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White House Petition To Let Foreign STEM Grads Work Longer In US Hits 100K Signatures
theodp writes: Computerworld reports that a petition urging the White House to act urgently on a court ruling that could force thousands of recent foreign STEM graduates working in the U.S. on OPT STEM extensions to leave the States early next year reached 100,000 signatures Tuesday, the threshold for an official government response. It could present a political conundrum of sorts for the Obama administration. Because the administration didn't act to protect U.S. workers at Southern California Edison and Disney, explained an attorney in the case, "now that foreign workers will be losing their jobs, how would it look if Obama went into overdrive to protect their jobs?" By the way, using a map to gauge whether support for the petition comes from all over the country (as the White House suggests), indicates that support for the OPT STEM Extension petition is largely concentrated in tech hotspots and universities, including off-the-beaten-path college towns that host large international student populations.
Since it achieves goals for their $upporters.
If you look at the responses on Whitehouse.gov then you villl see that the responses are all pretty lame and meaningless. This is when they even choose to respond. Many times they simply say they wont bother responding. The petitions simply get a response that you would expect when calling a call center in India for customer service. Nothing ever changes or happens from a petition.
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First, this isn't the same as the H-1B issue. This would actually be a better solution if we were facing a shortage of skilled workers, because more trained entry level sorts would directly address that. The problem is, the tech moguls pushing for H-1Bs don't really care about that, they just want cheaper workers. The fact that most H-1Bs are used not to bring in highly paid experts in their field, but instead to bring in contract workers for IT sweatshops, should tell you something. That, and the fact that H-1Bs are largely stuck in their one job, are part of why this solution will likely not have any tech moguls or the like pushing for it.
I do find it disingenuous that the lawyer quoted conflates the two though. Entry level types who happen to be foreign graduates of a US university aren't going to be competing for any jobs that aren't already at risk of being given to any US-born graduates (which is a problem in Tech, but is a rather different one). That said, the Obama administration (and politicians in general) ought to be doing a lot more to crack down on the H-1B fuckery, just in general, nevermind in relation to a broader immigration overhaul.
I'd be happy to support visa for these folks, but NOT H-1Bs or similar. If we need them, bring them in and give them full rights. If we don't need them that badly, we don't really need them.
Coming here and working at below-market rates *does* technically "improve our economy*, as the investors get to make a bit more money off of them, but not in a positive way (driving down skilled middle-class labor wages).
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Anyone who has ever worked with Indian grad students knows that we are not getting anything worthwhile by letting them in.
Agreed with sibling... how many of the petitioners are actual US citizens? After all, an Internet-based petition is open to the world, and geolocation ain't that hard to circumvent (and that's not even counting the number of H1-B's signing it from their own home, US-geolocated, IP addys).
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Collectively, immigrants -both legal and illegal- send tens of billions of dollars back to their respective countries every year, removing that currency from US markets. How again is that a "good deal" for the US economy?
Because while they may send $120 billion in remittance per year, they make trillions of dollars working in our economy. They go to US restaurants, US supermarkets, buy US real estate, and start US companies. 40% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by 1st or 2nd generation immigrants, so I'm fine with them sending a fraction of 1% of our GNP overseas each year.
Unlike those who are born here who don't shop or eat at restaurants. What you're saying is that if you live here you buy things here. Great. Let's start making them citizens instead of temporary workers. Note, a temporary worker is not an immigrant. A temporary worker has no interest in improving their host country.
It's sad that we don't consider developing these skills in our own population. The US is a huge country and probably contains the same number of potential STEM workers that we're "taking" from the rest of the world. It just so happens that we don't really want to invest in Americans. Universities, as a whole, tend to like foreign students who pay full tuition. From kindergarten on, we consider most US students to be a burden unless you choose your parents wisely and are able to go to a private school.
It's been my experience that these STEM'd grads are smart, and decent folks. But their presence here is based on a lie. And those that stand by them support that lie.
The US is a huge country and probably contains the same number of potential STEM workers that we're "taking" from the rest of the world.
The US has about 5% of the world's population. It is laughable to think we have the same number of potential STEM workers as the rest of the world, especially given that our primary schools rate so poorly compared to other nations.
It just so happens that we don't really want to invest in Americans.
The US spends more per student than any other developed country in the world. (source). Private school tuition does not affect these averages much, so even our public schools are better funded than the rest of the world. We absolutely do invest in Americans, but with only 5% of the population and 22% of the world's GDP, it is impossible to keep up our current advantage without continuing the brain drain we have been doing since the world wars.
I do agree we need massive changes to our school system, but there is even more resistance from the educational industry than there is against immigration.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke