Nearly 35,000 Comment On New Federal STEM OPT Extension Rule (computerworld.com)

theodp writes: Computerworld reports that the comments are in on the Department of Homeland Security's new proposed rule to extend OPT for international STEM students from 29 months to at least 36 months. The majority of the comments received by DHS support extending the program, CW notes, which is probably not surprising. Rather than choosing to "avoid the appearance of improper influence" by declining to respond to a "We the People" petition protesting a pending U.S. Federal judge's ruling that threatens to eliminate OPT STEM extensions altogether in February, the White House informed the 100k petition signers that they had the President's support, and pointed to the comment site for the proposed DHS OPT STEM rule workaround. Like the "We the People" petitioners, it's unclear whether the DHS commenters might represent corporate, university, and/or student interests, although a word cloud of the top 100 names of commenters (which accounted for 17,000+ comments) hints that international students are well-represented. By the way, in rejecting the 'emergency changes' that were enacted by DHS in 2008 to extend OPT for STEM students without public comment, Judge Ellen Huvelle said, "the 17-month duration of the STEM extension appears to have been adopted directly from the unanimous suggestions by Microsoft and similar industry groups."

Comments

Re:I sent my comment

[DarkOx]

Fine if that is the case convince your law makers or get ones elected who agree with you. Once again this is typical of leftist types, don't like the rule of law just ignore it. That is not how this country works. The law was written, there was a dispute over its interpretation it went to court and the Administration LOST.

Its amazing how when right right leaning politician wants to do something like keep poorly vetted refuges out of their state, or not let someone who could be a carrier of known to be highly communicable and deadly disease just go wherever they like, suddenly the like, or some kid who happens to be tan in color ignore his teachers and wounder around a school with something that looks dangers, you people are quick to use the law to railroad everyone who resists into compliance.

When a judge rules against you though you just ignore it and carry on business as usually. When you have a law on the books that you barely got passed via parliamentary games, that has SPECIFIC dates when things are supposed to go into effect, oops time for extensions and rewriting it on the fly legality be damned.

You don't get to have it both ways. We either have laws and follow our process or we have mob rule. We seem to be erring toward mob rule.

Re:And WTF is a STEM OPT rule?

[selectspec]

No problem. A STEM OPT rule is a payback from Congress to the rich and powerful higher education lobby here in the United States that allows colleges and universities to subsidize their bloated budgets by enrolling lots of smart and motivated foreigners as full tuition paying students, letting said students work in the US without a HB1 Visa while in school. However, in order to not violate the equally rich and powerful protectionist lobbies, the STEM OPT rules have a limited duration.

So, we educate and train these individuals and then kick the ones who cannot afford a good immigration lawyer (another equally rich and powerful lobby) out of the country, subsidizing the IT industries in their homelands and perpetuating the drive to outsource high tech labor outside of the US.

It's a brilliant strategy that relies on central planning over free markets to control the distribution of human resources.

Re:I sent my comment

[Tablizer]

This program has worked spectacularly for decades.

for the 1%.