OPTing out of immigration is not an option for India or the United States

2020/05/20 Leave a comment

Although written for an Indian audience, given the likely significant number of Canadians studying in the US, this change, should it proceed, will have an impact on them:

Although some students return home to India after graduating, for the majority, the US academic journey is premised on continuing pursuit of the ‘American dream’. Their F-1 student visa allows a one-year (three years in case of STEM students) paid Optional Practical Training (OPT) that usually results in a full-time job, typically on an H-1B visa. Separately, tens of thousands of skilled white-collar professionals from India also come to the US on H-1B visa, for short- and long-term projects that often turn into life-long employment in the US. Over decades, these two streams have combined to form the core of a thriving Indian-American community of more than 4 million people that is America’s best educated and highest earning ethnic group.

The pandemic has not only disrupted the annual commencement ritual but also threatens to dismantle the template that led to the formation of this cohort. The destruction of the job market that has rendered some 36 million Americans jobless has all but destroyed the ‘American dream’ of millions of eventually high net worth immigrants who have made the US what it is: a rich, vibrant, innovative melting pot. Thousands of students and guest workers are currently in limbo, not knowing what the future holds, their academic planning, job prospects, and just about everything, including travel plans, on hold.

Their misery is compounded by rising nativist, xenophonic, anti-immigrant sentiment from a Trump base that sees foreign students and guest workers “stealing” American jobs. It’s an understandable sentiment in times of despair, except this was an undercurrent even before the coronavirus struck. There are other issues with this argument: The US by itself does not produce enough qualified graduates, particularly in STEM fields, to meet the needs of its industries and corporations. The reason Microsoft, Google, Apple and other companies back immigration is not because foreign workers come cheap (a fiction that ignores the fact that the labour department requires certification that they are well-paid); they do it because they need global talent.

Such a composite internationalist workforce also gives US companies a foothold into new markets. The entry of Texas Instruments, Hewlett Packard, and other companies into India in the 1980s was spearheaded by Indians working for those companies in America. This globalist engagement is lost on nativists in the US, and even in India, where for the longest time there were complaints about losing its best minds and talent before realisation dawned that “brain drain is better than brain in the drain”. India’s investment in human capital in the US and elsewhere yielded unexpected benefits, among them foreign exchange remittances that offset the $8 billion spent on foreign education and influencing global perception of India.

Of course, US nativists and critics of the guest worker visa are correct that there has been abuse of the programme. Unscrupulous body shoppers and companies have manipulated the system, and this needs cleaning up. But hosting foreign students and guest workers is a net gain for the US and for countries that send their students and workers to America. Physicist and futurist Michio Kaku calls the H-1B visa America’s “secret weapon” without which the US would be an also ran, pointing out that 50% of all PhD candidates in the US are foreign born.

The salience of immigrants has been particularly striking during the pandemic, when they have been on the frontlines. According to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, while 16% of the US workforce is foreign born, immigrants account for nearly 25% of physicians and dentists, 20% of engineers, 23.5% of computer specialists and almost 30% of scientists.

The skills that H-1B workers bring with them can be critical in responding to national emergencies, argues the American Immigration Council, pointing out that over the past decade eight companies currently trying to develop a coronavirus vaccine – Gilead Sciences, Moderna Therapeutics, GlaxoSmithKline, Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceuticals, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Vir Biotechnology, and Sanofi – received approvals for 3,310 biochemists, biophysicists, chemists, and other scientists through the H-1B programme.

So opting out of immigration is not an option for the US, or for countries such as India that thrive in a myriad ways on US immigration. April was the cruellest month for travel, tourism and immigration. Rough winds did shake the darling buds of May, but may June restore reason and sanity.

Source: Darling buds of may: OPTing out of immigration is not an option for India or the United States

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Trump administration weighs suspending program for foreign students, prompting backlash from business, tech

2020/05/18 Leave a comment

Yet another example of Trump administration considering further immigration restrictions, one that would reduce the attractiveness of studying in the US:

At the direction of the White House, the Department of Homeland Security has sent recommendations for further restricting legal immigration during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to one former and two current administration officials.

Among the recommendations expected to be considered is the suspension of a program for foreign students to stay in the U.S. to get one or two years of occupational training between secondary education and full-time employment, a move many in the business and university communities are fighting.

The program, known as Optional Practical Training, or OPT, is an incentive for foreign students to come to U.S. universities, as it provides some cushion between school and employment. Talk of suspending OPT has pitted business interests against immigration hard-liners like President Donald Trump’s senior adviser Stephen Miller, the officials said.

Miller, acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf and Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., have all said the program has been rife with abuses, particularly by Chinese students whom they accuse of getting American educations and then returning to China. Data from the Congressional Research Service, however, shows otherwise.

“Suspending or ending OPT makes no practical sense — it solves no problem, it reduces the quality of America’s higher education system, and it threatens the international exchange of ideas so vital to academic freedom,” said Julie Schmid, executive director of the American Association of University Professors.

“International students contribute nearly $41 billion a year to the U.S. economy. Our campuses and our communities benefit from the contributions international students make to education and research,” Schmid said. “This move does nothing to ensure the health of U.S. citizens during the COVID crisis. As with Trump’s Muslim ban, this is just bigotry posing as concern for national security.”

The new guidelines, expected to be announced in an executive order this month, would expand curbs on legal migration announced by the White House in April. The administration is expected to frame the move as economic protection for Americans faced with staggering unemployment rates.

Representatives of the White House and DHS did not respond to requests for comment.

A U.S. official familiar with the matter said, “While we won’t comment on internal administrative policy discussions one way or the other, millions of Americans have been forced out of work by the pandemic and they ought to be first in line for jobs — not lower-paid imported labor. Polling shows Democrats, Republicans and Independents agree.”

Critics of the proposals say Miller and other immigration hawks are using the pandemic to accomplish a goal they have had since Trump took office: bringing down the overall number of legal immigrants.

When Miller served on the staff of then-Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., he helped draft a bill that would have eliminated OPT. Now, four Republican senators have asked the White House to take the issue of curbing OPT and other legal migration programs into their own hands.

“We urge you to continue to suspend new nonimmigrant guest workers for one year or until our new national unemployment figures return to normal levels whichever comes first,” Cotton and Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Josh Hawley of Missouri said in a letter to the White House on May 7. The letter said OPT, along with H-1B visas for highly skilled workers and H-2B visas for non-agricultural seasonal workers, should be suspended.

Todd Schulte, president of FWD.US, a pro-immigration reform group of business and tech leaders that counts Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg among its founders, said the plan is too similar to previous proposals to be framed as a legitimate response to the economic crisis caused by COVID-19.

“Three years ago, when unemployment was at 4 percent, the signatories who were in the Senate at the time tried to slash legal immigration by more than 50 percent. … Today, as unemployment has skyrocketed, these senators now say we need to slash legal immigration in response to the COVID-19 crisis,” Schulte said.

An official familiar with discussions at the White House said the influence of the business community, often communicated by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, could sink plans to suspend OPT.

But Rosemary Jenks, executive vice president of NumbersUSA, which shares Miller’s goal of decreasing overall immigration, said it would be a mistake to keep the program open. Jenks noted that OPT is a regulatory program not protected by statute.

“At a time when millions of Americans and lawful permanent residents are graduating from college with severely limited job opportunities due to COVID-19, it makes absolutely no sense for the administration to continue a regulatory program that allows foreign graduates to take jobs Americans need,” she said.

Source: Trump administration weighs suspending program for foreign students, prompting backlash from business, tech

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