With no small help from obliging US officials who have expedited Saudi visas. From Arab News, with thanks to Eschwapp:
RIYADH, 26 June 2005 — Some 2,500 scholarships are available for Saudis wishing to study in the US in different fields, an official at the Ministry of Higher Education has announced.Speaking to Arab News, Saad A. Al-Hagan, manager of public relations at the ministry, said scholarships were available for bachelor’s, master’s or PhDs in medicine, including nursing, pharmacy, engineering, computer science, basic sciences (mathematics, physics, chemistry), law, accounting and e-commerce.
He said the decision to offer the scholarships was a result of Crown Prince Abdullah’s recent visit to the US. Those eligible are Saudis who have been admitted to a recognized American university and have a valid visa. They can either download the application from the ministry’s website or collect it from the ministry.
“The ministry will pay an amount equal to $1,200 per month if the recipient is a bachelor, and more for married students. Other expenses will also be covered such as a round-trip ticket and a monthly incentive depending on the student’s grade point average (GPA),” Al-Hagan said.
He thanked the US for expediting the issue of visas and said the measure would go a long way to allowing more students to study in the US.
According to earlier reports, the ministry has also made arrangements with a number of universities in Canada and Europe for sending Saudi students there for higher education.
Oh yes, by all means, expedite those student visas. And, be sure to tell the students that the State Dept. finds no problems with B.Y.O.S. (Bring Your Own Slaves) I can almost hear the swift stamping of all those visas at the U.S. Embassy in Riyhad.
Former President Clinton had an Oxford classmate when he was a Rhodes Scholar Prince al-Turki. Both men rose through their respective power climbs to positions of authority in their counties; Clinton as POTUS and al-Tutki as head of Saudi Intelligence. al-Turki is now Saudi ambassador to the U.K.
In the mid 1990's al-Turki prevailed on his Oxford classmate Clinton to include Saudi 'scholars" under the "easy visa" pass system for entry into the US. Guess who came in via that arrangement.
Saudi "students" in this country, as well as those from the U.A.E., have established a record. They live, often in the same very expensive apartment buildings, where every need is catered to -- concierges for everything. As it happens, I had occasion to visit someone unrelated. It was something to see the Saudis, or their families in some cases, emerge from taxies and limousines, carrying -- every day -- packages from the kind of places that we assumed only Japanese schoolgirls actually buy from, paying full price (Hermes, Sonia Rykiel, and so on).
Saudi students have also provided a land-order business for those who write their papers for them, just the way, in the old Soviet Union, many doctorates gained by non-Soviet citizens were the result of theses actually written by impoverished but highly skilled Russians.
Saudi students have provided a lot of business to high-end car dealers. And to garage mechanics, for the rate at which they smash up those cars, sometimes killing or wounding an American or two, and then if not caught and tried in time, simply decamping back to Saudi Arabia -- why, if there were a list of those left limping by Saudi drivers in this country, or worse, it would be quite a list. Anyone have figures on the damage Saudis have inflicted in their "student" years?
And then there are girls, the Infidel girls, some of them attracted by the cars and the money, some falling for the liquid brown eyes and soft-voiced routine. Fun to debauch those Western women. Curious, isn't it, that we Muslims respect our women, and you Infidels allow us, your enemy (these are the thoughts, not what is spoken) to take "your women" and do with them what we will.
Do we want to stay in the country? Okay, then we'll go through the farce of marrriage to one of them, and when we decide to go back, leave them, or maybe take them. What a surprise those American girls will get, sooner or later, when they live in Saudi Arabia, or have the children we allow them to produce for us, snatched back to Saudi Arabia, for Infidel parents have no rights -- none.
Oh, but you say -- these students will be different. These are the "new Saudis" whom an alarmed Saudi government wishes to train to build the new Saudi Arabia. It is all part of their coming to their senses, you will say. We should encourage it. For these will not be rich students, spending half-a-million or more a year. These will be Saudi scholarship students. They will not have Ferraris, the blonde on the arm, the high-rise apartment, with the Jacuzzi, and the exercise room and swimming-pool for all the cosseted tenants to share (no graduate student housing for Saudis). It will be different.
Will it? Let's see. And in any case, why do we want to permit Saudis, rich or slightly less rich, to benefit from American or other Western education? They will not drop their Islam from their mental baggage. They will help to misinform the Americans they meet, or those they see in classes. Why do we want to help Saudi Arabia be less dependent on us, in the end, for foreign workers? Why do we want to help Saudi Arabia by transferring, through education, any technical knowhow? We don't. We don't want to help Saudi Arabia in any way, as long as almost every Saudi is inculcated, as inculcated he and she must be, with the doctrines of Islam, that teach hatred, murderous hatred, of the Infidels. Until that little matter is discussed, openly, and the passages in Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira known to all and not explained away, and no amout of anguished looks and furrowed brows by the "how-can-you-do-this-to-us" and "what-good-does-this-do" school of debate and "dialogue" will make this untrue.
Let the Saudis end their persecution of non-Muslims in Saudi Arabia. Let them allow Saudis, as well, the right to choose their own religion -- even, indeed, to listen to what those who offer them another religion might have to say, even in fact, to leave Islam altogether.
But if, if you really must allow these people in, rather than cutting all ties to Muslims to a minimum (we seem in such haste to do the reverse, and of course an entire Washington lobby -- the "bringing democracy" or "opening up the Muslim world" or "dialogue" lobby -- is now swimming in money and possibilities for more, and all the Bright Young Things getting on that particular gravy-train don't want that pitch to be queered for any reason, including that of intelligent statecraft) -- well, if you really insist, then let the Saudis pay for those educations in the same way that we pay for their oil.
A barrel of Saudi oil costs less than $1 to lift. It costs us about $55 a barrel (yes, there are middlemen, but let's forget that for now). That is, the price of that oil to us is 55 times what it costs the producer.
Fine. Let us charge every Saudi, Kuwaiti, U.A.E. student -- or rather, demand from the fattened bank accounts of their governments that have, for decades past, battened on this maddening accident of geology -- 55 times what the real cost of that education is to the universities.
Since most universities proudly explain that their tuition does not reflect the "real cost" of that education -- you, student, are getting such a bargain, did you know that? -- and the 501(c)(3) provision means that all universities that can receive donations are, in effect, partly subsidized by all American taxpayers, then let us set the "production rate" at what? $50,000 a year for each year of college or university? No, let's lower it to $30,000. Let's be fair.
Now $30,000 x 55 (the "Saudi multiplier") comes to $1,650,000 per year, for each Saudi student. That seems about right. Let it be shared between the university, the local police (for added security costs for every Muslim visitor) and the American government.
Now, 2,500 students x $1,650,000 per student, each year, amounts to:
$4,125,000,000.
Oh, let's just round it off to $4 billion , shall we? After all, Saudi Arabia is our "ally," or even, as the BBC, Aramaco, and Raymond Close, James Akins, Charls Freeman, and a cast of thousands likes to say, our "staunch ally." So we'll give them a break.
Now I know $4 billion a year from Saudi Arabia to allow access to Western education, long subdidized through our tax system, and the product of Western Infidel traditions of free and skeptical inquiry not available anywhere in the Muslm world, may seem like a lot to some.
But think of the $10 trillion dollars that Saudi Arabia and other Muslim OPEC states have received, for doing absolutely nothing, in the 1/3 of a century since just the 1973 OPEC price rise (not to mention the accumulated billions in the decades before). Think of the hundred or two hundred billion that the Saudi government will receive just this year alone. Think of how happy Saudi Arabia is that we, the Americans, got rid of Saddam Hussein, their worst fear, and that, unlike in the first Gulf War, we paid for it ourselves -- and still haven't managed to extract from the Saudis even any debt relief, much less billions in reconstruction aid, to Iraq. They can't help laughing. It's just too wonderful. There is no end to the American innocence, even without the propagandists of Aramco.
No, that $4 billion has symbolic value. Charge it.
After seeing what about 19 Saudis could do on 9/11, imagine the fun we'll have from 2,500.
Imagine what the students will do with their knowledge and skill upon graduation. Will it be used in a manner friendly to the West? hmmmm
I want to puke...
Saudi Arabia should have been invaded, not Iraq.
And now evil George Bush is letting them into the country on "scholarships". When will people realise that this man is a traitor to their country.
Hugh is spot on (as usual).
American colleges and universities legally charge double the tuition for out-of-state entrants.
It absolutely makes sense then to add substantial surcharges to fund all the necessary safeguards, especially when issuing visas to foreign students from countries known to spawn terrorists.
Like Hugh said . . .". . .that $4 billion has symbolic value. Charge it."
Why have they never been charged for 9/11?
Why are they now rewarded for it?
Prince Turki recently spoke about 'the travesty of 9/11'- the first time I thought I didn't hear right. Then he said it again: "Travesty"-
Wouldn't you just like to use them for target practice?
I want to tear my hair out!!! AAARRRGGGG! Keep letting the enemy in through the front door you fools! (Not to mention the back door!)
This is like the people of old New Orleans forming welcoming committes for termites.
(Little wood putty cupcakes as hors d'oeuvres?)
I think ALL Saudis should be refused entry- students, visitors, anyone, until they control their lunatics preaching jihad, infiltrating Iraq, and especially until they stop forbidding any other faith to be practiced in Saudi Arabia but Islam.
The last being the perfect pretext for exclusion:
No more tolerance until they end their intolerance!
(And since that won't happen, they will be kept out permanently.)
(And the U.N. would have to back the U.S., since the Saudis are in clear and outrageous violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.)
I want someone to explain why Saudis would want to come to the land of infidels to study. After all, Saudis are the creme de la creme of humanity, superior beings, better than all other muslims and infinitely nobler than ignorant, immoral, kafir Americans.
Why aren't Saudi universities the first choice of the scions of Muhammad? Why do they bother to attend universites at all; they are too good to work except to promote Islam and jihad, which requires little more than handy reference books and a voice. It would be utterly fascinating to witness the ensuing chaos if all the foreign workers who run Saudi Arabia from behind the scenes were to leave the country en masse.
Saudi Arabia should be home to the finest, most prestigous universities in the world. Students from around the globe should be flocking there to get top-notch educations in modern, first-rate schools. They certainly have the money to build them and the unmatched intellectual acumen to staff them, thanks to Allah, who accelerated the evolutionary process and created Arab muslim superhumanity. Behold almost 1400 years of unprecedented human progress and achievement! Allah blessed them with vast natural resources and great wealth; behold the spoils of oil riches.
Student visas are merely facades for radical muslim activists, more fanatics to join the seditious fifth column already living and breeding here. More rabid Wahabbis to extend the vile tentacles of Islam and the ubiquitous jihad. This is such heartwarming news. We are deeply indebted to our dear Saudi friends for their gift of 9-11; let's help them do it again.