By S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole –

Prof S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole

America – the land of plenty – had something nice and beautiful that made many want to come here. But Donald Trump has ruined it.  Especially after grabbing a Venezuelan oil tanker full of oil, Trump’s America is an international pirate. He says he will keep the oil. Sinking boats and killing survivors makes us war-criminals. Claiming that the ships carried drugs without proof is to blame the alleged smugglers, ignoring that Americans who buy the drugs to satiate their addiction are also to blame. The Sri Lanka government’s generosity to those who suffered from the ongoing floods, makes it far more civilised than Trump’s America. In our Parliament there is an upsurge of women and ministers, including the Prime Minister who is decently dressed whereas the American First Lady poses in the nude and calls it art.

The womenfolk at home strongly objected to the use of this picture but it is here because it is newsworthy as it shows the US president’s attitude to women as objects, and how even Christians see it as harmless.

In Sri Lanka women make up 64% of university places and dominate fields like medicine and the law whereas American women take on 61% of places.

Initially, I came to America by accident. When I told my M.Sc. supervisor in London, John Carpenter of Imperial College, that I wanted to return to him for my doctorate, he encouraged me to go to North America. He reminded me that I had seen the best of the British system in the UK and Sri Lanka and, to grow as an academic, I had to see North America. He told me that his friend Peter Silvester at McGill University Montreal was looking for someone good and to write to him for a place on his team saying I was writing on his direction. I did and walked into McGill.

In Canada, I saw the yearning to go to the US. Evening banter at graduate school was how various students got American jobs and Green Cards. It was a kind of feverish infection that easily spread. I was happy in Canada.

However, when one member of my supervising team under Silvester, Zoltan Csendes, transferred to Carnegie-Mellon, Carnegie-Mellon Alumnus Silvester advised me, “That young man wants you badly. If you do not go it would take him a year to find a research assistant. Yours is an enviable position. Go with him. You will do well.” So I did, without the GRE again. When I went for my US visa after a year at McGill, my transcript had only one subject: Research. That was because I had been admitted bypassing PhD-1 directly into PhD-2 because I had my master’s degree. The US Consul could not understand. He refused me my visa.

My new supervisor, Csendes, appealed to the Consul. He was told, “These Indians come to Canada to sneak into the US, not to study.” That was my first experience of this brazen racist mindset that Donald Trump has reawoken in America.

To cut a long story short, Silvester and Csendes intervened. Carnegie Mellon hired a lawyer who went to the Pittsburgh immigration office. When Samuel Hoole was called, Csendes went up. Without any conversation he was stamped my “Adjustment of status.” Silvester and Csendes were the obverse side of Trump racism.

Later, when I wrote of racism, whether in the US or Sri Lanka, newspapers, for example the LA Times, Claremont Courier, Hartford Courant, and Washington Times, respected me for who I am and promptly published my articles. These institutions still hold up the pre-Trump standards, aspirations, and ideals of the old America that still is, although badly wounded.

That bright face of America was very much alive till recently. I returned to Sri Lanka to give my children exposure to our culture, family and church. They grew up on comic books, Enid Blyton, Richmal Crompton, and, as they grew up, Agatha Christie and Arthur Conon Doyle. They enjoyed life. That voluminous reading got them good SAT scores and under need-blind admission scholarships – that is, the policy that once admitted, a child’s financial needs should not prevent acceptance of the offer lest the less qualified take that vacant place. My Sri Lankan salary got them generous scholarships – for example $50 a year at University of Pennsylvania, something Trump seems jealous about. With his middling SAT scores as hinted at by Jimmy Kimmel, he cannot understand excellence – that an underperforming American cannot push out a brilliant poor child.

Consequent to that envy, as India Today notes, Mark Mitchell, CEO of a leading US polling firm, wants  to “de-Indianise” American companies. Even as the MAGA racists bayed for curtailing the H-1B programme through which many of us South Asians (including me) came into the US. It is a visa programe used to hire talent unavailable in the US and over 70% of the annual 85,000 H-1B visas are granted to South Asians. A  section of Americans see it as a threat to their employment, and have been projecting Indians, part of the most productive and assimilated of immigrants, in a negative light says India Today.

“When you reach the point that the most-educated, most taxpaying, lowest violent crime [committing], zero single mothers’ group is the one you hate the most, it is pretty clear that YOU are the personification of America’s present-day dysfunction,” commented Kartik Gada in India Today. Gada is a seasoned professional with executive experience in tech, investment banking, venture capital, and hedge funds and has also taught  at Stanford University.

This is why many of us South Asian Americans feel nervous when US citizens are arrested by US ICE (Agency for Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and deported violating court orders. Most of the people ICE arrests are people of colour. According to the Cato Institute, Aug 4-5, 2025) one in five ICE arrests is of Latinos on the streets with no criminal past or removal order. ICE is arresting thousands without reason except for their colour. Of people booked into ICE custody this fiscal year (since October 1, 2025), nearly three in four (73 percent) had no criminal conviction. Only 8 percent had a violent or property criminal conviction.

Today the great American universities have their financial strength to be generous to the poor undermined as Trump sues them on very frivolous lawsuits, and gets a huge settlement that suspiciously looks like a bribe to avoid the hassle of litigation. That spirit of university generosity is doubly undermined as family unification is curtailed. How my wife sponsored her parents is now harder for people of colour like us. For such, green cards through which Medicare provides generous health support are now suspended even for having diabetes. A Sri Lankan American I know with cancer gets free immunotherapy costing Medicare over $500,000 every 4 weeks. With Trump insurance premiums could rise 2-3 times after January.

That is for us of colour. But as the BBC reports, Melania Trump obtained US citizenship on a visa reserved for immigrants with “extraordinary ability” and “sustained national and international acclaim.” Nicknamed the “Einstein Visa”, the EB-1 is in theory reserved for people who are highly acclaimed in their field – the government cites Pulitzer, Oscar, and Olympic winners as examples – as well as respected academic researchers and multinational executives. Those standards did not apply to Mrs. Trump. She began applying for the visa in 2000, when she was Melania Knauss, a Slovenian model working in New York and dating Donald Trump. She told CNN that her nude photos were art and she was proud of them. Trump commented “pictures like this are very fashionable and common.” Melania was approved in 2001 for her Einstein-like stature for posing in the nude. Becoming a citizen in 2006 she sponsored her parents who are now in the US.

Shameless about being a racist, Trump does not even hide his bigotry as a clever supremacist would. Trump (ABC News) demanded in his low SAT English, “Let’s have a few from from Denmark. Do you mind sending us a few people? Send us some nice people. Do you mind? But we always take people from Somalia, places that are a disaster, right? Filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime. The only thing they’re good at is going after ships.” He complained as reported by NPR, about “having all these people from shithole countries come here” — and singled out Haiti, El Salvador and Africa as examples — he also added  that, “we should have more people from Norway.” Speaking in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday Dec. 10, 2025, Newsweek reported that Trump called Somalia “filthy” and “disgusting,” disparaged Afghanistan and asked why immigrants to the U.S. couldn’t come from Norway, Sweden, or Denmark. 

The MAGA-Trump goal seems to be to whiten America showing White prejudice and Black prejudice have similarities except that Black prejudice speaks from a position of weakness, whereas White prejudice has the White House behind it. Trump is the White version of Louis Farrakhan. Farrakhan frequently promoted Black beauty, empowerment, and self-love, calling Black men “beautiful.”

A President who boasts of his looks and of grabbing women by their genitals as reported by the BBC does not understand the norms of decent society. As we say in Sri Lanka, it must be in his background.

A final word at this time when children have been offered admission to many universities and need to choose which to accept. As pundits are interviewed and holforth, they ask children to not consider earning potential but which field of study helps you and trains you to think.

Stuff and nonsense! In a good American university, whatever the subject, the curriculum is very broad and a strenuous attempt is made to train students to be critcal thinkers. However, we must not forget that we study to get good jobs. Earning is important. While all disciplines inculcate critcal thinking, an important difference must not be forgotten. Clever students will gravitate towards subjects with earning potential. In such subjects we will meet competitive and cleverer students. Their presence keeps up class standards.

While I was stronger in mathematics than in physics, I went for engineering because I was qualified for engineering admission, far more than many who qualified for mathematics. As a result I studied with very clever students. That made me exposed to more critical thinking through competitive classmates than I would have been exposed to as a mathematics or BA major. So my advice – go for a subject with a competitive class and you will be better trained and kept on your toes.

A related hot topic concerns AI and computer science. The two are like mathematics and engineering. They serve each other. Artificial Intelligence (AI)  is fundamentally a major field and a sub-discipline within computer science (CS), focusing on creating systems that mimic human intelligence, but it draws from many other areas like mathematics, psychology, and engineering, while CS provides the core theories, algorithms, and infrastructure. Think of CS as the broad umbrella of computing, and AI as a specialized, advanced area that builds upon that foundation to tackle tasks requiring learning, reasoning, and problem-solving. So do not take too seriously the gurus who say computer science is on the way out and AI is in. Nonsense. It is like saying mathematics is on the way out and engineering is in.

Trump has at most three more years. I think and hope he is likely to be forced to leave office sooner, letting Vice President James D. Vance take over who likely won’t be as bad as Trump. The old America will return in 2028. So do not give up on your dreams of moving to the US.

There is a good future here as well as in Sri Lanka the way the destitute are being looked after by the NPP and women treated as persons rather than kinky fetishes under Trump.