Federal Judge Calls BS On Homeland Security's 2008 STEM 'Emergency'

theodp writes: In 2008, the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security enacted 'emergency' changes to Optional Practical Training (OPT) to extend the amount of time foreign STEM graduates of US colleges could stay in the country and work ("to alleviate the crisis employers are facing due to the current H-1B visa shortage", as Bill Gates explained it in 2007). More than seven years later, U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle has found that the government erred by not seeking public comment when it extended the program, and issued a ruling that could force tens of thousands of foreign workers on OPT STEM extensions to return to their home countries early next year. Huvelle has given the government six months to submit the OPT extension rule for proper notice and comment lest it be revoked. From the ruling (pdf): "By failing to engage in notice-and-comment rulemaking, the record is largely one-sided, with input only from technology companies that stand to benefit from additional F-1 student employees, who are exempted from various wage taxes. Indeed, the 17-month duration of the STEM extension appears to have been adopted directly from the unanimous suggestions by Microsoft and similar industry groups." Microsoft declared a new crisis in 2012, this time designed to link tech's need for H-1B visas to U.S. children's lack of CS savvy.

Comments

STEM OPT extension was really bad

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Great recession, almost a depression, crashing economy, loss of million jobs a month.. unemployment spiking over 10%... underemployment way past 16%... and they persisted this farce of 17 month additional OPT for STEM? It is corporatocracy, pure and simple.

Re:STEM OPT extension was really bad

[tompaulco]

But that doesn't accurately depict the situation that existed in *TECH*. Yes, unemployment and underemployment among construction workers was high. But at the time, tech workers had an unemployment rate under 5% (and in 2008 unemployment overall was only 8%). Considering that it takes years to put a tech worker through a college degree and introductory employment, even if construction workers were qualified to switch from construction to tech, it wouldn't have helped the short term problem.

Unemployment figures don't take into account the people who used up all of their unemployment and were never able to find a job. They may still be unemployed, but the numbers aren't tracked. Also, this number doesn't take into account the number of tech workers that took jobs in other fields because they couldn't find jobs in tech. I know many, many people (including myself) who have 25+ years of experience in tech, but are doing something else because there are no jobs.
Underemployment is rampant as well. Tech jobs don't pay enough to live on, but when they demand 60-80 hours a week of your time, and availability on a whim, you also can't go get a second job to make ends meet.
Microsoft is starting to slip, though. They released press releases demanding more H1B workers a little too soon after laying off 6,000 tech workers. Someone is bound to notice.

Family reunification vs STEM

[jonsmirl]

Prioritizing family reunification visas is worse. I know of two people that have used family reunification visas to bring in their parents. All four of which went onto Social Security and Medicare shortly after arriving. The US would have been much better off if those four slots had been given to STEM workers.

I'll believe it's an emergency when 2 thingshappen

[NotSoHeavyD3]

1. Wages increase

2. They bring in people on green cards for 5-10 years for any employer instead of this H1B nonsense where they bring people in with a leash around their figurative nuts and hand the nut leash to one company.

Total Horseshit, As Always

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no shortage of tech workers. There is only a shortage of people willing to work at rates management wants. And these are not burger flipper jobs that can only sustain paying employees out of the $5 value menu gross proceeds. These are wildly profitable tech giants with billions in revenue.

Re:Total Horseshit, As Always

[gweihir]

Indeed. Something went very wrong after the last crisis was over: Companies continued to decrease STEM staff quality and wages paid, despite revenues being back to good and sometimes excellent. This has two effects, both catastrophic in the long run: 1.) fewer and fewer bright and capable people will go into STEM 2.) when the next crisis hits, companies will be a lot less able to deal with it, as they have systematically dumbed down their employee-pools. The only "positive" effects for the companies I see is even higher bonuses for even less deserving CEOs and the like.

Somehow, they have completely forgotten that STEM is hard, it is what makes the modern world tick, and that good STEM workers are both critical for the long-term success of any tech company and hard to get.

Re:Funny

[jedidiah]

...too early in the morning.

What Silicon Valley hipsters are likely to object to are "indentured servant" visas. This is one problem with the low skill illegals actually. The situation helps create an underclass that can be easily abused.

That's what H1Bs are for, they are a tool to abuse labor.

I've always said that if a guy's talents are worth importing, then it's worth importing that guy as an EQUAL.

None of this stupid indentured servant crap.

There is indeed a crisis

[paiute]

Large companies are having real problems finding skilled people they can pay minimum wage and treat like chattel.

Re:There is no way this looks good.

[jafiwam]

Meanwhile, Real IT Pro's know there's a tremendous shortage of real Talent out there, and it has gotten so bad companies can only stumble upon people who know what they are doing. Everyone else just kinda passes as somewhat knowing what they are doing.

I am not surprised at all this tired old lie would show up as an anonymous first post in a thread like this.

Pay more, more will come. Very simple. Why would anybody bother to learn / earn experience for your shit-pay job? Your problem is YOU.

Re:comparing overall unemployment rate

[JustNiz]

>> People who are still in their early careers don't realize how vulnerable they become when they get older.

As a 52 year old software developer I get what you are saying. The trick is to be in the right industry. All the young guns are mostly doing only web and web-related stuff because they think its cool. Just avoid that whole thing.

What helps is that those guys seem to be pretty much clueless when it comes to bare metal stuff like embedded systems and device drivers etc because it seems even in CS degrees these days they don't teach anything as low-level as C, let alone assembler or how computers actually work any more. It seems most of those guys are completely out of their comfort zone around any language/environment that doesn't have a garbage collector, isn't in a VM or container, can't be scripted and doesn't come with a massive app framework that includes giant libraries of helper functions to do all the actual heavy lifting.