The international student bait-and-switch
themargins.substack.com
themargins.substack.com
It's so stressful to worry about your transportation, your income & career prospects, your education, your friends & loved ones, and your entire life in the States being taken away because of politics that change with the whims of the current administration. My heart goes out to the people who have lost the chance to attend great universities, work at great companies, and live in the States because of this. Hurting them only comes back around to hurt us.
However, you are also sometimes legally allowed to be in the US while you're in some kind of pending state -- for example, if your old visa/work authorization is expired but your new work authorization is pending and a decision hasn't been made about it yet.
The DMV needs an end date in the future, so they won't give you a license without one. So you can be legally present in the US, but not able to legally get a driver's license.
What if she were your wife?
It does make me wonder though why there isn't a "long-term relationship visa" for people who haven't reached marriage yet but want to be together and be eligible to work, and require some evidence that the two have been together stably for some period of time. In many cases one party is a US citizen and it would be in the best interest of the mental health of that US citizen to allow his/her partner to be together with them, and from the government perspective would thus be indirectly in the best interest of the country.
What purpose would this status serve that marriage wouldn't? What is the idea behind planning to be in a permanent relationship, but not marrying?
What? This seems perfectly normal to me. At least for me any serious relationship is always with at least the vision of permanence, starting from the very beginning of when you call yourselves official -- unless it fails at some point.
Considering most such failures occur in the first couple years, as you're still getting to understand each other, it's probably a bad idea to jump the gun into marriage that early while you still don't have a full understanding of each other. But that doesn't make it any less "planning to be permanent".
I'd also say that people who meet "the one" earlier on should arguably stay unmarried for longer. If you meet at 20, I'd say wait till 25+ till you marry. A lot can change in a person between 20 and 25. If you meet at 30, you can cut that shorter a bit and that's fine because most people know what they want in life at 30.
But a 22 year old US citizen who has been in a 2 year stable relationship with an F1 student, possibly living together, with permanent intent? I'd say don't rush them into marriage, but for goodness sake, let them be happily together.
I'm not sure if this statement makes me want to laugh or cry.
I'd like to meet that "most people" you mentioned. So far, everyone I ever knew at best was conformed with the constraints placed on their life.
It's a great step before marriage, to provide recognition and protections for people who want a different bundle of legal consequences than marriage provides, for people who object to marriage on any number of reasons of principle, for people who want to defer the legally binding wedding until after the pandemic when their family can attend, to have less of a relationship hierarchy in polyamorous or open relationships, while waiting for just the right romantic moment to propose or to be able to obtain the right engagement ring, etc.
A lot of people either don't like marriage or don't view it as a valuable priority, even if they have a relationship. Federal government statistics from here in Quebec in 2016 show that only 34.3% of the province's population age 15 or over was married, and fully 22% of that population had a common-law partner. https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/as-sa/fo... (I'm not sure why they started that stat at 15, since the earliest you can get married in Canada is 16 and even that requires permission from e.g. a court or parent. Maybe it's for uniform reporting versus pre-2015 data where earlier ages were sometimes legal.)
And the taxes aren't always a bad thing. In my case, my partner makes much less income than me, so starting this year we can shift medical expenses to her tax return to save with the medical expenses tax credit. We'll also qualify to share health insurance plans despite not being married.
Let me circle back and invite you to make sure you know all the limitations of being common law partners (which you seem to be). For my wife and I for example, the fear that her parents might have the final say in her health decisions if she's incapacitated meant we needed more than simply common law.
In our case, there are strong financial reasons not to get married yet: she's a student receiving Quebec financial aid, and since we're unmarried and childless at the moment, Quebec doesn't consider my income or assets in student aid decisions (unlike how e.g. Ontario treats common-law partners). Once that changes, we may reconsider.
I met my girl in Australia and between working on a farm together for a year and then a "short" visitor visa (6 months) in Canada we met that 1+ year requirement. Didn't hurt that I do IT remotely.
My understanding is that it was originally set up to allow gay couples to apply, as most countries didn't/still don't have gay marriage laws on the books. However only offering it to one group would be discriminatory, so everyone can use it, in theory. In my apartment building there is at least one other couple, a Scottish guy and Canadian girl, who did the same.
Plus, as the parent mentions, regular marriage is on the decline in N. America too.
That said, common law still carries weight in things like inheritance, and if you split they can petition for your property and money, just like in a divorce. They just have fewer/more limited rights to things, and there is a 2-year window to file after splitting, while a divorce decree can be far more encompassing and longer lasting.
What you said about common law applying to inheritance and splitting doesn't actually apply to Quebec, however. No rights exist in that context here unless otherwise agreed in certain ways. Very different legal regime than the rest of Canada. (Technically common-law partners are called de facto spouses or de facto partners under some Quebec laws, though others include them under the definition of spouse despite not being married. Makes sense since Quebec doesn't use the common-law legal system with respect to relations between people, as opposed to between people and the government where it does.)
Uh, no. In a lot of countries, obtaining a work visa to live there and work there is as simple as a local company handing you an offer letter for a highly-skilled job.
It's the US that loves to intrude on employer-employee relationships. That kind of BS doesn't happen in e.g. China. If a company wants your talent, they'll find a way to get you a visa. For STEM jobs it's not even a question.
Singapore might even hand you a landed permanent residence (LPR) card if you have a PhD out of a well-known academic institution. You need to meet certain criteria within your first year there but goddamn the immigration policy is much more sensible for the future of the country.
Plus you are subject to political whimsy if your country of origin does something the CPC doesn’t like (even if you are Canadian).
It's not nearly as bad as the H1B system.
If e.g. Alibaba really wants you on their deep learning research team the government isn't going to say no.
The government isn’t going to say no, but alibaba doesn’t play nice like an American company with a Chinese branch office (MS China, for example).
Citation needed. I bet most H1b visas terminate in the applicants leaving the country. Like mine.
Many H1b applicants are from countries where it's harder to impossible to get green cards in a reasonable amount of time. If you make the mistake of coming from a big country like India or China, you can we but forget about it. It's easier if you come from, say, New Zealand or Switzerland.
The US immigration system needed work before. It is a total catastrophe now, if you are someone interested in working in the US.
If they want to keep this US citizen's talent in the US, they need to make sure their immigration policy is up to par.
Not to be flippant, but since you emphasised the severity of that predicament so much: In a country with decent public transport (ie most countries) that wouldn’t be a problem. I’ve only ever owned a car in the USA; no need elsewhere.
Let me rephrase my point a bit - independently of the quality of public transport, not being able to drive is not a big deal in most places except the USA. (An additional indicator for that might be the fact that the driver’s license operates as the de-facto ID card in the US.)
I used to own a car in the UK about 20 years ago. Since then, bicycle and public transport (and renting a car if I need one).
Europe (I now live in Berlin, but I've been most places in Europe) is obviously fine. There's 3 different rail systems, plus trams, plus buses. Plentiful bicycle lanes. Big wide pavements made for walking. And the city is so compact it's possible (even pleasant) to walk to the other side in a few hours.
Australia (Perth, one of their least pedestrian-friendly cities) was sometimes a pain. Do-able - I lived there for almost 10 years with no car, but it was unusual enough to be remarked on. There is public transport, and it's mostly excellent; on time, affordable, clean and safe. But the scale of the city makes transport tedious regardless of method (half the population of Berlin, about 10 times the size).
In SE Asia the "public" transport was non-existent, but you could get a tuk-tuk/red car/whatever to wherever for a few dollars (a 6-hour tuk-tuk ride in Sri Lanka cost us $20, getting anywhere in Phnom Penh was $2). And walking is usually fine - hot, sweaty, and fascinating. Transport is never a problem there.
In San Diego, there was nothing. No pavement. No bus service (and I was advised not to take whatever bus there was because it was dangerous). Walking to the local 7-11 half a mile away was a 20-minute adventure dealing with road systems that made no provision for pedestrians at all.
Obviously I haven't seen a bunch of the places you mention (they're on the list), but so far the USA (well, San Diego) is a completely different experience from the others. I would not want to live in San Diego without a car.
Mr. Duruk's thought's are frustrating to read because he assumes his privilege. He assumes he's owed an easy and straightforward journey to citizenship, that his future as a foreign-student shouldn't be jeopardized in the least by the political whims of the local population, as if the ravaged parts of THIS nation which screamed out and democratically elected a protectionist president do not deserve to be heard at the international's community's expense.
America isn't perfect, no country is, but having lived here for twenty years, having experienced life in other places, and having traveled internationally, I wouldn't chose another place as my home--and apparently neither would Mr. Duruk.
While I do not agree with this administration's immigration policies, I have enough perspective to realize that immigration policy is ultimately beholden to the local population. That is what democracy entails. Nobody owes anybody anything in life, complaining as if you are owed something reeks of privilege and a sense of entitlement.
I don't think that's it. What the person seems to begrudge is them breaking the implicit deal. No one will ever willingly pay $200k to a university if vastly improved career prospects were not promised at the end of it.
Countries are expected to have a cohesive foreign policy across Govts. When the world most 'credible' country starts changing policies based on which side of the bed the president woke up on, it can get quite irritating for those stuck in the midst.
> I wouldn't chose another place as my home--and apparently neither would Mr. Duruk
Being better than a rapidly Islamizing Turkey under dictatorial rule isn't a huge positive.
Also, it might be a coincidence, but it can rub people the wrong way that immigration is significantly easier for predominantly white Europeans (no visa needed to visit in practice (for audition, interview) and no waiting periods for immigration) as compared to people from Islamic countries (single entry visas) or Asia (infinite waiting periods).
> I have enough perspective to realize that immigration policy is ultimately beholden to the local population.
Agreed, as long as the country doesn't pull a, "I've altered the deal, pray I don't alter it further".
I have always maintained a "reject them at the gate" policy. Don't welcome them with open arms, and then leave them to drown in the deep end.
Amen and amen.
>Mr. Duruk's thought's are frustrating to read because he assumes his privilege. He assumes he's owed an easy and straightforward journey to citizenship
An example of this is the widely shared diagram explaining "How to move to the USA legally"(https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/6rbwfx/how_to_m...). The creator (Reason magazine, which I generally sympathize with more often than not)'s intent is to sarcastically mock the US immigration system's vagaries. But as many (not all, but enough) in the Reddit thread point out, why is the US (or any country) supposed to make entry into it for non-citizens "easy"? (This is completely separate from whether doing so might be a good decision for the country from a long-term economic perspective.)
>While I do not agree with this administration's immigration policies, I have enough perspective to realize that immigration policy is ultimately beholden to the local population. That is what democracy entails.
Indeed. In a democracy, the populace is always "right" in the sense that the populace is entitled to do whatever it votes to do that is compatible with its laws and relevant treaties. (And, of course, said democracy is always free to amend said laws and exit said treaties.) Again, this has nothing to do with whether the decisions the people and their elected representatives make is "right" in the sense of benefiting the country or people in the long term. Even if such a thing were possible to determine objectively, it doesn't matter because the people have spoken, for better or for worse.
It's been frustrating to see "democracy" defined too often as "what the people decide, unless it goes against what I and other experts think is correct". It's not supposed to work that way. The recent wave of looting and rioting is going to cause the people, temporarily cowed, to once again speak their mind and remind the world the next chance they get at the ballot box.
These are people who went through all the right steps and were admitted to the country and who followed all the conditions of their visas, who are being kicked out simply to score political points.
My university (UIUC) heavily relies on international student tuition to provide facilities, pay teachers, and give financial support to students who need it, despite the fact that it's a public university; they simply don't get enough funding from the state.
If it's a place like stanford which hasn't increase it admission count much since the 1960s, that is a completely different issue.
Since the Iraq war, the emperor has increasingly had no clothes. Instead of moral progress to realize those ideal, things have increasingly devolved and the bottom keeps dropping out...
I have optimism that even now the majority of Americans hold to some ideals to aspire to, and that eventually given a generation, things can change. But I won’t hold my breath!
What? There was a massive military build up in the US during the 90’s including things like SDI.
I am amazed how many people still choose to believe the propaganda.
The major ramp up of military power came with Reagan's presidency.
Interestingly enough I've seen a surprising number of international students going to more obscure and affordable US colleges than in the past.
Meanwhile, we have now four years of evidence that at every moment where they can reduce the number of illegal immigrants to the US, they make that decision. Whether it's banning people based on their religion or kicking out people who have been legally living here for decades as refugees. It just makes far more sense that the administration's real goal here is to reduce the number of foreign students, not to force universities to reopen. The director of homeland security just doesn't want to admit it.
The focus is on the coercion because the Federal Government has very little direct coercive power over Universities; other manners of coercion (like withdrawing funding) would likely get stopped by the courts. But this threat is one way that the administration can hit Universities where it hurts.
Did you mean "legal immigrants"?
“International Students 223: In Person Cultural Learning.”
And make all assessment digital. In practice it is an in person lab, but one nobody must show up for.
The ICE policy made everyone I know just gape at the stupidity of it all. It’s not hard to work around.
Other options which may be a good idea to do anyway is a public speaking class or a discussion class (almost exclusively on zoom) where students are asked to reflect on their goals and future plans.
> all I can feel sometimes is that I’ve bet on the wrong horse
This is a very American experience, where there is no safety net for being wrong if you run out of money on the bet, but we do have convenient bankruptcy laws when you run out of other people's money on top of that.
> The whole point of moving to the developed world is to not have to deal with developing world problems
The only unique thing about America is having the resources to do better, it just doesn't. so I am pretty thrilled that people are being forced to reconcile the difference between Hollywood propaganda and real life.
Most other major economic unions were forced to become more inclusive and empathic, by invasion and reeducation. The US has never been forced to reconcile any part of its culture, it is populated by people with incompatible extremes of ideologies wherever they came from, and it promotes those extremes for temporary unilateral control of US resources.
Your writing was very insightful, I hope this helps you patch your understanding of what America is and gives you a more objective way to use it as a tool.
Btw you‘d be surprised how countries way way way smaller than the US have sizeable international student populations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_student#Destinat...
do you think that they really are just being flippantly "kicked out at any second"? or do you think it is because it's 2020 and the country is being ravaged by a highly contagious virus and every single american college campus is closed. Where are these students supposed to live? The dormitories are closed. How many college towns have enough available housing for 30,000+ displaced students. You know the American kids have to go home too.
China? If we are worried about the US becoming "America first", I think China is even more nationalistic than the US and looks through a prism of does this benefit China.
India? Has no interest in foreign adventures. Especially under Modi, has become more nationalistic
Russia? See Ukraine.
Japan? Prevented by its constitution from foreign adventures
UK? Brexit
France? Actually, partially exited NATO decades ago. Very nationalistic.
Germany? Doesn't have much ability to project power. Depends on Russia for vital natural gas.
As anti Brexit as I am, how has this made the UK an unreliable partner?
What's the purpose of the question? If you are looking for a place to work, live or do business with, the dependability is important, but I couldn't care less about whether eg Switzerland projects any power when making any personal or business decisions.
(Now, if I was the head of a country and looking for allies, that would be different. But I doubt many people are in that position.)
It is wise to improve our own self and not use others weakness as justification for our own.
Loss of reputation causes disastrous impacts one or the other and watching our own politics is similar to watching a self destructive person justifying their own actions.
And rejoining NATO again was a mistake. NATO lost its purpose when USSR lost in the 80s. There is no reason for NATO when UN exist.
Agree on the other point though.
In my experience this is almost completely false. They do have to pay out-of-state tuition to public schools, and they generally aren't eligible for taxpayer-funded need-based aid. But we don't blink at giving scholarships to international applicants just as often as domestic. Often international students dominate the applications to master's programs, and get all the scholarships too.
The latter part resonates with me. Taxes provide major funding to big public schools like Ohio State, where most American students attend school. Phd programs are often fully funded by NSF and other government agencies. The article seems to be talking about private schools, which are much more expensive but not the only option. And while this may not be true at Harvard, across the country most Americans going to private schools are paying full tuition. This is a big part of the reason private school are viewed as unequal, wealth divides. Poorer american students often can’t go to many private schools where they can’t get financial aid to attend. The school will only have scholarships for a small number of students, and the rest need to be wealthy enough to pay the tuition.
No need-blind admission (except at the school I went to, the others literally told me I was too poor) and no government funded student loans (my private loans, which were still non-recourse, started accruing 12% interest the day I took them out)
Graduate school is slightly different in that you're often working for the school to cover the tuition, and who is eligible will be based on the donors and the program administrators.
You can be too poor to be eligible for a visa (which goes for any country I'm aware of), there is a govt requirement to be able to support yourself. Otherwise I find it odd that schools would tell you anything about why you weren't accepted.
As for "no government funded student loans", I said there were no taxpayer-funded student need-based aid.
Graduate school includes Master's programs which the blog post was also talking about, and which only rarely come with teaching or research assistantships (those are primarily for supporting phd students). But international students are just as eligible for those as anyone else. It's much more common for MS students to get a scholarship than an assistantship.
For phd students, the primary sources of funding is overwhelmingly research grants the faculty member themselves get from the NSF and NIH. These grants almost never require the supported students to have permanent residency. Many programs (e.g. phd in electrical and mechanical engineering and many schools) would cease to exist if that were a requirement.
1) international students are a major source of revenue for many US colleges and, more strongly,
2) they bring in a higher share of the revenue than what their share of students is?
Seems to me that completely depends on the school. Maybe international students will only come to a particular school if they get a free ride, while local domestic students will pay the tuition for the convenience of being near home.
At tuition-driven schools (i.e. most schools, but not the big ranked research schools we always hear about), most students are there as sources of revenue, except for the stars they can entice with full scholarships.
At research schools, research grants are the main source of revenue. The rest is a sideshow.
Also in either type of school, if they live off campus (far more common for MS and phd students than undergrad) then they are less revenue per student. Schools are essentially in the hotel business too. We are learning all about this lately.
The reason I ask is because there seems to be a side argument on who is paying more, domestic or international students. I would’ve thought foreigners pay more (that seems to be the case in the UK), but would defer to your first hand expertise.
However, what the article is predicated on is just that international students bring in “enough” revenue that they can be used as leverage against the universities. I was wondering whether you’d concede that.
Even if those applications are likely to be accepted, dealing with immigration bureaucracy is an absolute nightmare and anyone who is even slightly an edge case is gonna go through hell.
It is always surprising to me that the US has been able to mostly maintain this image all while operating a global network of torture prisons and, now, domestic concentration camps for both adults and children, and while imprisoning 20x+ of its ethnic minorities, per capita, compared to China (which has, by various accounts, 1M+ in labor camps).
Do people not generally know what conditions inside US prisons are like? Are the torture facilities not common knowledge?
How is this level of spin even possible?
As for your traditional neutral nations not that involved in the world I don't consider that a good example. History is pretty clear what happens once you venture out.
I think the moment you start playing the field in changing the world the world, even if you try to promote things that are 'right' things get muddy fast.
Erm, actually it is set a lot higher for almost every developed nation. Yes, European countries have been involved in some atrocious crimes but post WW2, the US is the only developed nation that engages in such things.
Becoming a world venturing power does not imply that those atrocities are necessary, or justifiable. Most of these things are totally avoidable. Putting immigrant kids in cages, imprisoning minorities in large numbers and persistently denying affordable healthcare to citizens is something the US can absolutely choose not to do without compromising its status as a world power.
Take a look at those nation's actions before that and you'll get abetter feel of how things go.
Because nobody wants to watch a TV show about traffic.
I’m just arguing (purely descriptively) that quite possibly the prominent depictions in US movies and TV shows have given many people an impression of the US that is more glorious than reality; and that this discrepancy is greater regarding the US than most other countries.
Ignoring the "and you are lynching Negroes"[1] argument you're trying to make, your argument doesn't make sense on a logical level. How can you compare a relative figure ("20x+") with an absolute one ("1M+")? At least compare apples to apples.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes
But, even those aside: Global network of CIA torture prisons. Concentration camps in Texas. Universal surveillance of all communications without judicial oversight. Extrajudicial assassination of citizens.
These are real things, happening today. Do people just ignore them because they don’t fit the “land of the free” narrative?
Not even close to being true.
The commenter was a) comparing two rates (incarceration rate of minorities) between countries by providing their ratio, and then furthermore b) providing an additional related piece of information, namely an absolute level in one of those countries. Perfectly sound, logically and all.
Having said that, yes, when I came across that sentence you quote
(> Most fundamentally, I’ve always thought that the United States had a more profound respect for human dignity.)
I had to chuckle as well at the (then) naïveté of the author. Apart from immigration, the incarceration and homicide rates I’d also adduce capital punishment, the issues surrounding policing and race, as well as health insurance.
Still, much better than many other countries! But certainly not near the top.
How expensive can it get before the millions of students stop coming? How bad can the education be? How bad can the politics be?
I think the answer is a lot worse. USA is still attractive to billions of people on the planet.
Sure, the international students often don't pay that much, but in many cases they don't end up with good access to permanent residence either, let alone citizenship.
Tell that to the people living in Appalachia or on skid row in LA.
Like most third-world countries, the US is a fine place to live, if you have money and/or access to power. But if you're not in that category, don't expect anything from public institutions.
[0]https://www.arc.gov/assets/research_reports/EmergingPatterns...
This is my home town. My mother still lives here. I cannot fathom how. The grocery stores look so run down the the Walmart one town over has entire chunks of the store just flat and open and missing. I tried to purchase a basketball the other day and there was not a single one to be found in any of the three low quality dollar stores or anywhere else. I tried to get something mailed to me and instead of prompt delivery it disappeared into a USPS facility for five days.
The town feels sick and dying
1) when people move to the US to avoid developing world problems, by and large they aren't moving to the places you mention. From my experience growing up in a rural state, most people who grow up there stay there - most people who move to the US aren't going _there_ for opportunities
2) the types of problems faced back home by people seeking asylum or by refugees are very different from the types of problems being faced by poor people in the US. Does being poor in the US suck? Yes, absolutely. We should do better. But let's not pretend it's comparable to living in a war zone.
IMHO you should re-evaluate your priors.
* Morehead, KY
Low social mobility, a safe homelife, and good schools are only for members of the lucky sperm-an’-egg club in the US
Talented people have good memories. They will remember this and tell their friends and people who go to them for advice for years to come.
“Trump’s freeze on new visas could threaten US dominance in AI
The president’s executive order to temporarily suspend H-1B visas exacerbates the US’s precarious position in the global competition for AI talent.“
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/06/26/1004520/trump-ex...
The United States has been disenfranchising its own citizens for decades particulary economically.
Students from around the world should be allowed to stay but this world view is so foreign, pun not intended, from my perspective as a mixed man from a broken background.
For context, the current administration is using international student visas as leverage to get universities open for in-person classes this year.
He's complaint seems to be that the US is not treating immigrants with dignity.
"American Colleges are Good, They Said"
"You’ll Be Respected, They Said"
"Life is Good, They Said"
And then he spends time explaining why none of this is true.
But in the end: "In a few months, I’ll be eligible to apply for my US citizenship ..."
So just letting off some steam and not really explaining why given the above America is still so attractive?
Also Australia: Oh, covid: no money for you, indigent peons!
Basically, if you cannot afford to eat, as a displaced international student its begging, or starving. No help.
Truly amazing lack of insight into future study outcomes here.
We used to have a strategy called "the colombo plan" which was free tertiary education on a requirement to go back home and this built links into emerging economies which liked us.
Now, our strategy is to milk international students dry, keep the ones who can survive exclusionist immigration policy, and screw everyone over if the risk-side tanks. Great plan!
Whilst at the same time ignoring local students almost completely.
It's a loss-loss!