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United States Education

Congress Urged To Ease Immigration for Foreign Science Talent (axios.com) 94

Posted by msmash from the tussle-continues dept.
More than four dozen former national security leaders are calling on Congress to exempt international advanced technical degree holders from green card caps in a bid to maintain U.S. science and tech leadership, especially over China, according to a copy of a letter viewed by Axios. From the report: The America COMPETES Act passed by the Democrat-led House includes a provision to exempt foreign-born science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) doctoral degree recipients from green card caps. The exemption would be offered whether their degree is from a U.S. or foreign institution. Current U.S. immigration law limits the number of green cards issued per country, and people from populous countries like India and China are disproportionately affected.

The Bipartisan Innovation Act Conference Committee is expected to begin this month to try to reconcile the House and Senate bills. Several Republican senators, including Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) have said they're open to keeping the green card provision in final legislation. The letter, dated May 9, is addressed to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and the conference committee. Signatories include former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, former Secretary of Energy Steve Chu, former deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security Kari Bingen and 46 others.
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Congress Urged To Ease Immigration for Foreign Science Talent More

Congress Urged To Ease Immigration for Foreign Science Talent

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  • Nurture Local Talent (Score:3, Insightful)

    by zkiwi34 ( 974563 ) on Monday May 09, 2022 @04:22PM (#62517632)
    That or admit it that the USA education system is not fit for purpose, and get to fixing it.

    • Huh? Why, that will only bear fruit in 10 or so years, I'm not in office anymore by then!

      • Also, you will be speaking Chinese by then.

        • You say this as if you think that people saying that would care.

          Because in 10 years, if necessary they are no longer in that country either. They'll just go wherever Money makes you welcome everywhere in the world.

    • Re:Nurture Local Talent (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Austerity Empowers ( 669817 ) on Monday May 09, 2022 @04:29PM (#62517658)

      They have been carefully defunding and defeaturing it for decades so they could make the claim "public education doesn't work" and privatize it, why would they stop that now?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by arnott ( 789715 )
        Many of the people waiting for the Green card received the public education in US.

      • We spend far more per capita compared to other countries and get far less in return; throwing more money at the problem is not the solution.

    • Re:Nurture Local Talent (Score:4, Insightful)

      by GoTeam ( 5042081 ) on Monday May 09, 2022 @04:41PM (#62517704)
      Or we could admit that we have a massive immigration issue that rewards law breakers to the detriment of qualified legal immigrants and the existing US citizens that pay the law breakers share of living expenses. Some politicians have claimed that they'll work to fix green cards once proper border protections are in place. I think that's shot-sighted and allows cowardly lawmakers to hide behind a cause.

      • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

        by Virtucon ( 127420 )

        We have a border issue, we need to stop politicizing the crisis at the border and detain all who enter illegally and then deport them as quickly as possible. The problem is we have NGOs who like to live off the gov't teet that wants to clog up the immigration courts with needless cases trying to exploit every loophole imaginable in the laws. If you enter illegally, you can't stay. It's that simple. If you need asylum come to a border crossing and apply for it.

        • Re:Nurture Local Talent (Score:5, Informative)

          by dbialac ( 320955 ) on Monday May 09, 2022 @05:40PM (#62517878)
          The STEM migration they are referring to has nothing to do with illegal immigration. You might as well be talking about the migratory patterns of Sandhill Cranes. Regardless, even with a STEM degree, we spent years watching our jobs get sent overseas by H1B visas given to companies like Infosys, who would game the system to help Americans lose their jobs and train their foreign replacements.

        • Re:Nurture Local Talent (Score:5, Informative)

          by youngone ( 975102 ) on Monday May 09, 2022 @05:42PM (#62517888)
          The real problem is the businesses who can pay those immigrants below minimum wages. What are they going to do? Complain?

          What do you think would happen to the dairy industry in Iowa (for example) if all those people where sent back where they came from?
          Ask Devin Nunes why his family moved there. Actually, don't bother he'd just lie.

        • Re:Nurture Local Talent (Score:4, Insightful)

          by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Tuesday May 10, 2022 @12:03AM (#62518504)

          We have a border issue, we need to stop politicizing the crisis at the border and detain all who enter illegally and then deport them as quickly as possible.

          That IS politicizing the border. It is just politics that you agree with.

          Also, most illegal immigrants don't enter illegally. They enter legally and then overstay their visas.

    • The education system is just fine (Score:5, Informative)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Monday May 09, 2022 @04:42PM (#62517706)
      But we yanked all the state and federal subsidies around 1998. I was in college at the time and I remember reading in the college newspaper several well researched papers talking about how crazy the cost of tuition was going to get as a result. The articles were written with the help of the economics department so they were spot on.

      The reason we have a student loan crisis isn't because administration costs increased, it's because we slashed subsidies. Those subsidies weren't being given out as checks to students so nobody really thought about them is subsidies. Instead the way it worked was the state and federal government's directly funded the public universities and the public universities kept their tuition low.

      It's frustrating because I see a lot of people looking down to their noses at young people for taking out loans to pay for college. People who got those subsidies but because they didn't get a check in the mail don't realize they got those subsidies. It's similar to people who were able to buy a house for cheap because there was a massive infrastructure spending program at built hundreds of thousands of houses in the 1980s and essentially built whole new cities and suburbs.

      There's an entire generation of baby boomers and gen xers who benefited massively from government subsidies and spending and let's face it socialism but because nobody just wrote them a check they don't realize that.

      • Re:The education system is just fine (Score:4, Interesting)

        by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Monday May 09, 2022 @05:05PM (#62517760)
        Not really. States are spending more than ever on higher education: From 1977 to 2019, in 2019 inflation-adjusted dollars, state and local government spending on higher education increased from $110 billion to $311 billion (184 percent increase). [urban.org] (The population meanwhile increased from 220m to 328, a 49% increase).

        One thing that has changed is that more people are going now - 25% in the late 1970's to 40% now [amacad.org]. Although that in itself cannot account for the whole increase in spending.

        I was about to go see about federal spending but I think I'll wait first to see if you have any support for what you claimed in the first place.

        • Re:The education system is just fine (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Xylantiel ( 177496 ) on Monday May 09, 2022 @06:27PM (#62518012)
          The article you cite disproves your assertion: "state direct appropriations per student declined over the period. That is, state and local spending on higher education only increased over the period because tuition payments increased." The spending number you are quoting *includes outlays paid for by tuition*. Thus it is increasing because tuition is increasing, and tuition is increasing faster because government direct contributions are going down. From the same source [urban.org] it says state appropriations per student were 29 percent lower in 2013-14 than the peak in 1988-89. Maybe you can take a warning that your confirmation bias is so strong that you have drawn the opposite conclusion of what that data shows.

          • Re:The education system is just fine (Score:4, Insightful)

            by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Monday May 09, 2022 @07:58PM (#62518212)
            No, you are muddling total spending with per-student spending. I was replying to a post that says, "we yanked all the state and federal subsidies around 1998." This is not true. The taxpayer burden has not been reduced. The sentence you quoted, "state direct appropriations per student declined over the period" is because the fraction of people who go to college has increased, not because states are spending less. In other words the same (actually more) money is being spread out among more students. So, people who think the 1970's were a paradise compared to now are making a false comparison - students of then vs students of now. This is problematic since a smaller fraction of the population got to be "students" at that time. Maybe you would have been attending Berkeley for free back then, but statistically it is more likely you would have been working in a steel mill paying taxes for somebody else to attend Berkeley for free.

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
              Given that costs tend to increase per student, it's effectively a cut if the sector is also being expected to turn out more graduates. Having a better educated population in a global marketplace is a requirement orthogonal to per student funding levels. Even with some efficiencies in some area, if you reduce funding per student faster than efficiency gains, then students have to pay more. Your argument is like saying that it's fine if they cut your hourly rate from $20 to $15 for the whole period if you inc
        • It literally says that the only reason the numbers you're quoting went up is because people are spending more on tuition. Exactly as I said people are spending more on tuition because direct government subsidies were pulled. Those direct government subsidies were hiding the cost of tuition from you. Again exactly as I said. The cost didn't change we just shifted who was paying it. It used to be the super Rich because they need it Americans to be well-educated to run their businesses. Once they had cheap for

      • Most of my property taxes go to schools. I'm paying over $10K/yr just on property taxes and 85% are to the local school district.
        Since I've lived here 22 years, the school district has issued bonds of over $3B, hence the ungodly amount of property tax I'm stuck with.
        What did they spend it on? $900m went to 9th-grade centers and new elementary and middle schools. The rest went to pay for football stadiums.

        What has to happen is that we need quality education driven by goals set by parents, not the school boar

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dbialac ( 320955 )

        It's frustrating because I see a lot of people looking down to their noses at young people for taking out loans to pay for college

        Who? I took out loans to pay for college decades ago and not once did anybody turn their nose at me. I had a lot of friends in college who did the same, who again, never got their noses turned down at them. What I do see is students at the beginning of their careers not understanding that they will make enough 5 years down the line to easily pay off their loans. When you're 22 or 23, 5 years seems like a long time. I assure you that won't last.

        • You probably wouldn't notice it. Or if you don't hang around right-wing media. There's a large scale narrative being pushed from right wing media that kids shouldn't take out loans because school isn't worth it. It's part of a broader push from the right wing to discredit education so they don't have to pay for it. As it stands our country is going to collapse under the weight of the massive high interest loans were forcing kids to take on because we pulled the subsidies to higher education that the baby b

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by k6mfw ( 1182893 )
        Excellent summary, I say disregard those that dispute you. I think subsidies defunding began in 1980s. I remember later that decade especially in early 1990s when those already with a college degree had to pay lots more per unit at junior colleges (hey, it is continuing education). I read somewhere (maybe you wrote it) that student debt was unheard of before 1980. And going back earlier years you can get a first rate education at UC Berkeley for dirt cheap (obviously you need to qualify) as a friend earned

    • That or admit it that the USA education system is not fit for purpose, and get to fixing it.

      There are 2 goals: boost our talent pool and deprive our foreign competitors of their best and brightest. Imagine how much nicer India would be if so many of their best and brightest didn't leave the country. Compare that to Israel where their best are more likely to stay. Israel used to be much poorer.

      It's a major reason why tech outsourcing fails. Their best programmers left for the US, UK, Aus, or someplace else entirely. All that's left were the people every major tech firm rejected.

      So

      • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

        by Virtucon ( 127420 )

        Meanwhile, if you have a master's degree and are a US citizen, you're passed over for a foreign visa holder because they're "cheaper."

    • Our local talent is too busy with tictoc and their *feels*
      They have no interest in science or engineering, that's hard work!

    • US education system currently IS being fixed. It is being fixed by diversity, inclusion, and equity. It is being fixed by making sure math textbooks instruct kids on how to be nice to each other, or about the mathematics of being transsexual. I fail to see the problem.

      • Parent: Don't be so stupid? Guess that makes the point...

        US Education declined from being one of the best in the 60s after Education became one of the top Voter priorities and then the GOP got involved; resulting in it being a political football. Voters are to blame; if they didn't care so much just 1 party would have supported it and it would have remained effective and under the political radar.

        It really doesn't matter if you use a woke word problem or chart in a math book where most the chapters go unre

  • Local talent? (Score:4, Informative)

    by arnott ( 789715 ) on Monday May 09, 2022 @04:31PM (#62517668)
    Many of the people waiting for the Green Card studied in US institutions.

    • Yeah and you paid for it (Score:5, Interesting)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Monday May 09, 2022 @04:46PM (#62517716)
      So funny thing about that this is how that works. They get loans just like everybody else. If they go back to their countries they don't pay the loans and good luck collecting them when they're in another country. The complexity of international debt collection makes it practically impossible even though the treaties are there to do it. So they default on the debt and the taxpayer, that's you and me, ends up paying for it.

      Now if they have a sponsor and get a green card then the loans do get paid. Typically not by the person taking the loans but by the company that sponsored the worker. This essentially makes the worker an indentured servant of the company causing them to take significantly lower wages. This has a knock-on effect of lowering wages in the industry and therefore lowering your wages. Oh and the company writes off the cost of the loans from their taxes so once again the taxpayer ends up paying for it.

      We slashed state and federal subsidies to public universities in the late 90s so we could cut taxes. Mostly on the super rich but there were a handful of tax cuts for people such as yourself so I will give you that. But when we did that we completely fucked up how we pay for college and made local talent extremely uneconomical. This was allowed to happen because the companies didn't want or need local talent anymore. They much prefer those indentured servants. They want us all racing to the bottom and fighting among ourselves

      • ... complexity of international debt collection ...

        That's why so many businesses want your credit-card details when you travel: It doesn't matter where you go, they can take your money, courtesy of VISA/Mastercard.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Is that really the case? In the UK, foreign students have to pay up front, and have no access to the UK's student loan system.

  • I'm in favor of anything that'll let us stop leaving people to die at our border because we're afraid we can't keep track of them while we check out their stories. I really do not like the thought that collectively we're so hard-hearted that we can still be arguing about rebuilding the Berlin Wall here in America.

    Giving some people a leg up because they have some desirable skill or ability (e.g., a "meritocracy") is no different from any other form of discrimination. I'm sure that given this tiny way to

    • Close the border and you'll get rid of the flood of illegal aliens trying to get in. Enforce the system and laws we know work. Better yet, why don't we ask other nations to take on that burden. I don't see anybody with a high school much less a college degree trying to enter illegally.

      • "Close the border and you'll get rid of the flood of illegal aliens trying to get in"

        No, close the border and you'll get rid of all the people trying to emigrate legally. All you'll be left with are those entering illegally, since there will be no other kind of entry.

    • "rebuilding the Berlin Wall"

      The purpose of the Berlin Wall was to keep people from *leaving*.

  • Given the shit storm the Republicans are manufacturing, why would anybody want to come to this country? I'm thinking about starting up a recruiting agency that exports US talent to other parts of the world and do everything I can to encourage the brain drain.

  • The America COMPETES Act passed by the Democrat-led House ...

    Lol, allowing more immigration is the complete opposite of America competing, isn't it? If we can't stand on our own feet...

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Virtucon ( 127420 )

      I love the stupid names these idiots come up with. It should be called "Fuck American workers act"

      • “ I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and lived here, even though sometime back they may have entered illegally,"

        Without googling, who said that? Joe Biden or Ronald Reagan?

        • That was Reagan and again he was a pro-business Republican first, those big campaign spenders.

          AFAIK he never put down a delta time on "sometime back" or the notion of how many decades an illegal alien should have been here to qualify.

          • Just further proof how far to the right the party is moving.

            • and the Dems aren't moving left? There's no middle anymore, just far left and far right both with their hardliners.

              • In any other country, America's "left" would still be right. Both American parties are right; it's just a matter of degree, with Republicans being knee deep in fascism. We don't have a "far left" of any serious dimension.

              • You need grounding; the Dems are NOT moving left; they've moved right as well. Not that there is a 1 dimensional scale but the two party scam and simplistic education that has you thinking quite small (to their benefit... also, not grasping rank voting.) The 2D space which this nation is trapped in is mostly a diagonal line and history shows a shift to the upper right towards Mussolini with some Dems being as far right as Hitler, but far more middle vertically.

                Begin with politicalcompass.org; then read so

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by arnott ( 789715 )

      The America COMPETES Act passed by the Democrat-led House ...

      Lol, allowing more immigration is the complete opposite of America competing, isn't it? If we can't stand on our own feet...

      Most of the people seeking Green card are already in the US working for many years. And many of them went to public universities in the US for college.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kackle ( 910159 )
        I'm aware of that. I'm also aware of how such systems get abused and depress local talent's power. I believe in fairness and 'Americans first'--it sounds selfish, but that's what the government should be focused on as that's what they're paid to do.

  • I'm not paying too much attention to the morons in DC lately but are these some of the same "experts" that said Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation?

    • Maybe Hillary’s emails are on that laptop?

    • Hunter Biden's laptop is not forensically sound and inadmissible in legal proceedings. This is why the FBI will sit on it and use it to try to find admissible evidence but never do anything directly with it. One doesn't have to be a Russian agent to plant evidence on a laptop... but it's certainly cheaper and easier than what they actually already were proven to have done to interfering in US elections... and with likely their largest espionage budget in their history they must be doing something with that

  • Tech talent shortage = big pay to get access to domestic talent. I really like immigration, but covid and total lock down and lack of immigration has been really good for my annual take-home pay

  • We are supposed to block the Mexican border, but no other?
  • Computer science? I’m much more skeptical. I’ve heard too many firsthand accounts, from people I actually know and trust, of people coming here from another country, taking a single database course, and then grabbing one of those scarce visas so they can work for one of the FAANGS for half of what a US programmer would cost.

    I’m strongly pro-immigration. US citizens have decided they dont want kids, and we need workers. But I see no reason that immigration policy should function as a s
    • The summary said that the exemption applies only to doctoral degree recipients (PhDs). Presumably they will be filtering out people with fake degrees. Personally, I think that if they're not restricted by the caps, then they also shouldn't count toward the caps.
    • If we're going on anecdotal "evidence," I've worked with a number of compsci people from India, and I have to say they're a lot like every other demographic: some are pretty darned good; some are quite competent; some are eh; and some are awful. If I were to start a billion dollar company, quite a few former Indian associates would be in my first wave of hiring.

  • This is a reasonable idea as long as bogus degrees can be excluded. That will be hard.

  • No Foreign Workers until they start hiring back those of us over 50.

    Screw Congress.
    and
    Screw Corporations who lay off people in order to mover their work overseas.

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