My parochial issue is that people perform better in an environment they perceive as nurturing. When international applicants have a higher admissions rate than in-state applicants and non-California domestic applicants, it sends the signal to citizens of this country, and this state that our own universities, and thus our government, are deeply ambivalent about our success, or in my case, the success of my children. I understand this borders on a call for paternalism, but, ah, I'm a concerned parent.
Something dramatic happened in 2009 which caused in-state admission rates to drop by over 20 points while foreign admissions increased by 20 points. Ostensibly, the Academic Senate reduced the "guaranteed admission rate" for in-state high schools from the top 12.5% to the top 9%, and "widened the applicant pool". The observed effect on the campus population mix has been stunning. I can provide the graphs (I'll note the downvoters haven't asked for the data), or you can get the data yourself here (2) with a bit of querying (look all the way back to 1994 so you can see that we're not talking about recency bias spikes).
Interestingly, the reported "ethnicity" numbers omit the ethnicity of international students, just lumping them all into "international". Even more interesting is the counterfactual of who isn't crying foul about that. Generally, repressed minorities try to break out their numbers and the CCCP cries foul wherever they aren't winning (this is an observation about foreign policy behavior that dates back to the Korean War, not a comment on the Chinese people). But they aren't making much ruckus about the UC system. Nevertheless, it takes a hot second on campus to see that this international segment is primarily ethnic Chinese.
I'd be interested to see the financial portfolios of the folks who voted for this. One has to wonder what the UC Academic Senate's incentives are in supporting a de facto pro-China, anti-US agenda when you have reports like (3-10).
(1) https://www.sfgate.com/education/article/Regents-panel-OKs-b...
(2) https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/admissions...
(3) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/30/political-pres...
(4) https://techcrunch.com/2010/01/12/google-china-attacks/
(5) https://www.nbcnews.com/news/china/education-or-espionage-ch...
(6) https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/07/chinas-long-arm-reaches...
(7) https://edition.cnn.com/2019/01/11/asia/university-californi...
(8) https://www.wired.com/story/china-spy-recruitment-us/
(9) https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/01/politics/us-intelligence-...
(10) https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/apr/25/china-uses-...