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US Colleges Say Hiring US Students a Bad Deal
theodp writes "Many US colleges and universities have notices posted on their websites informing US companies that they're tax chumps if they hire students who are US citizens. 'In fact, a company may save money by hiring international students because the majority of them are exempt from Social Security (FICA) and Medicare tax requirements,' advises the taxpayer-supported University of Pittsburgh (pdf) as it makes the case against hiring its own US students. You'll find identical pitches made by the University of Delaware, the University of Cincinnati, Kansas State University, the University of Southern California, the University of Wisconsin, Iowa State University, and other public colleges and universities. The same message is also echoed by private schools, such as John Hopkins University, Brown University, Rollins College and Loyola University Chicago."
So is the right course to: change the tax code so that businesses have to pay the same taxes for international workers as for domestic workers (could reduce employment)? reduce the cost of employing domestic workers (could reduce tax revenue)? or further limit the number of work visas issued (could cause shortages of certain types of skilled labor)?
i thought the US needed to encourage more and better American citizens to go to college and become scientists and engineers...
looks like our educational institutions have said, "f that".
i say, "f them"
(i'm not opposed to immigration or people coming to get an education and leave, but i don't think my tax dollars should pay for these colleges to actively sabotage my kids' chances at getting a job.)
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
Who is the problem here? The universities who tell it like it is? Or the morons in congress who make it the way it is?
I seem to have wandered into LouDobbsDot by accident.
These students I am sure are paying well to be attending those universities and part of that fee is towards support services for their interests.
It doesn't seem unreasonable to me for those services to highlight whatever advantages these students have, because they probably have a lot of disadvantages in language and local knowledge.
Who'd of thought that employers, even state agencies, change their behavior in response to tax policy. If you want employers to hire more workers, make it easier and less expensive to hire and pay.
They get more money from out of state students than they get from local students. They get even more money from out of country students than in-country students.
They want more students alright... just more of the big-money students is all.
Since Brown is literally up the road from me, I decided to click on Brown's PDF first, and then the others. I thought maybe there was a breaking story I could submit to the Providence Journal so they could get the whole state of Rhode Island up in arms.
The summary doesn't match the language of the PDFs in the least.
I don't have enough middle fingers for this summary. It's massive troll.
Does that sound like employers can avoid taxes by hiring foreign students? I don't think so, Bob.
--
BMO
Read the PDF that is linked in the article. At no point does it advocate hiring international students over United States citizens. The document does mention that a company can conceivably save money since the majority of these students are exempt from Medicare and FICA tax requirements. Furthermore, the document is published by the university's international services department. It is their purpose to try to get the best deal for international students.
This article is trolling. Move on.
Clearly, you are not an apple grower that's paying a PR firm and then finds out they are using your money to get the message out about oranges.
The private Universities can do what they want, but the public taxpayer funded organizations shouldn't be saying "Hire people who pay less tax", they should be saying "Congress, change the laws to make it a level playing field"
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
The published information for the most part is accurate. The fact that the U.S. workplace law system has devolved to a point where there are significant disadvantages to hiring a citizen is a problem with the system, not with the universities who point out this fact.
In other news, there are even more significant patent law, employment law, liability, insurance cost, employment cost, and tax advantages if you relocate your business outside the U.S. The fact that this is also true is not my fault. Don't kill the messenger, reform the government that led to this mess. In an age where both jobs and companies are free to roam the world, most will settle in places where the cost/benefit ratio of local government is optimal. Unfortunately I can't think of many U.S. states that aren't economic and legal basket-cases at the moment, trying to tax and legislate themselves into oblivion. YMMV.
If you RTFA instead of the summary you'd see it was a very poor and biased summary. The actual article did not advocate any such position.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The real reason could be this: International students pay well for their studies. If they hav work, they stay on studying to the end of their courses and can pay their fees. More importantly, they also encourage other students to come and study in the USA.
sudo mount --milk --sugar
Wow, great spin job!
Its a fact that FICA and Medicare often don't have to be paid for international students. This is federal law, so it's not surprising that more than one university describes the same factual situation that applies across the country. This is not under the control of the universities.
Note that, due to the various issues with visas, paperwork, etc., international students often struggle to find employment, and so its not unreasonable for universities to advocate on their behalf. Universities also typically have an entire career services group that helps all the American students, so they are hardly neglected.
It takes a fair amount of cynicism (I know, I know, its /.) to spin a university's attempt to support their international students into an attack on their American students.
If you really care about this issue, you should just aggitate against the tax law itself.
Did Lou Dobbs submit that? Please preserve /. from this nonsense; I thought this website was supposed to post "Stuff that matters". All this post offers is an outlet for outrage, self-righteousness, and ugly xenophobia -- natural human traits, but not healthy or helpful ones that we benefit from encouraging. How many people have those websites affected? Isn't there something more consequential going on, that we can put on the front page of /.?
Here is a radical option, drop FICA and Medicare taxes, seeing that College age students will never benefit from the programs because they will be long broke by the time the students reach retirement. Combined that with dropping the aggregate (State + Federal) Corporate tax rate to less than 10% and you will see Companies rushing into the US, bye bye 10% unemployment.
Unfortunately, we are headed in the exact opposite direction with a Government take over of health care. Taxes are going to go through the roof to support all of the spending going on and the US will still not be able to reach it's obligations. Combined that with Cap and Tax, and other countries are starting to look a lot better then the US, especially India and China (sense they don't have the same emissions requirements under Kyoto because they are "developing" countries)
So no, raising taxes in the middle of a recession is not the answer, We are already why to the right on the Laffer Curve and going further to the right is just going to push up unemployment more.
You're mistaken.
Most have an F-1 visa, with which they get one year of employment after graduation. During that year, they apply for an H1.
Beetle B.
No, its more like the apple grower is paying a PR firm who works for both apple growers and orange growers.
The international students are also paying the university, in addition to the state residents, and the university naturally will promote both groups.
With the way the recession is currently in the US, it makes no sense for the US govt. to not only allow, but, in some cases expedite bringing foreigners in (or letting them in willy nilly across the border illegally) to fill jobs that our own citizens are in desperate need of...
I don't see that a state funded school should be allowed by the taxpayers of that state to promote the hiring of foreign people over US citizens either...that's not what my tax dollars should be going for...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Who said the government ever makes sense?
Seriously. Look at Microsoft - they've been pushing outsourced (e.g. "revolving temp agency hiring") and overseas-sourced (how many times did Bill Gates lie his ass off claiming he "couldn't find" people trained to do things here while pushing for H1-B increases?) for years now. I have a friend who just spent three years "working for Microsoft", but he was actually hired by a temp agency (along with 80% of the people in his building) and forced to work "Shifts" with 90-day breaks in between "hirings" to avoid MS or the temp agency having to pay out certain benefits.
Of course we should be making it better on taxes to hire American workers than foreign workers, and that doesn't just go for visa holders; we should be taxing companies that use outsourced labor overseas, too. If they don't want to pay the tax, they can move their factories and resources back to the States.
Michael Dell is too cheap to pay for labor in the country that made him rich. I think the government owes him a reality check on behalf of US.
With the way the recession is currently in the US, it makes no sense for the US govt. to not only allow, but, in some cases expedite bringing foreigners in (or letting them in willy nilly across the border illegally) to fill jobs that our own citizens are in desperate need of...
That makes little sense, but I approve. In fact, as somebody who lives in Europe, I encourage every smart, qualified worker who doesn't feel welcome in the US to come over here. We'll get out of these economic problems by having smart people do innovative things. It doesn't really matter where they were born, but it does matter where they work.
I don't see that a state funded school should be allowed by the taxpayers of that state to promote the hiring of foreign people over US citizens either...that's not what my tax dollars should be going for...
So you're saying that universities should promote political opinions instead of the truth?
Or you could ... I dunno .... maybe SIMPLIFY THE TAX CODE and get rid of these dumb laws which create these idiotic problems in the first place? How much longer do you expect to be able to keep adding bandaids on top of one another?
The key word is "may". But then the article conditions state that in some cases using international students "may" require the employer paying FICA and Medicare. Generally they are exempt. That one sentence is taken out of context as the theme for entire article. I suspect the sentence is because there is general misinformation that hiring international students is somehow more expensive than other students. Hiring international, permanent workers (H1-B) generally is more expensive due to the paperwork and hassle. Hiring students (J-1) may not be more expensive.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
That makes little sense, but I approve. In fact, as somebody who lives in Europe, I encourage every smart, qualified worker who doesn't feel welcome in the US to come over here. We'll get out of these economic problems by having smart people do innovative things. It doesn't really matter where they were born, but it does matter where they work.
I wish it were that easy. Where is this elusive "work" you speak of? From where I sit, there is no hiring growth in 1st world countries. Requirement #1 for hiring is "low cost geography".
"Do not take things out of context! What the document says is companies might save some money if they hire foreigners on F-1 or J-1 visas. It is just so foreigners _who_study_in_the_United_States_ can find a job since employers seem to be under the impression that hiring a foreigner is a hassle."
With the way the recession is currently in the US, it makes no sense for the US govt. to not only allow, but, in some cases expedite bringing foreigners in (or letting them in willy nilly across the border illegally) to fill jobs that our own citizens are in desperate need of...
These particular foreigners have come to study at universities here. The universities bring foreign students over for a number of reasons:
* It makes it easier for our students to study in foreign countries when they want to.
* Different academic emphases in different cultures lead to students who bring a fresh perspective and a different set of background knowledge to research and inquiry.
* Foreign students are usually required to pay not just non-resident tuition, but an even higher additional fee to public universities.
* Positive experiences studying in the US send foreign students home with a new take on American culture and values. It's a fairly cheap and easy method of exporting democracy to certain parts of the world.
Our own university system would suffer if we ended international student recruitment. Unfortunately, because studying at US institutions is so expensive, many foreign students need to be able to find jobs to work while they're in school. Therefore, those programs are threatened by bigoted or ignorant employers who have something against hiring foreign students. (They're also threatened by DHS procedures that get students placed on the wrong list and have their visas held up for weeks, while their research languishes and in some cases completely expires, losing them a year or more of work.)
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
The document from the University of Delaware linked in the summary makes no "pitch" at all whatsoever. ... you guessed it, information that employers may like to know about hiring international students.
In fact, the document which is entitled "What Employers Should Know About Hiring International Students" really only speaks to
How did this make it to the front page? It's clearly flamebait.
I'm a 2000 man.
I'm not sure if your latter statement makes much sense. If so, then all new domestic college grads who never worked (or very little) before they graduated college would be on equal footing as international students, since they all paid the same taxes ($0...although arguably, the domestic student has a negative balance, because he/she probably received tax benefits). Of course, I'm not a tax lawyer/accountant, and I don't know how to factor in anything your parents paid to raise you...but this is just my $0.02. =)
Well, if they would start a very honest effort, I'm sure they could find TONS of stuff they could do without. Let's start with some really outdated things they fund? I mean, the just recently got rid of the federal excise tax that used to be on your phone bill that was used to pay for the Spanish-American war. That tax lasted from 1898 till 2006 I believe. Well, there are federal spending dollars going to things like that too. We could start there and drop all spending for programs that are outdated.
No we don't need to cut education dollars first..BUT, why not dismantle the bureaucracy layers above the teachers and schools? I mean, we pay a LOT per student, but, by the time that $$ actually reaches the student, there is very little left for him and the teacher and the school itself. If you could cut out the upteen layers of middle men, I'll be you'd find we could cut spending, and STILL have the student/teacher level realizing more dollars than they do today.
While I do support a safety net for the elderly and the truly infirmed, I don't see a need to subsidize any abled bodied person that can work. If you screwed around and didn't get an education, well the world needs fruit picked and ditches dug. If we put off all the able bodied workers on welfare and entitlement programs, we wouldn't have a need for so many ILLEGAL (there is a difference) alien workers. Taking care of that situation, would also ease the burden that feds and state have to pay for schools and social services that non-citizens use, as well as a large chunk of medical expenditures that we all pay treating illegals here in the US at the emergency rooms that they use for emergency and less than emergency tx.
Have you seen the highway system lately? It isn't looking good. Let's stop subsidizing everyone, the corn farmers, the corporations, all the special interests. We should NOT be giving money out to anyone from the tax coffers. It should only be used for basic government needs and functions. Hell, why do we give money to other countries? I mean, sure, in a time of need emergencies, I don't have a problem with it..like when the tsunami hit, sure you help out. But this constant stream of $$ out of the US is just bribe money for trying to get someone to vote or act our way. Screw that.
There is a fuck-ton load of waste in the bureaucracy of the United States govt.
Unfortunately, I think the only way to get the Fed. to stop spending like a drunken sailor on leave, is for the states to grow some balls, and STOP SENDING MONEY to the federal govt. I think we have to dry up the funds before they will cut the spending.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Hey, at least it is ONE govt. program that DOES stimulate the economy and put money back in the hands of the citizens. There is a lot of money to be made in working these military govt. contracts. At least they aren't wasted dollars as bad as some govt. projects are. Good high tech jobs for these dollars, better than subsidies to corn farmers and high fructose corn syrup interests.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Or you could ... I dunno .... maybe SIMPLIFY THE TAX CODE and get rid of these dumb laws which create these idiotic problems in the first place? How much longer do you expect to be able to keep adding bandaids on top of one another?
Won't happen. The only reason the populace hasn't overthrown the current government is because the tax code is complicated enough that people don't realize how screwed they are.
Broken window fallacy. It's only "stimulating" the economy by taking money from the citizens and giving it to the defense contractors. If we cut our defense budget by 15%, we could pay for health care.
I question the idea that funding of military is good for the economy. Military spending is often on manufacturing of non-renewable items. Items, like bullets and missiles, that need storage when not used and can only be used once(often to destroy objects of value).
As opposed to producing things that have utility value, like fishing nets, rakes, pots/pans, etc.
Yes, intelligence satellites became used for GPS and stuff, but what if money was used for civilian benefitting tasks to begin with? Would it have yielded better economic results
Awesome, nice work theo. Looks like you got the crowd nice and angry. You should apply to CNN. They may replace Lou Dobbs with you for your cool attempts at spreading falsehood. READ the article people. It doesn't advocate recruiting international students but rather provides guidelines to employers who wish to do so with legal information that they would need.
Having been an international student myself , its funny to see these kinds of antics becoming increasingly more prevalent now. Looks like this is from the people at the Programmers Guild. If the USA does not welcome skilled professionals from the world by pursuing sensible immigration policies, then its days as a technological superpower are numbered. And it could only be a few years before, China, followed by India and maybe other countries in the region such as Singapore (as big as Silicon Valley, and tremendously talented workforce) complete the deed. Currently, it takes close to 10 years for an international student with a standing job say from a blue chip tech company like Intel,Google,Cisco or Microsoft to get a Green Card. That is outright crazy.
Give it a few years. You are already seeing students stopping to come to the US to pursue higher studies. And we are also already seeing a reverse brain drain of talented professionals, a high percentage of whom were trained in US universities, returning to their home countries to pursue opportunities there rather than wait for years to be accepted as permanent residents (green card) here. A few more years and we'll reach a tipping point where the GDP growth in those countries, which is already > 5-6%, will encourage budding entrepeneurs to stay there and lead the charge of tech professionals and tech companies (the few that don't already have a presence there) to move there.
The entire story is about talent. If you can't attract and retain it, then you are done. Bill Gates, Tom Friedman, John Chambers, Andy Grove have all encouraged stapling a green card to international students. At around 50-100k per year, (assuming it is restricted to those with job offers), its a tiny drop in the ocean. But yet, Americans are so narrow minded that its incredible to see the foolishness unfold.
so why the hell are you bitching and not reporting them and their "doctors" for fraud like a responsible citizen.
fuck dude, take some responsibility.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
Actually, you read his post completely wrong. He didn't criticize the education system so much as point out a fact about the useless layers that basically do nothing for us. Just look at your town and the education system and count the number of people who are not teachers, janitors, or technical support. Basically the people who do nothing but sit in an office, never speaking to students or getting up to actually do anything useful. Fire all those guys, and you've saved probably 70% of our education cost, or at least freed that money up to hire more teachers.
Bullets and bombs are the best products to sell. Think about it - they're use once. Additionally, once you use them, you generally need more. And the other guy is going to want some too. It's a wonderful system.
Military spending buys something much more precious than bullets and missiles - it buys security. With our huge stockpile of bullets and missiles, we run a much lower risk of invasion by some hostile country.
Of course, that benefit is eroded quite a bit when our politicians toss our military around like so many tennis balls to overthrow whatever dictator we had set up a decade ago...