U.S. Weighs $100k Fee for Foreign Students Wanting to Work After Graduation

9 pointsposted 5 hours ago
by impish9208
(wsj.com)

9 Comments

acalmon

2 hours ago

What a stupid, nearsighted proposal. This would kill innovation in the US. The US is one of the few countries in the world that does not suffer from brain drain. Quite the contrary. Some of the best minds in the world end up in the US (even from the US's "enemies" such as Iran, China, etc.) to the detriment of their homecountry's development.

There is ample evidence that foreign students who come to the US, in particular those who are in STEM and qualify for OPT, generate more jobs than they consume.

This fee would simultaneously break research in US universities, destroy our innovation ecosystem, and give a huge leg up to our adversaries that will more easily retain their smartest individuals.

We maintain our global leadership by denying our adversaries and competitors their top talent.

I don't think Americans understand what a long-term benefit it is to be an attractor of top global brains. Tesla, NVIDIA, Google, eBay, OpenAI, WhatsApp, Chobani, Pfizer, etc were created by immigrants or kids of immigrants. In fact, most fortune 500 companies was created by immigrants: https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/report/fortune-50...

lokar

2 hours ago

It's emblematic of current zero sum thinking. The fact that someone else has a job that pays more than yours hurts you, even though you will never qualify for that job no matter what. Simply destroying that job "helps" you somehow.

And the fact that the person holding that better job is of a different race makes the "harm" to you even worse.

It's crazy and self destructive

throwitaway222

5 hours ago

No foreign employment until the US is at 100% employment.

tfehring

4 hours ago

Most evidence indicates that OPT graduates create more jobs for US-born workers through business formation than they "consume," so this change would get us further from full employment for US-born workers. See e.g. [0] [1]

[0] https://bw.bse.eu/wp-content/uploads/1564_compressed.pdf

[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3635535

throwitaway222

4 hours ago

I'm not sure I fully trust this data anymore. If all of the major US companies have a CEO that is Indian, and these companies still employ a lot of US people, but that number is changing fast - is it really just a study that's trying to convince you not to believe your lying eyes

bdangubic

3 hours ago

what are your eyes telling you? whatever they are telling you, you would feel the pain if you actually ran a business and were restricted in hiring to make "US 100%" this is why companies spend tens/hundreds of millions lobbying politicans and why we have a charade of OPT / H1B by the current administration while no one is talking about much bigger issue which is outsourcing. In a company I contract for, 47% of all employees (out of 4k) are outsourced. but you won't hear a peep about that cause you just go to mar-a-large with a large white envelope and problem solved while the "masses" are eating up this "OPT" and "H1B" charade. Too funny...

lokar

3 hours ago

This won't cause more Americans to get hired. These jobs will just move overseas, and probably take other jobs (that Americans were getting) with them.

metalman

2 hours ago

sounds like a way to attract and keep the rich and cunning ones.