H-1B Foes Challenge Bush Administration In Court

theodp writes "Computerworld reports that the Bush administration's recent decision to extend the amount of time foreign nationals can work in the U.S. on student visas is being challenged in a federal lawsuit by H-1B visa opponents. The suit, filed in US District Court by the Immigration Reform Law Institute and joined by The Programmers Guild and other groups, charges that the administration — acting through the Department of Homeland Security — exceeded its legal authority with a no-notice-no-comments 'emergency' rule change that extended the Optional Practical Training work period from one year to 29 months. Critics say this is little more than an effort to skirt around the H-1B cap limit. Because extended stays are limited to those whose degrees are in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) fields, educators are speculating that the rule change will drive international students away from non-STEM majors."

ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[MilesNaismith (951682)]

H1B has turned into a huge scam for corporate slavery. Employers know they can get cheap labor and throw them away when done. Most visas go to giant corporations like MicroSoft. If we want to "welcome the tired and huddle masses" then re-open Ellis Island and take them in and give them Green Cards or Citizenship papers and let them walk into a free country and decide what to do. This equine excrement that ties them to the sponsoring employer should be viewed for what it is which is a disposable cheap worker program.

Re:ABOLISH THE H1B PROGRAM

[nasor (690345)]

In New Zealand they have an elegant solution; the minimum salary for a foreign worker who is there on their equivalent of the H-1B program is $55,000. That ensures that companies are only likely to bring in foreign workers if there is a genuine shortage of people with their particular skills. Your salary is usually a pretty direct measure of how scarce people with your abilities/training are and how much demand there is, so anyone who is coming into the county to fill a shortage in a particular field should almost by definition be getting a relatively high salary.

IBM says Americans aren't good enough

[Hankapobe (1290722)]

What bugs me is when corps say that they can't get exceptional IT staff from America (IBM HR person in the Wall Street Journal) [wsj.com]

Certain skills still are in strong demand, says Ms. Chota, adding that the company can't find enough qualified graduates with degrees in computer science and those who have knowledge of both business and IT. "In the U.S., unfortunately, there are not enough great computer-science graduates," Ms. Chota says.""

Um excuse me? So, Americans are not good enough for IBM. Even though they go to the same great American universities just like the smarter foreigners.

So, which is it?!?

Americans are good enough.. just not CHEAP enough.

[plasmacutter (901737)]

The CS program attendance plummeted at the same time salaries and job security in the field plummeted.

The talent is there, they don't want to work in a field where companies don't want to reward them.

They can't get americans to buy their crappy pay, benefits, and job security, so they want to farm out slave labor they can have deported at their whim.

forget the fluff, focus on the true issue

[gadabyte (1228808)]

regardless of what you think of immigration, education, H1B's, and DHS, why are so many comments about immigration, employers, etc - and not governmental abuse of power?

if anyone would like to explain how using emergency powers in a non-emergency setting isn't abuse, please, step up to the plate.

idiocy

[nguy (1207026)]

The most hurt by this will be Americans. These graduates won't disappear from the face of the earth, they'll just be working for Microsoft, IBM, Google, etc. in Europe, India, and China, make their inventions there, start startups there, and pay their taxes there. No US job will be saved by this action; to the contrary, as more and more R&D moves overseas, the supporting jobs will move with them.

Of course, if the H-1b foes persist in this, it also completely screws people who have lived in the US for many years. But they aren't Americans, so who cares, right?

Re:Land of immigrants

[causality (777677)]

Why do people keep implying that insisting that immigrants come here legally (and in this case, discussing what that will mean) is the same thing as insisting that they are unwelcome? Do you not see the dishonesty of that?

Saying that this is a "land of immigrants", while true, is also irrelevant since no one is trying to prove that it isn't. The issue being settled is the duration of a visa. The argument is how much time is needed to realize the stated purpose of the visa. You first have to have immigrants (more like visitors, in this case) who are welcome here before there is a question of how long they may stay.

Re:Land of immigrants

[Dionysus (12737)]

"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Note that there are no mention of non-poor, well-educated people :-)

I left the US, and now work for a company in a country which gives me 5 weeks vacation each year, with pay comparable to what I would have gotten in the Bay Area. And I don't have to worry about the visa crap or whether I will get a green card.

Re:Land of immigrants

[Dionysus (12737)]

Norway.

BTW, I did love living in the Bay Area. Love the energy of the area. Norway doesn't have a tech area like the Bay Area. Oslo is more finance than tech (but most tech jobs seem to be in the Oslo area).

The reason for the extension of the OPT is that Congress wouldn't increase the H1b quota. The problem then is that the quota is filled the first day it is available (April 1st), which is before anyone studying in the US has graduated. And you can't apply for an H1b (or your job can't if you can get one) before you have graduated.

Re:Land of immigrants

[K. S. Kyosuke (729550)]

"what country?"

AFAIK, almost any West European or North European country would fit that description.

We already spend more than enough on education

[Shivetya (243324)]

We need to start looking at reducing administration costs of the school systems and using the money on teachers and student needs. Look at most major cities, their cost per student can be double what outlying areas have and the majority of it can be traced to anything but teachers and students. What good is throwing money at public schools if the money isn't going to improve our children? Too many city schools are jobs programs for friends of the political powers. Dumping grounds for cronies. If that county school can graduate more students at a higher GPA and their students do better in higher education all the while costing the local taxpayers less how is the city's problem money related?

I would prefer more options for parents to send their children to schools of their choice. This means the dreaded "voucher". Make it so the money follows the child and not the school. This might be the only kick in the pants some school systems will understand. We have great teachers. We spend more than enough to educate the children we have, we just spend it wrong.

The easy solution is to "throw money at the problem" but that is used as an excuse to rid ourselves of the responsibility for making the hard choices. All we get with this thrown money is more cronies. I read my local "paper" to see schools with trailers and look at the changes that go on the system. What do I notice most after capital improvements? How many more people in non teaching positions crop up. Suddenly there are committees paid out of school funds to do work already done elsewhere or not needed. More money means more government employees, not necessarily teachers.

Sorry, no more money. Account for what they have. They owe to the children. We owe it the children.

Education here is not the reason we have H1 visas. We have those because politicians put more value on the money of corporations than the people who elect them. Do any of the three current candidates support scrapping this?

Re:Weak

[Trailer Trash (60756)]

My kids go to a private school for about $4000/year each. Right now, the public schools in this area are spending $8500/kid/year, and claiming that they need more money to bring the schools up to par (our schools are among the worst in the state). I probably don't have to tell you that the private school kids test far above the public schools, even though the school also accepts a number of "at risk" kids each year through a scholarship program.

If money were the answer, our public school system here would be turning out einsteins.

Re:Weak

[xaxa (988988)]

We brought accountability to the UK school system a while back. Children were tested (nationally) more often (age 7, 11 and 14, as well as the exams at 16). Schools were rated based on the children's results, and "bad" schools told to improve Or Else.

It hasn't worked (well, the government's agency sets the exams, and makes them slightly easier every year, so they say it's worked. But university professors get angry because they now have to teach science undergraduates maths that used to be taught in school).

Teachers were (of course) worried that the children wouldn't pass the exams, so they concentrated their efforts on teaching how to pass the maths exam, rather than teaching maths. Only maths, English and science are examined (at 7, 11 and 14) so less time was spent on all other subjects to make time for exam preparation.
This results in children enjoying school less -- partly because of the reduced curriculum, but mostly because of the increased pressure.

The ranking of schools isn't useful anyway -- schools in poor areas do worse, schools in rich areas do better, it's extremely difficult to do anything about that. The government's solution is to close two nearby bad schools, build a new "superschool", and then say "there were N bad schools, now there are only N/2!"

Wales decided they didn't like all the testing, so they got rid of the tests (the 7, 11 and I think the 14). The Welsh government person in charge of education says it's brilliant, which didn't go down well with her equivalent in London. Especially as they're both in the Labour party -- the London (i.e. setting policy for England) minister strongly supports the testing.

Overall, keeping politics out of education seems the best idea. Some independent schools are starting to offer the IB instead of A-levels.

Re:Weak

[ShinmaWa (449201)]

Children were tested (nationally) more often (age 7, 11 and 14, as well as the exams at 16). Schools were rated based on the children's results, and "bad" schools told to improve Or Else

The United States has a similar system called No Child Left Behind [wikipedia.org]. Not too surprisingly, the exact same things that happened with the UK's version is currently happening in the US: testing fraud, teaching to the test, and even the encouragement by schools for less able students to drop out to help bring up the average school test scores. Of course, the overall effect is an actual reduction in the quality of education in the United States.

It's always amazing to me how a demonstrably bad idea gets mimicked over and over again.

Re:Weak

[clampolo (1159617)]

The real problem is that people think that all people are equal. It just isn't true. Some people are just dumb and/or lazy. They can't learn anything. Keeping them in school is the worst possible thing you can do. They are enraged at how they repeatedly fail, so they just disrupt the school. The best option is just to chuck them out as soon as possible

And there is nothing wrong with standardized tests. "teaching to the test" is a pretty silly cliche. These standardized tests have questions about BASIC math and BASIC reading. If a school isn't teaching this, then what in the hell ARE they teaching? If a school can't get their students to pass these simple tests then 1) the students are idiots 2) the teachers are idiots 3) both of the above

Re:Weak

[jandersen (462034)]

No, the real problem is that people think that equality is about everybody being exactly the same - which I personally think is a distortion manufactured for the purpose of disparaging all serious discussion about inequality.

Equality means 'all men (and in these modern times women too) are born equal under the law' - ie that the same law applies t oeverybody, no matter whether you are rich or poor, clever or stupid. Nobody in their right mind has ever imagined that all people are exactly equal when it comes to talent, intelligence etc.

The problem with standardised tests isn't the idea of testing students' skills, but the sad fact that once you have the tests, that is all you strive for. If there were no tests, the schools would ideally strive to simply provide the best they can, whereas when you have the tests, you strive to score as much as possible. It's like intelligence testing - if you are tested unprepared, the test may show something about how intelligent you are, but if you are allowed to study the test and prepare for it, you can suddenly demonstrate an huge intelligence, except of course that the result is now worthless.

I am all for testing and making the quality of schools comparable, so the parents have a better chance of choosing the right school for their children, but the standardised tests are simply bogus - a bad attempt at solving some problems, or even a tool for deceiving the parents and the public.

Re:Weak

[Sanat (702)]

3rd grade was the best three years of my life.

Re:Weak

[SideshowBob (82333)]

Do you know how poorly teachers are paid? I do, I'm married to one. They make peanuts compared to what they could make in virtually any other field with the same level of education. So when the NEA talks about a funding problem, they're talking about teacher compensation. How can you attract the best talent when you don't pay competitive salaries?

The only structural problem with schools are the bloated administrations (which are not unionized.) But that doesn't even begin to explain why the schools are failing. The real problem is our culture. Parents treat the schools as (at best) a baby-sitting service. Too many of them simply don't care how well their children do academically. Failure and success begins with the parents.

Private schools generally pay their teachers *less*, so the teachers in them are no more talented. To the extent that private schools do better, it's because they cherry-pick the best students. You will fail if you simply try to privatize the schools on a large scale. That would just be shifting all the current problems into the private sector where it will be compounded by profit motives and shady accounting (seen the prison system lately?)

I get so sick of hearing that libertarian BS from people that don't even know the first thing about the real problem.

Re:Weak

[jcr (53032)]

You will fail if you simply try to privatize the schools on a large scale.

The key is to restore competition to schooling at the elementary and high school level. We have world-class colleges, including the public ones, because colleges have to compete for customers.

-jcr

Re:Weak

[liquidpele (663430)]

The union doesn't breed bad teachers. Affirmative action does though. The only bad thing the union had really done is to set up teacher's pay to be based on years of teaching, so teachers starting off make peanuts and the older teachers do alright. Really, it should be based off of performance, but then again, how do you rate a teacher? If my wife gets a bunch of Spanish-only speakers one year, is it her fault they all barely pass (this happened this past year)?

Re:Weak

[Waffle Iron (339739)]

And don't say private schools. Most private (and parochial) schools get far better results at a lower cost per student. Why do you think that is?

Because they can pick and choose their students.

If you don't have to bother with problematic students, of course you're going to get better results at a lower cost.

Re:Weak

[Ex-MislTech (557759)]

The kids that are special needs need to be taught separately.

The normal kids that coexist peacefully need their own school.

The brilliant kids need their own schools because they are
our best hope of fixing most of the gigantic messes we have made.

The hell raising violent drug dealing bastards need a boot camp
type school that can get them to pull their collective
heads out of their asses.

The Three strikes rule would work well here.

3 strikes you go to the hell raisers school, 3 strikes in their
and you are out.

3 strikes on crime on the outside they are sent to labor camps
or can volunteer for EXILE and leave this country FOREVER.

I am tired of paying for ppl to sit in jail and watch cable TV
and eat food and not work and I get to pay for it all.

If they go to jail at a minimum they work a farm to feed all
the prisoners.

If they don't want that they can leave the US for all time.

Society is about working together, not anarchy.

If they want to be a jack ass that is fine, but not here.

Re:Weak

[rossifer (581396)]

Most private (and parochial) schools get far better results at a lower cost per student. Why do you think that is?

There's no mystery there.

1. because private schools can discriminate based on their admission, performance, and behavior criteria (they don't have to take everyone)
2. because private schools have lower student:teacher ratios
3. because private schools are almost never NEA (union), which allows them to fire poor performing teachers much more quickly.
4. because the parents who choose to send their children to private schools tend to value education more than your average parent, which correlates with higher expectations and more support from home

Those four reasons lead to a less toxic environment in the classroom, which leads to better motivated teachers (even with the pay cut most private school teachers take), better motivated students, and: far better results.

Re:Don't worry, it's just jobs Americans don't wan

[thermian (1267986)]

Are foreign students suddenly less a "threat"? What changed?

It may have something to do with hundreds of millions per annum being lost because all those now 'suspect' chinese students that used to go to university in the states have started to go to Europe instead.

Its been great for England, my gosh yes, the extra revenue was seriously needed, but not so great for the US. Last I heard some US Universities were having serious problems trying to make up for the loss of that money.

Oddly enough European society has completely failed to collapse, and we haven't found ourselves dealing with hordes of evil Chinese people plotting to take over our countries.

Personally it helped me learn how to make some really good Chinese meals.

Re:One overlooked benefit ...

[RCL (891376)]

I think that the most of international students in the US are planning to settle there sooner or later. So "reduces number of American students" argument is invalid - those students will eventually become Americans, too.

Lowering wages? Well... The golden billion [wikipedia.org] of human population finally starts to feel the globalization effects.