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Comment by dheera | Hacker News Reader

Personally I think there's a middle ground that's very important, which is that I think anyone who received a university degree in the US and passes the background check should be able to get an unrestricted work visa.

The US should want to keep the talent it selects and trains. These are people who build the economy, generate IP, and create jobs in the long run. Not only that, but these people who have spent 4+ years in the US university education system are extremely well-adapted to life in the US and will thrive at making the US a better place.

(Yes there's OPT, but it's not long enough and doesn't provide a path to permanent residency.)

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anyone who received a university degree in the US

No. No. No. That would mean that anyone from the University of Oxford would be out until he got himself a masters degree from the Christian College of Lost Hope, AR. There are far too many paid masters degrees around already that serve exactly that purpose and that are good for no one except the useless college.

> masters degree from the Christian College of Lost Hope, AR

Yeah no, screw that crap. I don't know the exact regulation framework that would accomplish my intent but you understand what I mean.

I'm talking about all the people with bonafide degrees and skillsets. 4-year bachelor degrees, PhDs, MDs, and the like. These people should be treated as assets to the country. (Maybe just excluding masters' degrees is the answer, but I'm not sure.) It's dumbfoundingly stupid as a national policy to invest so much in resources to train a person and then send them back to another country instead of giving them every incentive to stay.

Singapore and Australia (and maybe others I don't know about) allow international students to apply for permanent residency if they meet certain very reasonable qualifications and it works out very much in their favor for retaining talent.

Talking with friends that were international students, who also knew about the abuses of the current system, we came to the conclusion that to avoid abuse and get actual world class talent you would want to tier the system. Master's and PhD holders already benefit in the current system so better to expand the idea.

Undergraduate degree holders would only be rewarded for completing degrees in in the US in emerging and vital fields (mostly STEM). Awarding permanent residency to someone completing an Bachelors in communication at the worst college in the US is simply inviting abuse. Master's holders would get permanent residency in an expanding set of fields and ideally PhDs in every field. There may be some cases of abuse, but there should never be the case where a smart person educated in the US, especially in a growing or important field is forced out of the country because they didn't win a lottery.

> Master's holders would get permanent residency in an expanding set of fields and ideally PhDs in every field.

Unfortunately, this is ripe for abuse. You're basically allowing educational institutions to sell green cards. If you thought almost-unlimited-student-loans inflated education prices, you don't even want to see what selling green cards would do.

> but there should never be the case where a smart person educated in the US, especially in a growing or important field is forced out of the country

I agree with the premise, but this is kind of like "It is better than 1000 guilty men go free, than 1 innocent man be wrongly convicted". It sounds great in premise, but in practice can't reasonably happen. Again, I agree with your premise, but I think it needs to be approached in a different way.

> Unfortunately, this is ripe for abuse. You're basically allowing educational institutions to sell green cards. If you thought almost-unlimited-student-loans inflated education prices, you don't even want to see what selling green cards would do

That's pretty much how it's done in Australia. It props up a massive industry (education was the fourth largest export in 2018-2019) whilst ensuring a supply of qualified applicants for residency.

Prices for locals are still set by the government. So, whilst there is inflation, disadvantage to locals is limited to there being fewer places available to them. Whether it's morally okay is another question but the economics seem to work out pretty well.

Australia does /kind of/ do this with the skilled occupation list, but it's not like getting a Bachelor of Accounting means you are guaranteed a path to permanent residency (thanks to many of the recent visa pathway changes). Graduates from an Australian university can get a Temporary Graduate (485) Visa which lasts 2-4 years, but the pathway from then on usually requires getting an employer to sponsor your permanent residency (186/187) after 3 years of work experience, unless you get explicitly invited to some of the other programs (189/190)[+]. If you live in a regional area there are more options (887 for instance) but most people don't and might find it difficult to live in regional towns and cities.

As an immigrant to (and citizen of) Australia myself, I find it pretty appalling how hard it has become to become a permanent resident in Australia even if you are reasonably skilled (and the fact that permanent residency requires nomination by an employer -- which is unlike most other countries, where permanent residency is based on your own residence and skills). The work-based streams are becoming more and more narrow and it's longer the case that studying in Australia gives you any guaranteed pathway to residency (and I would argue it hasn't been the case for a fairly long time now).

[+]: A quick look at the EOI statistics <https://api.dynamic.reports.employment.gov.au/anonap/extensi...> shows that 7.2% ((LODGED+INVITED)/SUBMITTED ~= 7.2%) of people who register their interest end up being invited.

emerging and vital fields (mostly STEM)

You'd be surprised there. The degree that gives best odds in law school is actually philosophy. If you want to keep the tradition of Latin alive you need kids who have taken decent Latin in school. Chemistry and the life sciences, on the other hand, there is a terrifying oversupply of graduates. I agree with the need for quality control.

Yes I agree with this.

GP:> completing an Bachelors in communication at the worst college in the US

I think the key here should be "worst college in the US" and not the Bachelors in communication. If you got a communication degree from Mizzou or Columbia that's a totally different bar than a communication degree from a community college. The institutions and programs should be accredited, and demonstrate some standard of selectivity.

You want talented people in every field to stay in your country and create value and jobs, and selectivity for university admission is often a good proxy for that. The bar doesn't need to be insanely higher either; anyone who creates value and by doing so either directly or indirectly creates more jobs is worthwhile to keep.

If this is true regarding the philosophy degree then the student would continue on to the law degree to secure their residency. Regarding the saturated science fields they would then not be considered emerging nor vital.

Haha are you arguing that the US needs more lawyers?

You do realize that US universities don't view foreign students as an investment right? They view them as a revenue source.

The universities, yes, but at least for 4-year bachelors' programs, the country should be viewing it as an investment considering how selective they tend to be for mid- to higher-tier instutions. From a national government standpoint, they bring in some revenue to the economy, but it's miniscule compared to the GDP value they will create, directly and indirectly, with their newfound skills in a lifetime.

I'd even argue in favor of government financial aid for international students that meet certain bars of merit or talent. Give them a free ride if they are that talented. Then let them build the next company and hire a bunch of Americans. Hand them a US passport as well if they get there.

Also, PhDs are another story -- they are not revenue sources for the university, but they are a means to quality research, and very much an investment.

> Singapore and Australia (and maybe others I don't know about) allow international students to apply for permanent residency if they meet certain very reasonable qualifications and it works out very much in their favor for retaining talent.

I don't know about Singapore but this definitely isn't true for Australia these days -- visa programs in Australia are far more strict than they used to be (in fact, my parents and I probably couldn't have migrated here under the current visa system -- we came to Australia in 1999).

The Temporary Graduate visa (485) is -- as the name suggests -- temporary, and only lasts between 2-4 years if you graduated from an Australian university. If you want to go for permanent residency you (generally speaking) need to be endorsed by your employer through the Employer Nomination Scheme visa (186) which requires 3 years work experience in your field -- the practical upshot is that you would need to have been granted a visa that lasts longer than 3 years (no guarantee of this), get a job in your field immediately after you graduate (seriously no guarantee of this since many employers in fields like engineering illegally discriminate against people who hold temporary working visas), and find an employer (within the last few months of your visa) who is willing to nominate you for permanent residency and has an existing labour agreement with the government.

It's not impossible to do, but it's hardly a simple procedure and it's definitely not true that graduates have a guaranteed roadmap to apply for permanent residency. There are some visa programs which in theory would allow you to apply for permanent residency earlier, but they are invitation-only and usually have pretty high requirements which most people wouldn't fulfil.

> Yeah no, screw that crap. I don't know the exact regulation framework that would accomplish my intent but you understand what I mean.

> I'm talking about all the people with bonafide degrees and skillsets. 4-year bachelor degrees, PhDs, MDs, and the like.

I know what you mean, but that's not good enough; you'd need to find a way to make it legislatively watertight, and I'm not sure that's possible.

The issue is that America is allergic to sensible regulation so never would you find a way to craft a law that allowed those 4-year bachelor degrees to be counted without pulling in all the for-profit unis and if you attempted that you'd be buried in lawsuits and public outcry.

They're not saying to exclude everyone else, just that if you are here for four years getting a degree, you should be able to stay.

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