My boss happens to not be an American citizen. He is also a professor at UCSB (though his field happens to be unrelated to my dissertation research. Sad trumpet). Apparently he was approached at a party. This was by a wife of a friend of a friend of his. She asked him what the US could do to help Italy so that he wouldn’t have had to come to the US and steal an American job. He mentioned that he had asked a Chumash the same question about Ireland.

She said, “What?!”

“Exactly,” he replied.

I found this particularly funny, and it lead to a discussion about the lump of labor fallacy. But then I realized something more important. My coworker and I are both employed because of the expertise of this man. He’s created American jobs as an entrepreneur (this is 100% more significant now that my coworker is American and not Iranian). He is considered one of the world’s leading experts in the field he works in. From a strictly selfish, myopic view: Would we rather have him contributing to the US knowledge base or to Italy’s?