 Certain U.S. airports have started to deny entry to Chinese graduate students trying to come back to the U.S. from China, even the ones from Yale University. So, we gotta talk about it. What's going on? You know, for me, I just went back for the year of the dragon. And now I've been dragged in to some sort of geopolitical beef. What's going on? The geopolitical wars of the world. Let's read the headline. China says students, including those at Yale, are subjected to interrogations and deportations at U.S. entry points. Andrew, the main U.S. entry point is Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C. They've been deporting the most. Yeah, Dulles Airport. I mean, I think Washington, D.C., it being the nation's capital, I guess I could see them being the strictest. But anyways, David, basically what's happening is that these are Chinese graduate students who go to Yale University, but might have gone to undergrad in China. And that's part of the issue here. I'm going to get into the details of something that I read off the Yale News website. But basically, they're getting to the airport after visiting China and then all the TSA and everybody's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, where are you from? Let us interrogate you. And then even after a 12 or 8-hour interrogation, they're sending them back to China. We gotta talk about it, man. Make sure you like, subscribe, turn on your notifications. By the way, guys, check out smileysauce, smileysauce.com. I'll say this. Obviously, this is unfortunate. And our geopolitical tensions are at a high right now. I do think it is variable per airport. You know what I mean? Like if you flew into a different airport, they might not have that protocol or even that knowledge base in place. You mean certain airports are probably going to be more on top of things and more strict enforcing? Because this is something that was especially enforced during the Trump administration. But I will say this. During the Biden administration, I heard it didn't get flipped and turned over. So people are still operating off of the Trump protocol. Yeah. I mean, let's be honest. These grad students, if they had a macro bird's eye view of like the tone or the temperature, they probably shouldn't have flown back. You think so? Yeah. Like I know some Chinese grad students in New York right now that are like, yeah, I'm not going to go back. I can all take the risk. Right. Because you just don't know what's going to happen. Even if you have a valid visa, that doesn't mean that you will be for sure let in. Because if they find any reason, any reason at all, which the reason is for some of these people, for example, one student from Yale, a graduate student, a PhD student at Yale named Zhang, he basically it's because his undergraduate college in China was considered to be involved in part of a government military civil fusion strategy. I don't know what that means, but it was deemed as a potentially military adjacent college. Right. Like a quasi West Point or something like that or something like that. I'm maybe not even a West Point level, but something that having to do with the Chinese military programming. And since he graduated from there as the undergrad and then he goes to Yale when he tried to come back, I guess they denied him. And it's unfortunate. I'm not saying there aren't legitimate reasons to deny somebody entry, but right now, so much stuff is in a gray zone, you know, and as an undergrad, he may have just been like, yeah, it was just a good project to participate in. You know what I mean? Like he's just trying to build his resume. He's like, yeah, they're funding the research. I'm doing it. He's not even thinking about any of this stuff. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, obviously, I'm obviously America has the right to make the reads that they see fit to like on the flip side. Yes. But who's making the reads and with what threshold or like, you know what I mean? Or, or, or are any of these people being racist? We don't know. But anyways, we're going to get in the comment section because I think there's a range of opinions. I went on some of the subreddits, Andrew, that are more like definitely not Asians, right? They were more like, listen, there was good reason. If you get sent away, they have done the investigation. They have done their due diligence. You deserve to be considered untrustworthy. That is an opinion on the internet. Yeah. Yeah. Listen, I have a friend who is a Asian guy from Britain, born and raised in Britain, and he got denied at the Seattle airport because not because he wasn't supposed to be here, done no crime, but he was kind of like working when he wasn't supposed to. And if you're visiting the US from the international space from any country, even from Canada, you're not supposed to make money and work in America without a work visa. So technically he was working on the low getting paid beneath under the table. And they found that out. How did they find that out? I don't know. They interrogated him, obviously. And this guy, he's not even a Chinese citizen at all. So he's a British citizen. Yeah. He's a British citizen, pure British. So it wasn't because he was Asian then, but it was because he was doing something he wasn't supposed to. So I guess the argument is that these people did the due diligence and found some reason to deny the student entry, even though they had been a Yale graduate student. Right. Somebody said that it was how come it's just all from one airport? Doesn't it go to show you that different airports have different leadership and different standards? You're right. You're right. You're right. Duelist airport in Washington. I think maybe that one's the strictest, though, because it's kind of Washington, D.C. That's like flying into Beijing versus like you can find a chundu chundu. Everybody's a rapper or a tattoo artist. You go to Beijing. Everybody works. Who knows? Maybe if these people had flown into the New Orleans airport or Atlanta or Kansas City or they're like, here's some whiskey. Here's some bourbon. Get in there saying party or even SFO. I don't know. I don't know why it's particularly the Washington, D.C. airport. I don't know. Well, there's some logic to their guess. There's logic. Somebody just said, no, it's actually systematic signophobia in America. You know, just like when you take a trip to Russia and you come back, you might get questioned for an extra 10, 20, 30 minutes. Yeah. David, this is true. I noticed that even when we got back from certain countries, even when we're going through the end of customs, not that I've been interrogated, but they did like ask some extra questions like that quick interview at the end when you do pass them their password. For sure. For sure. If you come back from China, they're going to ask you a few more questions than if you come back from France. Maybe if you come back from France, they're just like, hey, good bread over there, right? I remember one time, one customs agent was like, hey, man, welcome back to home. They don't have all that. The guns and the hunting and the fishing and the shooting ranges like we got over here, right? Because he like kind of saw me, I guess, as a, I don't know, like an outdoorsy guy or something like that. And I was just like, oh, no, they don't have shooting ranges over there. Well, we were coming back from Asia. Yeah. I was coming back from China. Oh, yeah. So there was some sense of like, hey, man, you're on our team, right? Like you're on team like outdoorsmen. Can't wait to throw back some beers and shoot some guns, huh? I was like, David, I was like, are you inviting me? Am I going to like, is there a kickback somewhere? Where's the barbecue? Are we going on ATVs? I'm invited to the mud swamp or whatever. I mean, man, some, you know, and it's so funny, the comments section, some people are going to be mad at us that we're not going hard enough at American customs and some people are going to be mad at us because they're like, yeah, China is an enemy combatant right now from a narrative level. You guys can't see that because you know, what is so crazy about Andrew? Both things have some truth to them that like I get the rival aspect. There's some legitimate rivalries going on right now with the, you know, PhDs and science or whatever. But it's also been super politicized and trumped up in the media and exaggerated by people who do not know the hardcore semantics and the logistics. Listen, nobody really knows what's going on. I know some grad students here who don't know if they'll be allowed to come back into the US if they leave back to China. So the truth is, is there a way to make it clear to people? Like, should you just tell all grad students, hey, be very, very careful? You might not want to leave to go back to China right now just because they, we don't know because this is the times. This is the geopolitical vibe right now. Unfortunately, there is tension. There is possibly a war going on essentially going on right now. We don't know if it's been going on or if it's not about to start or whatever. So be more careful. Like, is that the message that should be sent to Chinese international grad students? Because like, should it be clear because it's like, I think it's terrible to be working so hard for a PhD program. And then you go back, you're like, Oh, I want to visit my family during Chinese New Year. And then you can't come back to America. You know, there's the reality of it and how it plays out in politics. I think that the reality, if you really look at the trade relations and the amount of economics that's going back and forth, it's way closer to frenemies than enemies. But the way it's sold in the media and people are trying to score points for their political crowd to win elections, to do things to look tough on this, look tough on that. There's a lot of posturing and almost like PR campaigns. And a few grad students not being able to finish their PhD, Andrew, that's nothing a politician wanting to make a statement. No, for sure. For sure. But you know what I'm saying? It's like, there's the reality of it. And then there's how it's playing out. And that almost becomes people's reality who don't study the actual thing. Yeah. And it's unfortunate. And there's a lot of collateral damage in that and people's PhD programs. That's nothing. Right. Somebody to chalk it up to be like, yo, this was just a pawn in posturing or whatever or jujitsuing this thing. Like this guy brought up that there has been longstanding sinophobia in America because do less Andrew, the guy that the airport is named after in Washington D.C. One time was posturing in the Pentagon that they should nuke China back in 1958. So the irony is that at the douless airport, the douless man who's named after wanted to nuke China, or at least thought of that. They had discussions and it was over something that totally was like that was like complete overkill. And I'll ask this. Why is America always talking about nuke in Asians, man? Yeah. Yeah, America. You want to nuke anybody else but Asians. It'd be interesting if there was ever a nuke again. And it was also on Asian looking people. That would be really telling. Yeah, if it's two for two or three for three guys, come on. That's a pattern. So anyways, guys, yeah, this is a complicated issue. We obviously do not know the details of why these students got denied. Do they unfortunately have some family ties that are closer to the Chinese government and military? If the dad or the uncle is the general, it's logical. The logic would make sense. It is true. It is true that they're we're in a complicated time and it is not cut and dry and and yeah, I just don't know. People's academic careers are essentially collateral damage to the times. Well, I mean, a lot of them can still finish online, but they can't come back to America. And I don't know, guys, being Chinese yet again is confusing in America. But anyways, you guys let us know in the comments down below. Let's have a discussion, share your perspective, share opinions. Do you know anybody who ever got denied at the airport? Why or why was that? I know people personally. I've also been interrogated at the Canadian border. Oh, my goodness, man. We got man. I'll tell you this from being that being Chinese going into Canada, Canada coming into the US flying back from China, but you get is different. Yeah. If you you guys don't know what that's like being Asian, trying to cross into the Canadian border and getting stopped interrogated. I think that was because they thought we were like some easy street guys street guys like drug dealers. But then if we come back from China, then people are like, we've been with our family before and being viewed as essentially like Chinese nationals too. Yeah, it's crazy guys being Chinese. I'm not gonna lie. It varies per border guard. But the people who like are like, yeah, being a border guard is my dream. They tend to be more on like archetypical. They fit in more of a stereotype. Let us know what you think in the comments down below. If you found this interesting, hit that like button. And until next time, we out. Peace.