Tuesday April 8, DHS CIS (Citizenship and Immigration Services) issued a Final Interim Rule to extend F-1 foreign student OPT time limits to 29 months without public comment and without Congressional review. Public comment was requested, after enactment, as a slap in the face. CIS has grown accustomed to re-writing immigration law without due process - last year an additional 20,000 H-1B visas were handed out in this manner.
Here is my comment in the Federal Register.
DHS CIS F-1 OPT Final Interim Rule (.pdf)
April 9, 2008
Dana Rothrock comments on:
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
8 CFR Part 214DHS NO. ICEB-2008-0002
ICE NO. 2124-08 RIN 1653-AA56
AGENCY: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; DHS.
ACTION: Interim final rule with request for comments.
Extending Period of Optional Practical Training by 17-Months for F-1 Nonimmigrant Students with STEM Degrees and Expanding CapGap Relief for All F-1 Students with Pending H-1B Petitions
In re: III. Regulatory Requirements; A. Administrative Procedure Act
The American people strongly object to this circumvention of Congress and the Constitution in enacting this contentious rule as an "emergency situation" to avoid "serious damage to important interests." Neither of these tenets are remotely conceivable and cannot be materially supported in a court of law.
An injunction must be ordered immediately. Subpoenas of agency documents must ensue. You are on notice to save your emails. Look up the word "spoliate" and don't do it.
Obviously, "important interests" are not American STEM students who are hoping to get one of the 120,000 new STEM jobs created each year. http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2004/02/art5full.pdf page 83
Over 600,000 science and engineering degrees are granted annually from American universities.
Tabulated by National Science Foundation/Division of Science Resources Statistics (NSF/SRS); data from Department of Education/National Center for Education Statistics: Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System Completions Survey and NSF/SRS: Survey of Earned Doctorates.
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_267.asp600,000 STEM graduates for 120,000 STEM jobs. I can understand why it might take 29 months for an F-1 STEM graduate to find a job, but that is not the underlying reason, is it?
Bill Gates asks for more H-1Bs, so DHS CIS responds.
Congress has voted down these F-1 OPT measures in "amnesty" legislation and "SKIL BILL" ammendments. Senatorial inquiries into H-1B and L-1 visa fraud and abuse are in discovery phase. These offshoring visas and the constant bloodletting of American jobs to foreign countries is "an emergency situation" causing "serious damage to important interests" - the American middle class. Job loss, age discrimination, the mortgage and banking crisis, fuel costs, and the Iraq War are putting the American economy in a tail spin.
Meanwhile, in Corporate America, cheap foreign workers are entering the front door and citizens are pushed out the back, after training their replacements. "Free Trade" visas add insult to the injury.
The American people will not tollerate this unconstitutional, fraudulent and irresponsible action by the DHS CIS.
Comments
National Emergency - not enough cheap labor
>> Bill Gates asks for more H-1Bs, so DHS CIS responds.
More evidence of who is really running this country - big business interests.
>> this contentious rule as an "emergency situation" to avoid "serious damage to important interests."
This is what the Nazis did. Declare national emergencies in order to legislate by edict.
US students first
The problem for me with this ruling (beyond it being illegal in my view as well as there is no worker shortage), is just how many qualified US students are there who were denied these opportunities?
I don't know the answer to that but it sure seems that almost no one is monitoring our University system, as an employer, and investigating discrimination against US citizen students.
With that many STEM students, surely they could have filled these jobs and because educational costs are so high, probably could have really used the money on top of it.
I wrote a blog post on this ruling as well.
Thanks for putting in a comment to DHS Dana, although my impression is they could care less what US workers think.
Looking for an internship or summer job -- good luck!
A new op-ed about the OPT extension explains why Chertoff and the DHS broke their own rules and violated the Constitution:
The Search for Internships Just Got Tougher