My previous employer hired F1 grads not bc they were better but bc they were cheaper. I know that bc I interviewed hires (it’s hard to resist for employers the idea that they can get two guys for almost the price of one).
these opt programs should be regulated same way they do H1, or better eliminate them. If you really want these graduates to stay and work in the country, just give them permanent residency from the start. It’s better for everyone.
What else do you expect? They are international students, undergoing the same undergraduate or graduate education as US citizens. There's no reason to expect them, as a whole, to perform differently than other US citizen new grads. I've seen very smart and diligent F1 students, as well as some clearly just coasting along without motivation. Just like for US citizen students.
> but bc they were cheaper
This depends on where you are but in my experience most Silicon Valley companies do not discriminate in terms of compensation based on nationality for new grads.
> What else do you expect? They are international students, undergoing the same undergraduate or graduate education as US citizens. There's no reason to expect them, as a whole, to perform differently than other US citizen new grads.
The quality of a uni graduate is less about the quality of the uni's teaching and more about the quality of said graduates when they get in, as well as how hard they work while at uni. I would assume, that the average international student who gets into a top university is already better than the average national, due to the higher selection pressure on the former. Also, international students, which in the case of the US, tend to come from a less rich country, are more likely to work hard at uni. They are less satisfied with their financial situation and hence have more to gain.
Having said all that, a lot of lobbying in favour of immigration has the unstated goal of wage depression. It is also not fair to accuse those who are against more immigration of xenophobia or worse. Every political decision has winners and losers and it's easy to be pro-immigration when you profit rather than suffer from it.
well there are plenty of crappy employers out there than just want cheap labor, but there are plenty that just want the best employees available world wide, especially if they compete in a world wide market.
When I worked at Spotify (NYC office), we had many international engineers (french, spanish, indian, chinese, swedish... etc), that got stuck in the H-1B limbo....
Spotify just moved them into the Stockholm office until/when their H-1B went through.... doing the same work, paying Swedish taxes...
The idea that 'less foreign/international' workers more jobs for US employees is partially false, and has two assumptions that are false:
1. Talent/workforce is not mobile (i.e. the same worker that could have been in the US, can't compete with US labour force outside the country, which is false). In case of Spotify, some of the projects which could have been done in NYC, just got done in Stockholm (and Goteborg) instead.
2. Smart people that coming in the US don't increase the overall economic PIE, but just take form the local workforce, which is false as well. Smart people usually raise up/increase the overall economic PIE.
Sure, there is plenty workplaces (usually bodyshops and second rate employees), that use H-1Bs and OPTs for cheap labour, but most serious companies simply want the best engineers available world wide. The government should help/facilitate the second type of employer. There is many ways the H-1B and (OPTs) can be reformed in order to benefit both the local economy and preventing abusers of the system.
Also, when engaged in a new cold war/trade war with China, the US can't afford to squander its most important asset that it has: The ability to attract the best of the world in this country.
If you put barriers for smart people to come in, and your opponent has 4x the number of available talent locally, then you are bound to lose.
While I like the hard stance of Trump with China, the hard stance with smart immigration is just boneheaded and plain stupid....
Yes. These policies also encourage good foreign students in the USA to return to their home country after they graduate (which does in fact happen more and more), which is good for the home country, but bad for the USA. Winning bigly.
Unfortunately the US really has ridiculous Visa policies across the board, with different types of documentation needed for different levels of the same thing.
If you want to do a CPT (internship while your course is ongoing), you can just inform your school and it's fine. But if you want to do it after the course (OPT), you have to apply for an EAD, which adds another 3 months of delay. Why can't the attestation on your I-94 be enough?
It's like the USCIS creates additional paper work for itself so that it can cry about having too much work.
French education visas allow 20 or 25 hours of work per week built into the visa. But getting to stay after the education is complete is really hard for non-EU citizens.
If you have a master or licence professionnelle it's easy enough to stay, as long as you get a job offer for more than 40k€/year or so (which isn't that hard).
If you have a lower diploma than that and you don't want to study for a higher level in France, you can only stay if you get a job offer among a list of needed jobs in your region (IT-related jobs are needed in almost all regions). There's a lot of red tape, but it's not as difficult as it seems.
Then you get a heap of international students doing jobs that have typically been for local teenagers and the lower skilled, often with huge labor violation issues.
these opt programs should be regulated same way they do H1, or better eliminate them. If you really want these graduates to stay and work in the country, just give them permanent residency from the start. It’s better for everyone.