And they're irreplaceable, I take it. The not-quite-bright grad student doing scutwork in the lab... an unsung genius and the power behind this research that churns out magical doodads. No one else could substitute.
Sounds pretty fucking racist, really. In the other comment someone was claiming that foreign students pay full price, and so they subsidize domestic students... in other words, university administration prefers them because they're more lucrative. Not because they're of a higher academic caliber. This is a nest of nasty, perverse incentives that hurts our own citizens and we have all sorts of propagandists telling us it's really for our own good.
Nothing about this is straightforward. Even if (and for me it's a big if) you were correct, pretending that this is straightforward is just disingenuous.
You asked: "how will this affect research", and the answer I gave was that the people doing the research will be forced to leave. From there, you assumed this:
"And they're irreplaceable, I take it."
And then went on to conclude this:
"Sounds pretty fucking racist, really."
So ask yourself... am I sounding racist, or are you just projecting racist sounding things onto me? It's very difficult to discuss anything when when that's your chosen rhetoric.
>You asked: "how will this affect research", and the answer I gave was that the people doing the research will be forced to leave.
No, the people who do this research are constantly shuffling in and shuffling out, year after year, and when this goes into effect the people who will shuffle in will be more americans and fewer foreigners, and no one is going to see any real difference.
Well, unless you're racist and just hate americans. Then you will probably perceive that they are somehow inferior.
Yes it's true that people shuffle in and out, but you're making it seem like a lead researcher on a project leaving suddenly would have no impact on the work. Often times yes, a project can fail if key personnel leave. Many labs are just a professor and one grad student who they had to work for years to get up to speed. Many times that grad student is the one person in the whole world who has the specialized knowledge they do. Such is the nature of researching at the bleeding edge of a field. If they were to suddenly leave it would have a noticeably negative impact on their research output, even if the best American student stepped into the role immediately.
That you fail to consider that possibility but you are very keen to claim "racist and just hate Americans" leads me to unfortunately quote the HN rules at you:
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
It's very straightforward: many of those foreign students who are being forced to leave Harvard were the ones actually doing research.