Posted on 05/13/2011 10:44:55 AM PDT by markomalley
The Obama administration is making it possible for more foreign students studying in the U.S. on visas to stay and get practical training in their career fields.
The administration is expanding the list of science, technology, engineering and math degrees that allow foreign students who earn them to stay in the U.S. up to 17 months after graduating. Those months can be spent working. The time also could mean the student may not have to leave before getting an H-1B visa, a visa reserved for high-skilled workers that can last for up to six years.
(Excerpt) Read more at 2.wsls.com ...
The list, ping
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....weren’t all the 9-11 hijackers here on expired visas?
Actually, I think this is a good change since it helps the US attract high-skilled immigrants with technical degrees. Let’s not confuse this issue with the Democrats’ poor policy on illegal immigration.
I agree. Most of these science and engineering grads are just the ones we want to come and stay in this country. I’m glad the Obama administration is doing this on their own, so the GOP don’t get suckered into enabling more unskilled immigrants come and stay here as part of a compromise.
We should be more concerned with our own students getting the high-tech degrees. When the United States of America needs to import smart people, we are really in trouble.
The issue here is not an expired visa. Students can already have up to 12 months practical training after their degree is completed. Students are required to declare their intention to do practical training with their university (I just signed such a form yesterday for one of my students). This is not the same issue as shifting to some sort of “undocumented” status. Practically speaking, it means that the law associated with a student visa actually allows a student to stay in the country and work for a limited period of time after their degree is completed. The rationale, as hinted in the article, is that it allows them (and the company that hires them, who usually does most of the paper work) time to transition to H1-B visa.
Ping!
This is nothing more than making it official.. Immigration could not find an elephant in a room.. so they look less hapless by making it official
I agree ... I have a son that is an engineer it is not good that now he will have to compete not only with out sourcing and H1 visas but now we add foreign students..
Getting our own students to pursue high-tech degrees is an important issue to address. However, significantly increasing the number of engineering graduates with US citizenship is not something that can be accomplished easily in the short-term. At my university, there are already significant incentives for US citizens in engineering. There is a bigger issue here -- in the future there will be less motivation for the smartest students around the world to come to the US to study. Multi-media-based education, US universities opening branches in other countries, and improving educational infrastructure in other countries will be forces that may cause the number of the brightest students coming to the US to decline. Graduate students power a university's research program. A large percentage of the grad student population in the US is foreign. Significantly reducing the number of smart foreign grad students will have a substantial negative impact on the relative world-wide position of US universities. Therefore, we should be pursuing policies that encourage the best and brightest of the world to come study in the US. If they end of deciding to stay in the US, that's even better. Better positioning for innovation within the economy benefits everyone -- including students that are already US citizens.
We are going to prosecute this kenyan MF’er if we survive.
LLS
I disagree. We should be encouraging our own students to pursue math and science degrees. College enrollment is at an all-time higth. Of course, with our public schools more concerned with PC crap than true learning, it won’t be easy. It disgusts me that we need to import doctors, etc. to America. We should be the world leaders in tech education. But when we have Northwestern offering live sex shows as higher education and Yale promoting porn, I am not too hopeful.
We have AMERICANS with technical degrees or hadn't you noticed? Don't you have American students in Manhattan any more?
We don't need these foreign students competing for the same limited opportunities as our home grown talent in a constrained job market.
The H-1B visa ought to be for people with experience, not to be wasted on freshly minted undergrads.
In my day, foreign students were happy to take their new technical skills back to their native countries to create economic opportunities and advance their people's standard of living. That's as it should be.
This has been the case for some time. A foreign student who gets a Masters Degree from an American university can qualify for a Practical Training Visa (F1 OPT). Supposedly this allows them to get one year of job experience in the US before going back to their own country. That has been expanded out to as long a 2 yrs. in some cases. In reality most of them get hired by US firms, convert to some other form of visa and never go back. This program is meant to bring in foreign case for our Educrat Higher Edumacation Industry.
Obama doing anything and everything to be elected again. Dream Act, Immigration reform, making jokes about the border. About Obama has done for Americans is extend unemployment and create the highest number of people to be on food stamps.
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