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.

Comments

Doesn't Matter

[Psychotic_Wrath]

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.

Re:UNAMERICAN

[evilviper]

Oh yes, it is so un-American to accept the world's tired, poor, huddled masses.

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.

So many of the world's college educated workers want to leave their home economy and improve ours instead.

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).