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Comment by Causality1 | Hacker News Reader

We're quite far from the scale tipping in that direction, but it makes me curious about whether the US government has the legal authority to say "educating foreigners is no longer in the national interest, therefore it is no longer a valid reason to remain in the United States" and decimate the foreign student population essentially overnight.

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The government can do whatever it wants when it comes to setting immigration laws. It's an enumerated power.

F-1 (student) visas are already nonimmigration visas. After you graduate, you have a few months of "optional practical training" (OPT) and then you're expected to go home. Hopefully, you can get an H-1 (another nonimmigration visa) to stay for at most six years, which is about how long it takes to get a Green Card (permanent residency)[+].

I had heard that the reason why F-1s are nonimmigration is because back in the 1960s it was seen as foreign aid with Cold War benefits. Encourage people from third world counties to come to the United States, see how great it is, and then go back and build up their own countries. A decade or two out, you now have a country friendly to US interests.

Maybe that made sense in the 1960s, but it seems like it stopped making sense sometime in the 1980s, and certainly by the 90s.

We make it too hard to immigrate to the US. If I was king for the day, I'd make F-1 visas immigration visas, or at least be able to fast track F-1s into an immigration visa. The glacial pace, and the difficulty to immigrate is a reason why people go back. I know people that ended up giving up on getting Green Card, so moved to Toronto, and already has gotten Canadian permanent residency.

[+] If you want to fast track your Green Card, marry a US citizen. You get it in a couple of months.

Indeed. The "big picture" is that regardless of how long it takes, be it twenty or fifty or a hundred years, eventually there won't be a technology gap between China and the United States. If we want the US to have any hope of competing against a country of 1.4 billion people we have to turn the borders into factories for making and integrating new Americans, and the sooner we do it the better. 1.4 billion vs 500 million is a better equation than 1.4 billion vs 327 million.

You're not supposed to apply for a green card on a non-immigrant visa though.

I graduated from a top US university with an engineering degree (actually, rated the top university at the time). Felt like the federal government was looking for any excuse to accuse me of being an illegal immigrant and throw me out of the country, so I decided to go ahead and leave of my own accord.

> six years, which is about how long it takes to get a Green Card

Ha! Unless you're are an Indian or a Chinese, in which case it's more than 10 years (which is being quite optimistic)!!

My research says it is 70+ year for EB3 visas entered this year assuming nothing changes.

It can almost certainly unilaterally revoke all the visas. Why the US wants to blow up its own higher education system would be beyond me, though.

Is having someone as a student, and then they leave ... beneficial?

I don't have a position on this, I'm just wondering.

Especially PhD students are ultra-cheap professional work force that drives forward US academic research.

Furthermore, a big reason why so many return to China, is that even if you graduate in the US, staying in the US is quite hard. The environment is not welcoming in to the newly graduated US educated foreign origin PhDs.

>Especially PhD students are ultra-cheap professional work force that drives forward US academic research.

I'm not necessarily doubting it as this is not my area of expertise, but what % of students really do "ultra-cheap professional work force that drives forward US academic research"... that anyone else can't?

Professors tend to act more as managers/grant proposal writers/reviewers. The vast majority of individual contributor work is performed by grad students and post docs. This work is often intellectually challenging (well, in as much as moving science forward is), so there is a strong benefit for selecting the best prepared candidates. Chinese students that come to do their PhDs in the US tend to be very well prepared/selected (especially once you look at non-ivy league research universities, it is easier to get a super qualified chinese student vs a US native student). Now, there might be a price point at which you could attract more locals to go pursue a PhD, but right now it is just not a very financially attractive proposition. PhD students typically get a stipend in the 30-40k range, but perform the kind of work that on the outside would pay 100-200k (let's say for people after masters). Similarly post docs make 40-70k range, but if they went into industry they would make 100-300k (depending on field).

Well, it's a US export sector. US professors do work and foreign money flows into the US.

likely only for tenured professors and possibly universities. professors hold immense power and likely benefit greatly from someone motivated to finish + move back and earn massive sums relative to rest of population; the university i'm guessing benefits to some extent financially/prestige of said research group/professor.

edit: losers are general public, whose taxes go to public universities who then train up a generation of students who won't contribute those benefits back to the country. private universities have different funding models of course, so not so clear there.

I thought taxpayers only subsidize in-state tuition?

Yes, exactly. Foreign students are actively recruited by universities because they're profitable: they have to pay the full fare.

> taxes go to public universities who then train up a generation of students who won't contribute those benefits back to the country

I would be amazed if I could find a US accredited institution of higher education that offered subsidized education to non-nationals.

> professors hold immense power

Nothing to say about this other than "lol nope".

There doesn't have to be a logical reason, it just has to make people feel good. Politics 101.

Something like this wouldn't surprise me at all, given the current political atmosphere.

When I studied computer science (for my Master's degree), I was one of three US citizens in the entire program. If the US gets rid of foreign students, it gets rid of upper-level CS, at least.

What university? Also, Master's degrees are aimed at a lot of international students.

The University of Texas at Arlington - but I've heard that with only a handful of exceptions, this is nearly the case nationally.

The people who voted for the current administration would be perfectly happy to get rid of upper-level CS. They complain all the time about California anyway, and wish it would fall into the ocean.

They are already planning to gut the OPT (Optional Practical Training) program which will all but ensure that students that do their Masters or Ph.D here will not be able to take their time to find a job. They'll need their H1-B visa available by the time they graduate or go back home.

The feds certainly can control who can enter the US and go to school. Legal authority isn't a question.

If they should or what is another story, I really don't know the answer.

Don't they pay full tuition? Even if they don't stay, it's a smaller net gain they study in USA.

Not to mention while they're studying aboard, they contribute to the local economy (goods & services). For masters and PhD candidates, they may also contribute significantly to projects led by professors; advancing a certain field

Yes, but that also means they drive up the price of tuition and the academic requirements of admission for American students just by existing as consumers of the "student slot at university" product.

Foreign students usually pay at a higher tier. They effectively subsidize the local students at schools that have been actively courting Chinese money.

It already does that, just after graduation rather than before. I don't know how many non-Americans I've met who came here to study but couldn't find a post-graduation job fast enough to get a new visa.

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