A rally in support of international students held at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. on Tuesday.
Photo Credit: Lucy Lu for The New York Times
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After President Trump’s scorched earth policy against Harvard University, freezing critical federal funding and attempting to block the enrollment of international students, maybe we should be grateful 47 isn’t running Major League Baseball.
At least, not yet.
From Trump’s vantage point, he believes that Harvard had too many foreign students “because we have Americans that want to go there.”
What if we apply that same twisted logic to major league baseball? What if MLB limits the number of international players in the United States, so that more Americans can play in MLB? Baseball is, after all, “America’s National Pastime.”
In this season alone, imagine baseball without, arguably, the greatest hitter on the planet, Shohei Ohtani (born in Mizusawa, Iwate, Japan), third baseman, Jose Ramirez (born in the Dominican Republic), Mets slugger, Juan Soto (another Dominican), and Cuban born Yordan Alvarez, the Houston Astros left-fielder and DH?
265 internationally born players appeared on Opening Day rosters in MLB, representing 27.8% of all players, as well as 18 countries and territories outside of the 50 United States.
Baseball would undoubtedly be diluted of the best talent that baseball has to offer if the commissioner of baseball, Rob Manfred, clung to Donald Trump’s more Americans, less foreigners, ethos.
Why the president would deny entry into Harvard of some of the best and brightest the world has to offer is simply unfathomable. Such thinking is ludicrous.
Let us count the ways.
The reason elite universities in the United States maintain such a competitive edge in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is precisely because of international students attending universities in the U.S.
The latest data shows that in the STEM fields, over 45% of computer and math scientists with doctorates are foreign born.
Bear in mind that immigrants represent an exceedingly high proportion of entrepreneurs, patent filings, and STEM graduates. Over 75% of patents from top U.S. universities, in fact, come from foreign-born innovators.
What’s more, 99 % of the patents by foreign-born inventors were in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), an area where the U.S. is projected to face a shortfall of 230,000 qualified advanced-degree workers in the coming years.
So, why wouldn’t we welcome immigrants who have proficiency in the very fields we need to fill in order to stay competitive in the global age?
Nick Schulz of the American Enterprise Institute (a bipartisan research and advocacy organization) argues that foreign-born STEM graduates of U.S. universities are job creators.
“Every graduate with an advanced degree,” Schulz wrote, “working in a STEM-related field in the United States has been shown to create on average 2.62 additional jobs for native-born workers. Sending those people away doesn’t protect American jobs, it jeopardizes them.”
Harvard researchers explore how to use generative AI for student feedback
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According to an article published in Forbes magazine, “firms founded by immigrants are 3.4% to 4.5% more likely to produce new technologies and less likely to use other existing technologies.”
In addition to developing new technologies and creating new patents in critical areas, which will allow the United States to stay ahead of its global competitors, why would the Trump administration curb the entry of international students into the United States when they contribute so much to the economy.
The Washington Post recently reported that international students contributed $44 billion to the U.S. economy in the 2023-2024 school year.
International students, it should be kept in mind, have to pay the full freight of college tuition at elite universities, like Harvard, and aren’t eligible for in-state tuition and other financial aid opportunities like domestic students have.
Aside from costly tuition, international students are also helping fuel the economy by spending on housing, restaurants, and other travel expenses.
According to NAFSA, the Association of International Educators, 82,000 international students who studied in Massachusetts contributed $3.9 billion to the economy, while California’s international students contributed $6.4 billion.
Such a loss of revenue would be shattering to universities like Harvard, which would find it exceedingly difficult to make up for the loss of revenue. Such a blow, could conceivably lead to cuts in advanced degree programs, research, and specialized personnel or educators.
Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, professor of political science and chair of religious studies at Northwestern University, said "the attempt to curtail or even shut down international student enrollment at U.S. universities is going to damage the U.S. economy not only in the tech sector but across a range of fields including medicine, law, and the arts and sciences. It is one of the most counterproductive moves the administration could make in terms of the long-term economic health and well-being of US citizens."
Trump, of course, argues (without proof) that the reason he is trimming international students is that a majority of them are instigators, spewing their antisemitism with pro-Palestinian mantras.
Trump told reporters that most international students are “troublemakers who can’t do basic math. How do they get into Harvard? Why are they there?”
It’s hard to believe such unsound thinking is coming from the president of the United States.
The logic of the vice president of the United States is even more ill-informed. J.D. Vance told Fox News that international students are "bad for the American dream for a lot of kids who want to go to a nice university and can’t because their spot was taken by a foreign student.”
If left to Trump and Vance, Harvard would no longer be an institution for the best and brightest the world has to offer.
Since 1901, 33 % of the country’s Nobel laureates have been immigrants; and in 2014, 40 percent of America’s doctoral degrees were awarded to noncitizens.
Trump and Vance, for reasons known only to themselves, can’t seem to connect the dots that the overall health of the U.S. economy prospers when higher skilled, specialized immigrants, are able to become integrated into the United States infrastructure.
Just think of where the country would be in the health care industry if it wasn’t for immigrants. 26% of U.S. physicians, 16% of Registered Nurses, and 39% of home health aides are foreign-born.
And, according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, nearly 3 million immigrants were employed as health-care workers in 2023, accounting for 19 percent of the 15.9 million people in the United States in a health-care occupation.
In addition to the health care industry, the New American Economy, a bipartisan research and advocacy organization, wrote in a press release that “foreign-born inventors played significant roles in the fields of semiconductor device manufacturing (87 percent), information technology (84 percent), pulse or digital communications (83 percent), pharmaceutical drugs or drug compounds (79 percent) and optics (77 percent).”
Imagine, more than 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants, and yet Trump wants to raise the “need not apply” sign at the front door of Harvard.
A federal judge in Boston on Thursday has blocked, at least for now, the Trump administration order to bar Harvard from enrolling international students.
But the damage might be irreversible.
Many bright, enterprising international students, who thought about being educated in the United States, might pick up their marbles and look for other countries to acquire their degrees and contribute to the country's economy.
In fact, it might already be happening.
Institutions like Harvard are typically magnets for global talent. International graduates of Harvard, very often, stay in the United States and launch their own companies and develop their new technologies, which benefits the United States. A National Foundation for American Policy study found 55% of America’s startup companies valued at $1 billion or more had at least one immigrant founder.
But with the Trump administration determined to block talent from abroad from entering the country, other countries might begin to outstrip the U.S. in global might, especially in high-tech areas, like AI.
FWD.us report that since 2000, the U.S. has lost 20% of its share of the international student market to countries like Canada, the U.K. and Australia.
China is also reportedly taking strong measures with recruiting international students and foreign-born experts.
China is now well ahead of the U.S in patent applications; and in education, China has gone from having 27 universities in the top 500 in 2010 to 76 in 2020. The U.S., on the other hand, has dropped from 154 to 133.
Norway is yet another country, which has allocated money to lure away American scholars in high-tech areas.
Vivek Wadhwa, author, academic, and entrepreneur, tells me that "talented young people who once dreamed of studying and working in the U.S. are now questioning whether the opportunity is worth the uncertainty, hostility, and disruption."
"This has serious long-term consequences," Wadhwa points out. "International students have been the backbone of U.S. leadership in science and technology—especially in high-growth fields like AI. By targeting them, the Trump administration is dismantling the very foundation of America's innovation economy."
Can you imagine if the Trump administration restricted international baseball players from playing in MLB? That would just pave the way for countries like Japan, Canada, Mexico, and Latin America to open their arms to the best baseball players in the world, leaving baseball in America in the dust without much talent to speak of.
Harvard without international students would be like baseball without hot dogs and peanuts.
--Bill Lucey
[email protected]
May 31, 2025