孤立主義正在扼殺美國夢

As the dean of an institution where each year’s incoming class of 900 MBA students contains about 350 people from abroad, I have watched with concern the reports of declining interest among foreigners applying to US universities. A survey by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers found that 40 per cent of schools saw a drop in foreign applicants for the next academic year.

作爲一所每年入學的900名MBA學員包括約350名海外留學生的學院的院長，我關切地注意到有關外國人對申請入學美國大學興趣減弱的報道。美國大學註冊及錄取協會(AACRAO)的調查發現，40%的學校出現了下一學年外國留學生申請數量下滑的情況。

I think about these numbers not only in my role as a dean but as someone who faced the same decision these students need to make, albeit in times when tensions around immigration were far less palpable. Born and raised in India, I came to the US for graduate school in the early 1980s, became a citizen and have lived here ever since. Over the past year my immigrant friends and I have been asking ourselves: if we were 30 years younger and considering coming to America today, what would we do?

我思索這些數字時，不只以我身爲院長的角色，而且是作爲當年同樣面對着這些學生需要做出的選擇的人，儘管那時圍繞移民的緊張遠沒有那麼明顯。我在印度出生和長大，在上世紀80年代初來美國讀研究生，之後成爲美國公民並一直生活在這裏。過去一年裏，我和我的移民朋友們在問自己一個問題：如果我們年輕30歲，現在考慮來美國，我們會怎麼做？

We understand why President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration tone has found an audience. The threat felt by US workers due to competition from lower-wage earners in other countries is understandable. Add in recent episodes of global terrorism, and isolationism appears appealing — the same way Brexit appealed to some British voters.

我們理解美國總統唐納德?特朗普(Donald Trump)的反移民論調爲何能找到受衆。對於其他國家低收入勞工的競爭，美國工人感受到威脅是可以理解的。再加上近期的全球恐怖主義襲擊事件，這一切都讓孤立主義顯得頗具吸引力——就像英國退歐吸引某些英國選民一樣。