Beacon 29: Student Visas and Their Results

WHY UKRAINE'S NEW LEADER COULD JUST STROLL AROUND D.C.


New Ukrainian leader and Orange Revolution poster guy Viktor Yuschenko is in Washington today to visit President Bush, and he'll address Congress tomorrow. He could pull a Gorbachev and get out of his limo to press the flesh, but unlike Gorbachev he could also just keeping walking around D.C. and not get lost.

That's because Yuschenko is a graduate of Georgetown University, one of dozens if not hundreds of foreign leaders schooled in the United States thanks to generous pre-9/11 student visa policies and the occasional grant, exchange program or student loan. Tiny investments can pay big dividends 20 years later, even though the U.S. also educates the occasional tyrant.

Here's a not particularly up-to-date list of foreign leaders who have gone to school in the U.S., as it doesn't include current luminaries like Kofi Annan (economics bachelor's, Macalester College in St. Paul; management master's, MIT) but it does note that Jacques Chirac went to Harvard and King Abdullah was a Hoya along with Yuschenko.