DHS To Extend OPT To 60 Months, Says Employers, Universities, Students Demand It (natlawreview.com)

theodp writes: In August, Federal Judge Ellen Huvelle called BS on 'emergency' changes made by the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security in 2008 to Optional Practical Training (OPT) that extended the amount of time foreign STEM graduates of U.S. 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). "The 17-month duration of the STEM extension appears to have been adopted directly from the unanimous suggestions by Microsoft and similar industry groups," said the Judge in her ruling, which threatened to invalidate STEM OPT extensions in February. But the DHS fired back Monday with a new proposed rule — Improving and Expanding Training Opportunities for F-1 Nonimmigrant Students With STEM Degrees and Cap-Gap Relief for All Eligible F-1 Students — that will extend STEM OPT to as much as 60 months (a standard 12-month OPT period, plus two 24-month extensions). Foreign students demand it, explained the DHS, as do public colleges and universities, who "particularly benefit from the payment of tuition by foreign students, especially in comparison to the tuition paid by in-state students." DHS estimates that the proposed rule will affect 634,464 foreign STEM students over the next 10 years.

Comments

woah woah woah

[ganjadude]

hold the phone a second

Foreign students demand it, explained the DHS, as do public colleges and universities, who "particularly benefit from the payment of tuition by foreign students, especially in comparison to the tuition paid by in-state students." DHS estimates that the proposed rule will affect 634,464 foreign STEM students over the next 10 years.

so the schools are selling us americans out to foreigners because... surprise surprise they get paid more! And even worse the government is supporting that????

where are all the "tuition is to high" americans at??? they need to stand up and say enough is enough

Re:woah woah woah

[hawguy]

where are all the "tuition is to high" americans at??? they need to stand up and say enough is enough

In theory, the high tuitions that foreign students pay keeps tuition lower for domestic students.

Re:woah woah woah

[Jane Q. Public]

In theory, the high tuitions that foreign students pay keeps tuition lower for domestic students.

BS. It doesn't work that way. Because of regulations, they can only charge state residents so much. So they charge others more. You're imagining some kind of "This is our total budget, so if others pay more, they pay less" scheme. Hahahaha. What world do you live in?

It's just exactly greed, nothing more.

Fuck You, DHS

[sexconker]

Fuck You, DHS.

Re:Fuck You, DHS

[gstoddart]

Fuck you too, Citizen.

Oh, wait, that's precisely the point. Like most of the rest of the US government, part of the mandate of DHS is now protecting corporate interests like copyright and making sure they can have cheap foreign labor to drive down wages.

Who's fucked now?

Perfect sense

[tuxgeek]

"It all makes perfect sense, expressed in dollars and cents." .. Roger Waters

US fucked visa system

[Anonymous Coward]

The only reason for these ridiculous band aids is that getting a green card takes fucking forever and the standards for work visas are incorrectly set. A BA/BSc/BEng from Harvard and Podunk State are considered equal. It's no secret that American universities attract some of the smartest people on the planet, which is a unique advantage that the US has. Competition for top universities is fierce and pretty much manages to swoop in the top talent on the planet. The problem is then that the immigration system is not at all merit based. Someone with a degree from Harvard is on equal footing with a graduate from a completely unknown school which accepts everyone who can send them a check.

The problem is that one should keep out people that are no better than what can be sourced among the local population. At the same time the immigration system needs to guarantee continuity for top students while quickly getting them to the point where they can stay permanently, which allow them to do things like start a family, buy a house etc. If the immigration system forces someone to move abroad even for a month there's a high chance they're not coming back.

pushes wages down

[Anonymous Coward]

i imagine the problem of "employee shortage" could be fixed in the private market (via higher salaries) rather than by passing laws to bring in outside people to work for less...

Re:pushes wages down

[GrumpySteen]

Except that the private market is the group that's pushing for the laws to allow them to bring in outside people to work for less.

What broken train of logic makes you think the private market is going to suddenly stop doing that and start offering higher salaries to fix the imaginary shortage that they've made up in order to try and get those laws passed?

Ooh, let me guess... you're a Libertarian, aren't you.

Re:pushes wages down

[BVis]

We could start by either fixing the H1-B system (for example, actually enforcing the rule that H1-Bs must be paid the "prevailing wage" for a given market and skill set) or eliminate it altogether. Make it easier for people with skill sets valuable to US employers to get work visas that are NOT tied to one specific company, like the H1-B is. If they're not beholden to their employer for their status, then companies have to compete for them, the same as 'natural born' workers. Stop allowing employers to cheat the system.

Re:non-profit

[tomhath]

So what does not-for-profit really mean then, when they're engaged in the same behavior.

It means they want to make money so they can grow, or at least stay afloat. But the owners of the not-for-profit don't get to keep the profits; unless they happen to be employed by it and collect a 6 or 7 figure salary.

H-1B is bullshit

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

99% of the H-1B circus is bullshit.

Are you really telling me that in this entire country there isn't anyone with the skills to fill that job? BULLSHIT.
This is probably even true at a state level, and also probably true at a local level as well.

Maybe if you're looking for something really esoteric, but a programming job or skill? Sorry, I call BULLSHIT.

It's nothing more than a way to get cheap, compliant labor while simultaneously driving down wages and sucking up tax breaks. I live a few miles from Microsofts Redmond campus, trust me when I say that I know what I'm talking about.

The entire H-1B program should junked and redone so that only TRULY "unfindable" skills or candidates would qualify.

Re:H-1B is bullshit

[AHuxley]

re "99% of the H-1B circus is bullshit."
The origins of the ideas surrounding the lax, well funded international student enrolment go back to the Cold War. The US wanted to accept, educated and pump out as many skilled people from different nations as it could. They would return home with first hand experiences of freedom, democracy, advanced US science, the big US brands and US only methods.
Some of then on average given a good US degree would infect their city, lower or higher government positions with ideas about US projects and close links with the USA. A lot of nations would slowly buy US products and services based on the skills their own internal experts.
Later US multinationals got the idea to use the same methods to swap out local engineers/high skilled/high cost with lower cost, more controllable 'guest workers'.
Great for generational share holders, the low cost worker and short term stock price for the management pay scale.. Not so good for skilled local people with top grades and expensive advanced degrees who helped build the US brand over the years.
The next trick is to have free global movement of a bands data cloud and tax. The "programming job or skill" can then be found in nations like Ireland, UK, France, Germany, EU, Pakistan, India, New Zealand on low tax campuses where graduates are at a lower cost that can feed back into back end, secure US work.
What will be left in the USA? Politically connected upper management, legal and tax experts, cleared security experts, mil grade contractors with deep connections. ie legal fronts with all the paper work to pass as 100% legal US firms enjoying no bid contracts for mil and gov projects. The work will be sub contracted back to other risky nations and US paper work submitted that the brand or firm is secure for all mil/gov projects.
The real magic is getting people to think its all about trendy freedom :)

Re:H-1B is bullshit

[Harlequin80]

Actually there are lots and lots of jobs where a particular skillset won't exist in the local market. This often comes about when an industry expands rapidly. One example would be the shale gas growth in the US. While there were people who had experience mapping the reservoirs locally there would have been a ridiculous shortage of people who would be genuinely able to do the work at the level required. It simply was impossible for the local market to supply those people as they weren't needed at all 10 years ago.

It's not even a case that if I offer more money I can get one. It is the case that there are 100 jobs but only 75 people who can do it. And if it takes 20 years to be able to do that job it doesn't matter how much money I offer there will still be 25 jobs un-filled.

This actually happens a lot more than you might think.

Re:H-1B is bullshit

[swillden]

Top startups are paying pretty damn well, so this has nothing to do with not paying enough. I work for Google and we lose engineers to them all the time despite already paying these people well.

Yep. The challenge for companies like Google (my employer also) is that they can't offer the candidate a chance at becoming a multi-millionaire, and the startups can. Google can offer to pay $200K in salary + bonus + stock grants, but a startup can offer $100K + stock options that will probably expire worthless, but have a non-negligible chance of being worth $50M. Especially for younger engineers who don't yet need to support family, etc., it makes a lot of sense to hop from startup to startup for a few years, just to see if they strike it rich.

We also pay exactly the same salaries for US citizens as we do for foreigners, their immigration status has no impact on pay.

The H1B program requires that. I suspect a lot of lower-tier companies do actually find ways to work around it, but I really doubt any of the big players do. It's too much risk over what is -- to the company -- a fairly trivial amount of money. Google expects to generate revenues of about $1M for each employee, so it makes no sense to engage in legally-risky behaviors to save, say $30K in salary.

I strongly suspect that H1B hires cost Google more than a similarly-qualified US citizen, because in addition to paying the same salary, the company also has to spend a lot of money on the legal processes, plus international relocation, etc.

It's actually a pretty simple mathematical fact that if whenever you find a good candidate, the candidate has a bunch of competing offers, then there are more open positions than there are applicants.

Exactly. When you need to hire 1000 (say) excellent engineers per year, but your recruiters can only find 10 qualified local candidates per week, you have to cast a wider net.

Re:H-1B is bullshit

[frank_adrian314159]

You are limited to places like Australia & Canada which aren't known for their cheap labour.

Which is what it's really always about, isn't it? Despite all your whining about "unavailable people". It's still all about "unavailable at the price I want to pay".

Re:H-1B is bullshit

[naris]

The condition for H1B is that there isn't anyone local you can find in 30 days of advertising.

This "condition" is routinely bypassed, mostly by advertising ludicrous requirements that are impossible to meet.

skill

It is a myth that H-1Bs are about obtaining skilled workers. Most of the H-1B personnel I have worked with don't have any actual skill. Some do have real skills, but they are the exception, not the rule.

The argument goes

[rsilvergun]

that this will reduce tuition paid because the foreign students subsidize local students. As someone trying to come up with the money to send a kid to college I know full well this is bullshit, but what can I do? 30 years of Reagenomics and Starve the Beast means anyone not in the top 10% is boned...

Wish we could do something about it, but good luck. Nobody gives a shit. Hell, us techies laughed at the blue collar folks while they were losing their jobs overseas. We kept voting in right wing free trade jerks and telling them to 'retrain!'. Why the hell should we expect them to give a fuck now.

Re:The argument goes

[ganjadude]

dont blame reganomics for the high cost of school. blame salle mae and guaranteed student loans

look at the charts, as soon as the feds guaranteed they would pick up the tab, prices started going up and up and up. The schools have no reason to care how you do when you get there because YOU arent paying them, the government does. They dont care that you get stuck paying the government back for years afterwards.

if you are going to go off on "right wingers" at least go after them for legit reasons, this one has nothing to do with them

Nice try

[rsilvergun]

but the cost of higher education was always, well, high. We just like to forget the massive federal subsidies we got in the 90s. To be fair it wasn't Reagan who cut them, it was Clinton/Bush jr. But Reagan's administration (along with Karl Rove) created the notion of 'starve the beast) that underpinned the cuts. The idea, crammed into our skulls over and over again, that We Can't Afford It, usually because of debt (nevermind that a modest capital gains plus repatrioting 2 trillion sitting off shore could take care of the debt in short order). The idea is to load the gov't with debt by massively cutting taxes on the wealth (and modestly on the poor and middle class) while increasing spending until the whole thing collapse. Just google the phrase and you'll get better explainations than I can give.

So yeah, I'm going off on right wingers. I've also got damned good reason to. I've thought this through, you haven't. Please start. Please. We're losing everything to guys like you drinking Karl Rove's Koolaid... :(

Vote Bernie

[rsilvergun]

He's the only candidate to oppose more H1-Bs.

Re:Why do people dislike immigration ?

[naris]

H1B and similar laws such as this one are not about immigration. They are about importing what is effectively slave labor that have to work long hours for little money, for the same company, or risk getting deported.

Re:The Presidential Candidate against H1-B

[naris]

That's not true. As can be seen in a comment above, there are 2 candidates against H1-B. The wacky Republican (Trump) and the wacky Democrat (Bernie Sanders).

Crisis in H-1B visa shortage ..

[nickweller]

translation: We want more cheap foreign labour ..