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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."
the majority of them are exempt from Social Security
The last time I worked with people on an H1B visas, Social Security was paid.
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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.
Oooookaaaay. It's not like the colleges are saying US students are bad. Instead, they're saying that these international students aren't as hard to hire as one might think and that there are benefits to it.
Just because I tell you that you should eat oranges because they're high in Vitamin C doesn't mean that I don't think eating apples is a good idea.
I'm impressed, though, because I've not seen a summary this reactionary and poorly constructed in a long time.
If you look at these links these are list pertaining to why companies SHOULD hire international students not reasons as to why companies should avoid domestic students.
They are simply trying to "sell" certain types of students (international) to companies by stating the benefits of hiring those types of students, thereby catering to those student's interests.
Nothing to see here.
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.
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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.
I came into the US education system starting from undergrad to grad school as a foreign student (F and H visas), and I have NEVER heard of anything this stupid. Every employer that hired me during this process paid for all required taxes, even the university themselves when I worked on campus with my F visa.
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
Did nobody actually read the linked documents? All of them are promoting hiring students from the university. They simply list what laws apply when a busness hires international students. All of them exist to clear up misconceptions people might have about hiring foreign students, so that they are not unfairly ignored in the hiring process.
For example, one question is "Does the student need a work permit to be hired" and the answer is no. The student cannot get a work permit until they have a written job offer, so any employer waiting for proof of a work permit before giving an interview is asking for the impossible.
I think Cmdrtaco should read TFA.
> looks like our educational institutions have said, "f that".
The job of universities is to point out reality, not fantasy. So if it truly is more expensive to hire American students, they should be saying so, just like they should be providing evidence for global warming even though there are people who would rather deny it.
Seriously, I looked ad the PDF, and the languages used in the summary, is no where to be found in the provided links. I vote to mod this story off the front page. In fact, I think the "editors" should be able to be moderated.
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
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 /.?
If you expect me to read or understand the topic before I form an opinion, then I str...
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I steal signatures. This one used to be yours.
It goes both ways (across the Atlantic). Americans come here to get cheap government subsidized university education instead of shelling out thousands of dollars in your expensive schools. Then they can quite easily get jobs because they have international experience and generally speak English very well. I really can't see how anyone is getting shafted by this arrangement.
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This story should be tagged as a troll story.
First, the documents to which the article links were not written with the intention of convincing U.S. employers to hire students who are non-residents of the United States in place of students who are citizens. Non-resident students are likely no different than any other student in college and need supplemental income to pay for their education. The documents purpose is to enlighten employers about the facts about hiring non-resident students who are in the country on a student visa. Perhaps the author would like to take it one step further and see if they can incite hatred in legal aliens who are here working under a green card as these pamphlets surely must be convincing U.S. employers to hire foreign students studying under a visa in place of legal immigrant workers. Or perhaps not.
Second, if the author bothered to read IRS Publication 519, as the pamphlets suggest, they would have realized that any foreign student studying under a visa in the united states will fall under Social Security and FICA taxes if they are determined to have a substantial presence in the United States.
If a foreign student spends any more time in the U.S. than is necessary to attend school then it is likely they will fall under the substantial presence test and an employer will be required to pay Social Security and FICA taxes for the student they hired. A foreign student who is only available to work a fraction of each year is not a threat to the resident work force or the social services systems paid for by that work force.
As a member of the unemployed I understand the difficulties many people are going through but we can maintain a semblance of intelligence and become informed before making poorly researched rants.
You need to read the links. This story is a troll. They aren't promoting international students over domestic students. They are merely giving the facts of what is involved with hiring an international students.
40-50% is when people start blaming an ethnic group, put a dictator in charge, and eye Poland longingly
Or you could move to a sales tax instead
a sales tax does not make the congressman a middleman with sufficient power
No the US needs to accept the fact that not everyone can be a scientist and engineer and start directing candidates to trade schools.
The word needs ditch diggers, the difference is America convinces the ditch diggers they need 4 years and a bachelors degree (And a ton of debt)
both F-1 and J-1 are exempt.
http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/international/article/0,,id=131635,00.html
F-visas, J-visas, M-visas, Q-visas. Nonresident alien students, scholars, professors, teachers, trainees, researchers, and other aliens temporarily present in the United States in F-1,J-1,M-1, or Q-1/Q-2 nonimmigrant status are exempt from Social Security / Medicare Taxes on wages paid to them for services performed within the United States as long as such services are allowed by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for these nonimmigrant statuses, and such services are performed to carry out the purposes for which they were admitted into the United States.
* Exempt Employment includes:
o On-campus student employment up to 20 hours a week (40 hrs during summer vacations)
o Off-campus student employment allowed by USCIS
o Practical Training student employment on or off campus
o On-campus employment as professor, teacher or researcher
* Limitations on exemption:
o The exemption does not apply to spouses and children in F-2, J-2, M-2, or Q-3 nonimmigrant status.
o The exemption does not apply to employment not allowed by USCIS or to employment not closely connected to the purpose for which they were admitted into the United States.
o The exemption does not apply to nonimmigrants in F-1,J-1,M-1,or Q-1/Q-2 status who change nonimmigrant status to a status which is not exempt or to a special protected status.
o The exemption does not apply to nonimmigrants in F-1,J-1,M-1, or Q-1/Q-2 status who become resident aliens for tax purposes.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
...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.
Nice sound bite but it is only true if the funding for those programs remains like it is today. I think the odds of that happening is a pretty good approximation of zero. Social Security and Medicare are the largest and most popular government programs out there. It is unlikely Congress will act quickly absent a fiscal emergency but sooner or later they'll have to address the funding of those programs.
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.
With the additional effect of causing millions of senior citizens who lose their primary income and health care. Which would have a devastating effect on their economic well being. There is no free lunch. Those programs serve a very real and very important purpose in spite of their problems.
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.
Sounds to me like you don't actually understand the Laffer Curve. The Laffer Curve hypotheses that there is an optimum tax rate - it might be necessary to raise OR cut taxes to reach that optimum. It does NOT tell you where you are on the Laffer curve, nor does it tell you what that optimum actually is. The Laffer curve does not prescribe or predict - it merely is a theory that an optimum exists. This makes it of limited value. The only way to find out for certain is to change the tax rate and see what happens but it is entirely possible we have a tax rate that is too low. That's the dirty little secret of those who constantly push for lowering taxes claiming that it will increase revenue based on the Laffer curve. You cannot possibly know where you are on that curve so you cannot use the Laffer curve as evidence that cutting taxes (or raising them) will be good policy.
I searched the links to find evidence that colleges were treating American students worse and promoting outsourcing.
I did not find this. And even my own college's page was very reasonable and straight-to-the-facts.
"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."
Sorry, Slashdot, but the link to my college doesn't send this message. Cut the crap with the yellow journalism already.
Sales tax sucks because it slows down the velocity of money. You pay sales tax whenever the dollar circulates which could be many times in a year.
And an income tax is taken off every time the dollar circulates to the company you bought your item when it pays it's employees... what's the difference?
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
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.
No, we are not way over to the right on the Laffer curve - that belief is Laffable. The US had some of its highest marginal tax rates - up around 90% - between WWII and the Kennedy administration, to pay down the war debt. The economy grew, and the debt got paid down. We're currently nowhere near the level of debt-to-GDP ratio we faced at the end of the second world war, and have nowhere near the level of marginal tax rates we had then, so to put it bluntly the prognostications of economic doom and gloom from fine fellows such as yourself strike me as nothing but fear tactics.
Here's a fun exercise - go grab the numbers from your favorite legitimate source for debt, GDP, and which party had control of the white house, congress, and the senate. Put them all together in a spreadsheet or stats package. Generate the debt-to-GDP ratio, and plot that side by side with who was making the laws and policies. If you really want to do it right, you should lag the ratio by a year because the economy has some inertia, and it takes a little time for new policies to get a toehold. You'll probably be surprised at what you see.
I'm curious as to your source for your facts.
Fact Sheets: Taxes History of the U.S. Tax System
1918 - Tax rates set at 25% of GDP
1920s - Tax rate reduced to 13% of GDP
1932 through 1936 - Tax rates increased, by 1940 tax rate at 6.8% of GDP
1941 - 7.6% of GDP
1944 - 20.9% of GDP
1945 - 20.4% of GDP
1950 - 14.4%
1952 - 19%
1960s through 1970s - 19.4% up to 20.8%
1986 - 17.5%
1990 - 18%
2000 - 20.8%
R Davis' receipts and outlays plots
1950 through 2008 - Tax rate varied from 14.5% to 20.8% of GDP
List of countries by tax revenue as percentage of GDP
United States - Tax rate at 28.2% of GDP
Total Tax Burden Is Rising to Highest Level in History
1965 through 2008 - Tax rate varied from 15.5% to 20.9% of GDP
Even the Heritage Foundation that continually makes mind numbingly brain dead conclusions that in some cases contradict the charts on their own web site don't show future receipts in the 40% to 50% range. Their end of the world predictions only go as high as 25.5%.
It is also telling that the very worst of times seem to be preceded by tax cuts that resulted in some of the lowest tax rates versus GDP. Note the booming 1920s "The economy boomed during the 1920s and increasing revenues from the income tax followed. This allowed Congress to cut taxes five times,", the tax cuts reduced receipts and were followed with the great depression. Note the booming 1990s followed by the tax cuts during the Bush administration, the reduced receipts and, ta da, massive recession on the brink of depression.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for reducing tax burdens but lets not jump to conclusions and assume simply cutting taxes will instil wealth and prosperity into the heartland. In fact to the contrary, the facts show that something else is occurring along with the tax cuts that results in a detrimental affect to the working class and their ability to make a living.
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.
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!