ukraine.

President Trump’s administration apparently did not care about the corruption uncovered by the ambassador. Indeed, the president tried to use taxpayer money slated to help Ukraine fight off Russian aggression as a bribe to help his 2020 reelection bid.

Perhaps, he hinted to the Ukrainian president, perhaps the Ukrainian leader could find something to damage Joe Biden, possible rival in the election. He hinted that the money for Ukraine would be given only if this were done.

Thanks to a whistle blower and several courageous public servants, the facts became public. Unfortunately, the careers of Yavanovitch and several others who testified were damaged. The damage to the reputation of the United States is far greater.

Palestinian Christians and Ethnic Cleansing

A new plan of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deals with annexing parts of the West Bank to be part of Israel. To the surprise of many Americans, a large number of Palestinians in this area are Christians. They are forgotten in the assumption that all Palestinians are Muslim.

Two Christian ministers in Palestine write: “The plan mentions Jews and Christians on one side and Muslims on the other, as if to communicate that this is a religious conflict between the Judeo-Christian tradition and Islam. While this may serve the partisan domestic purposes of Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu, this is not our lived reality as Palestinian Christians.” (Munther Isaac and Jamal Khader, “A Different Kind of Ethnic Cleansing,” Sojourners, July 2020)

Isaac is pastor of a Christian church in Bethlehem. Khader is a Roman Catholic priest in Ramallah.

Netanyahu’s plan, according to Isaac and Khader, recognizes the “civil rights” of Palestinians in the area, but not necessary their political rights, “opening the door to strip them of citizenship through Netanyahu’s alleged request for forced ‘population swaps.’”

Jewish people have been victims of horrible human rights atrocities. Surely, they among all people, should know the dangers of drifting into “ethnic cleansing.”

Where Have All the Visiting Students Gone?

“For at least 50 years, the U.S. has been the leader in international education, welcoming first a trickle, then a stream, then a broad river of undergraduate and graduate students from all over the world. That river has dried up now.”

—Phyllis Pomerantz; “Another COVID-19 victim: International education.” The Hill, 22June 20

In all my stints as a U.S. consular officer in foreign countries, one mainstay of my work were the student visas. Loads of young people wanted to study in American colleges and universities. This country’s schools were among the world’s best and offered the most varied curriculum for any subject you wanted to study.

Some of the world’s leaders today are graduates of U.S. higher education.

In addition, foreign students, usually paying full tuition, played a major part in financing the education of American young people, who often paid less.

However, the Covid-19 virus has halted much travel, including student travel, to the U.S. As virus cases grow in the U.S., they are going down in other countries.

And, of course, Canada, Britain, Europe, Australia and others also offer first class advanced education. So why not seek an education in these countries, which now seem much safer, as well more welcoming to foreigners?