1. EB-1: A visa given to an alien of extraordinary ability. The requirements for this are complex but a person with a decent lawyer should be able to navigate them provided the person has access to enough people in academia and industry who vouch that this person is of extraordinary ability.
2. EB-2: Employment sponsorship. Both academic institutions and industry have a standard practice of sponsoring people who have done any form of grad. school to a path that involves a green card.
Now, sure, 1) has overly bizarre documentation requirements (like for example requiring that one print out every paper that one has written and send it to USCIS) and 2) takes way too long for people born in India and China. This of course requires reform in a fair manner that takes into account other constraints like making sure that immigration doesn't become top heavy from two nations.
The sequoia capital article talks about foreign born students getting ejected. Do we have any quantitative data on how many of them are really being ejected? ( Acquiring a H1B visa to work in the United States is not hard. When, I (a foreign born student) graduated and applied for an H1B visa, it took ten days for it to get approved. ) Have there been surveys done on people who have voluntarily left for personal reasons vs. people who left because of this issue?
1) People who have non C.S. degrees even from good schools. Once you have finished your degree, you have three months to find a job. Some people don't find a job within those three months and are forced to leave. Honestly, I am not sure what the solution to that is? Stapling a green card on their applications post graduation seems good to help an indefinite stay but what if you can't find a job in 6 months? 9 months?
2) People who don't want to stay here. Their objective is to go back home.
Actually, the difficulty varies from year to year and from company to company and from subfield to subfield. So yes, people do suffer from the status quo.
Just throwing this info here in the interest of completeness.
Actually, I do think you can apply for an EB-1 before acquiring an H-1B. I presume your concern is because of the single intent nature of the F1 visa, if so, there are people who have performed an adjustment of status whilst on OPT. Now, again in the interest of full disclosure, the only reason I applied for an H1B was because I knew that I would be applying for an adjustment of status in a few months and decided to be safer than sorry. However, I came to know later that quite a few people on OPT applied for one and didn't have problems.
> Actually, the difficulty varies from year to year and from company to company and from subfield to subfield. So yes, people do suffer from the status quo.
I am not denying there are exceptions: Some exceptions which seem justified to me include denial based on the fact that the company is a sweat shop which USCIS is cracking down on more (I am not opposed to this.). The other is delays (which can be indefinite) due to security reasons. This is especially guaranteed if you work in robotics, machine learning, biology or are a muslim etc
My point was that in general the system is not completely irrevocably broken down. Yes, it requires cleanup, a refactoring to make it simpler. Personally, I hate hate hate the H1B system and think it is one step above bonded labor, where a unscrupulous employer can fuck with you if he wishes to. Also, there needs to be considerable reform in the way green cards are allotted on an employment basis: I would love for a point based system that integrated all the different paths to permanent residency that we have right now.
Before getting into it, I'll say that I agree on policy. It is pretty dumb to send CS PhD recipients from reputable universities home, or force them to go through the idiocy of temporary work visas with dual intent to remain in the us. It makes more sense to just grant residency.
I just have a very, very different opinion about the rest of this.
First, I think that PhD programs in the sciences are generally a poor return on investment relative to other options (the professional degrees, in particular). Here's a link to a RAND study that concludes that the American allergy to STEM PhD's is rational and market-driven.
http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html
My guess would be that PhDs in CS are a better investment than science degrees in the aggregate. However, PhD degrees in CS still have sky high attrition rates and time to completion compared to the professions, and salary and employment prospects long term for top students who could attend elite law, medical, business, or other professional schools are still better than what is offered by PhD programs.
In short, I think that any "shortage", to the extent that it exists, is market driven and rational. PhD programs need to face a reckoning, and they need to change. The RAND study makes some good suggestions, but PhD programs won't change if they can position themselves as gatekeepers to US residency. They'll just wave goodbye to the Americans who already have residency and don't have to go through this bullshit, and continue their abuse of students who have fewer legal options to reside here.
This brings me to my next disagreement - that PhD students make up the costs of their scholarship "to some extent." I think this is a vast understatement. Talented PhD students in STEM fields are profit centers for universities. The work product of a 5th year PhD student in a biochemistry lab vastly exceeds the minor stipend this student is paid. This is why PhD programs like to string out their students. It's a big reason for why they won't move to the professional model (advocated by the RAND study).
In short, I hold opposing positions here, depending on which perspective I take. Yes, PhD graduates from STEM programs should be granted residency, it's nuts to send them home or force them to jump through hoops. No, PhD programs should not, under any circumstances, hold the power to grant residency to international students. They will abuse this - they already do.