President Obama and the First Lady Michelle recently attended an opera at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The President said that he thoroughly enjoyed the opera. On getting back to the White House, he wanted to know who the fantastic singers in the opera were.
The President was told that the two sopranos were Marina Poplavskaya and Anna Smirnova and the tenors were Roberto Alagna, Simon Keenlyside, Ferrucio Furlanetto and Eric Halfvarson. The conductor was Yannick Nezet-Seguin and the producer was Nicholas Hytner. They were all foreigners. The only Americans involved in the opera were the costume designer and the lightning designer. The audience were mostly Americans. The President asked one of his advisers “where are all the American sopranos and tenors?” He was told that most of them were playing in Europe. This made the President quite angry because the Europeans were taking American jobs while talented Americans were having to find work in Europe. He thought this was something like the computing industry. There also most of the work is either outsourced to India or China or is being done by Indians and Chinese in USA. Some of the young Americans who cannot find jobs in the USA now have to work in India or China. The President thought that he had controlled the number of Indians and Chinese to work in the American computing industry by controlling the number of H1B visas. He therefore must control the number of foreign actors and singers, in particular in famous American opera companies. Mr Obama has now proposed that all shows like an opera presented by Metropolitan Opera in New York must have at least 50% Americans. Exceptions may be permitted if the opera company could prove that no suitable American was available. The President’s proposal was strongly supported in the Congress by Democrats as well as Republicans.
Talking informally to a group of reporters, the President noted that he is also concerned about domination of some sports by foreigners. For example, most of the top seeds in the last US Open, Raphael Nadal, Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray, Caroline Wozniacki, and Jelena Jankovic, were all foreigners but he noted that he does not plan to put any visa controls on the sportsmen since the most important American sports, football and baseball, are mostly played by American players.
