Some thoughts on foreign graduate student citizenship

[johnd83]

Last edited Wed Jan 25, 2012, 03:47 AM - Edit history (1)

I recently finished graduate school earning my Ph.D. in engineering (Hurray!). During my time in graduate school I had lots of foreign friends and fellow students. There were not that many US citizens working toward a PhD. considering it was in the US; the reasons for this are numerous and fairly complex. I can go into them if anyone is interested. Because of the way graduate students are funded it works out that many of them were actually funded by NSF or other federal money. I am not against having foreign students studying in the US and having federal funding. The US has been a haven for scientists and engineers for several generations. What does really bother me though is the immigration policy.

I asked some of my friends if they were planning on staying in the US. Some were, some were not. Talking with them I found out that attempting to work in the US even with a Ph.D. was a bureaucratic nightmare requiring complex visa paperwork and sponsorship from a company. If they were let go or wanted to change jobs, they would lose the visa and be back at square one. Some of my friends had decided it was just too complicated to stay in the US and were going to return home.

So we are left in a situation where we attract and pay to educate the best and brightest in the entire world, but when they are done we send them home to compete against us even though many of them would like to stay. This is a relatively simple problem to fix: if a foreign student earns an advanced degree in STEM or related field they get some form of permanent residence with a path to citizenship. I don't even see why this is controversial! There is a huge shortage of skilled engineers and scientists.

I know this was a minor point in the SOTU but I think it is one that is overlooked too often.

[jberryhill]

1. Are you doing a post-doc?

What are your immediate plans?

[johnd83]

2. Part time post doc + small business

The part time post doc gives me some income and health insurance while I try to launch a small consulting business. I am more interested in research and development than teaching.

[exboyfil]

3. Interesting post

Let me tell you my story. Back in the early 1990s I was looking to go back to graduate school in Engineering. While my undergraduate work was not stellar, I had been working in industry for 7 years getting As in MBA and correspondence Masters Engineering courses (the engineering courses were from Iowa State). I had also been paying taxes to the state of Iowa for seven years. I also had pretty good GRE scores (general and Engineering)

I tried to get an engineering teaching or research assistantship at either Iowa State or Iowa, and I was unable to obtain one. When I finally went to Iowa in 1992 (after being laid off by my employer), I found almost every M.S. student had an assistantship except me. As you noted probably 50% or more of the M.S. students were foreign nationals. I did very well in my engineering classes at Iowa, and I eventually got my M.S. without receiving a dime from the university. The fact that I did well in my classes demonstrates that I had the aptitude for M.S. work in engineering. I do fairly advanced work at my current employer, and I publish some.

My question is why wouldn't a U.S. citizen - especially one from the same state be given a little more consideration for assistantship money? Compared to a 4.0 from some India university, I probably did not look like as strong a candidate, but seven years of work experience should count for something.

My daughter is leaning towards engineering as a profession, and I struggle to advice her on whether it makes sense to go into it. I think it does, but look at the number of engineering degrees being awarded worldwide. I see a glut in the field. I do think that more attention should be paid to attracting U.S. citizens to M.S. and PhD programs. I can see your argument about training foreign workers and then forcing them out of the country, but why should not U.S. students get those jobs instead? One thing that could immediately happpen is make the engineering departments cover the full out of state tuition for their foreign assistants. At least when I was at Iowa, out of state and foreign assistants were treated as in state for tuition purposes. This allows the engineering departments' money to go further.

As far as H1B Visas, I would simplify it. No more posting for U.S. citizens because it is a joke anyway. If you or your employer pays $40K/yr, you get to stay in this country and work. If US engineers cannot compete on those terms, then we are in the wrong business anyway. We can argue about the number.

[johnd83]

4. I think things have actually gotten a little worse

At my university there are two sources of funding: teaching assistants (TA) and research assistant (RA). The TA are funded internally, and the RA are funded externally by companies or from government grants. About 3-4 years ago they changed the rules so that a student could only get 2 years of TA funding, meaning that every student needed external funding to finish a Ph.D. This is a very hard situation considering the economy crashed about that time and it led to a lot of pain. About 6-7 years ago my university introduced a 5-year co-terminal masters program that allowed a student to keep their undergraduate funding arrangement (whatever they decided to knock off the top since the tuition is so ridiculously high anyway...) and get a master's degree. The problem with this situation is that they usually wind up with an M.Eng. instead of an M.S. The M.Eng. degree is basically a dead-end in graduate school.

I feel your pain for funding. My advisor for my M.S. liked my work and promised to fund me throughout my Ph.D. Even then it was struggle and I worked on a lot of different projects over the years to stay funded.

The real problem here is that we just aren't investing enough in research and graduate level education. It is not that there are too many foreign graduate students, there just aren't enough students period. A relative pittance of federal government investment in NSF, NIH, etc. would do have a massive payoff economically.

[JDPriestly]

5. I have a sister with a PhD in a math and computer field.

She continues to take science courses and is just brilliant, but she can't get good jobs. It is partly because people from foreign countries get those jobs and then hire others from their countries. They seem to discount the grades and qualifications of American-educated applicants.

I would rather see the US spend much more on identifying American-born children who show interest and talent for math and then helping them finance their education in science and math.

My kids were interested in math and science and really excelled in school. We are in a city in which they got a lot of opportunities to move ahead at their own speed. The key was that they were spotted early not just at home but by their teachers.

We need to do more to identify talented children and encourage them. Mentoring by professionals in science and math is a good idea in my opinion. American children are exposed to artists on television and in the movies. But rarely do they see or learn much about how satisfying professions in science and math can be.

[johnd83]

6. I am suprised to hear she is having trouble finding a job

A lot of defense contractors desperately need US citizens to work for them because of security clearance issues. It also depends how applied her area is. Finding an academic job can be very tough.

I would also very much like to see more US citizens in science and math but we both culturally and economically discourage it at the moment.

[hfojvt]

7. I have a BA in math and an MA in economics

I have found both degrees to be worthless. I scored 1590 on the GRE in quantitative and analytical so presumably I am fairly good at math. I have worked the last ten years as a janitor, and before that for three years as a factory temp. If there is some shortage of mathematicians then I must be invisible or something.

Oh, and I live right next to a military base. Defense contractors? Hah, the only people they hire are retired officers, which this town is flooded with.

Back in 1986 I worked for the Air Force. I heard they had so many ROTC officers with engineering degrees that they had more engineers than they had engineering work.

[johnd83]

8. Math is tricky

It really depends what area of math you studied. With economics you end up competing against all the MBAs and that is a completely different can of worms. My parents both have PhDs in math and didn't get that far. They both taught for a while, but my dad ended up working as a computer programmer (this was before there were separate computer science programs). My math major friends have all done OK recently. You may be running into age discrimination at this point rather than lack of engineering jobs. (I don't know how old you are but you claim to have been working in 1986.) It is something that is not isolated to engineering.

I don't know about the glut of ROTC engineers. Defense contractors recruit very heavily in mu university and I have a lot of friends working for them.

To be fair, my biomed-engieering friends can't find jobs. Not all areas are always going to be in demand. That being said, most of my friends have found decent work.

[Nikia]

9. In some ways, I feel for them

On the other hand, there are Americans that are having a difficult time finding jobs in those areas. I know that many of them don't have doctorate degrees.
Is a doctorate degree in engineering always necessary for the job. Are people with lesser degrees that have been researching in those areas for the last 10+ years completely unqualified? Would large companies be willing to arrange part time work and paid tuition for graduate degrees for their employees with undergraduate degrees? Is an engineering degree always necessary? Might a person with an undergraduate degree in science be able to do the job, especially if they are hired at the entry level and learn more about the product and processes as they go.

[johnd83]

10. To be honest, I don't really know

what the answer to the immigration vs unemployment debate is. But what is happening now is talented people are going back to their home countries and taking the research capabilities with them and companies are starting to outsource research. If this is allowed to continue it will be a catastrophe and it must be stopped. It is critical we keep the best and brightest here in this country wherever they are from or we will lose the only advantage we have economically right now.

[Vehl]

11. My thoughts, as an Immigrant

First of all, Thank you johnd83 for this thread and post. I've seen quite a lot of posts on this/related subjects on DU over the years and have usually stayed away from participating in them. The reason I do not participate is that I'm usually sickened by the anti Immigrant(only towards the tech workers/students) posts some members make on such threads. However even though I do know that most of DU'ers do not share the views of those vocal few, such posts leave me with a bad taste in my mouth and usually keeps me away from DU for a few days

I applaud the way that you have presented both sides of the argument, and I have to say that its not often one gets to see such a post. When I was watching the State of the Union address by the president I noticed his statement regarding students and tech/science immigrants (which you also did). Imho this is a welcome and long overdue one.

So we are left in a situation where we attract and pay to educate the best and brightest in the entire world, but when they are done we send them home to compete against us even though many of them would like to stay. This is a relatively simple problem to fix: if a foreign student earns an advanced degree in STEM or related field they get some form of permanent residence with a path to citizenship. I don't even see why this is controversial! There is a huge shortage of skilled engineers and scientists.

(ps: Just to clarify..now onwards this post is a general post and not a response to yours )

You have hit the nail on the head here. If i remember correctly, more than 70% of the PHD holders in the science/tech fields are immigrants. Almost all of them came here as students. It will not be incorrect to say that the current position of leadership America enjoys in the Science/Tech arena is due to these very immigrants...at least to a significant degree.

I understand the worries of those who believe such a policy will negatively impact American workers. However if one were to look at the history of American innovation and job creation, one would see the huge contributions made by immigrants, especially in the past few decades( One should also not disregard the influx of German and other immigrant(scientists, mathematicians..etc etc) to the US after WW2, which provided a huge boost to the American tech/science base).

The field of computing...especially the Silicon Valley has always had immigrant blood running through it veins..even from the onset.Immigrants, especially the tech/science immigrants have contributed so much to the American economy, both in the form of job creation and innovation.

Some of the Companies(from a long list) founded/Co-founded by Immigrants include

Google
Yahoo
Intel
Youtube
Sun microsystems
Hotmail ( Which gave us the concept of free email)
Ebay

The list goes on.

"these immigrant founded companies employed 450,000 workers. Add it up. That’s far more than all the tech workers we gave green cards to in that period."

18% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants and their children founded another 22%.
This represents 1.7 Trillion (in 2010)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2011/06/19/40-percent-of-fortune-500-companies-founded-by-immigrants-or-their-children/

Furthermore H1B workers/Students(Not included the large number of naturalized immigrants)
They also founded half of the top 50 new startups in America
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/21/immigrants-startups_n_1162590.html

Not to mention the fact that they are also responsible for 25% of the Global patents America was awarded

In 2006, more than 25% of U.S. global patents had authors who were born abroad — and this doesn’t even count people like me, who came here, became citizens, and then filed multiple patents. Of Qualcomm’s global patents, 72% had foreign-born authors, as did 65% of Merck’s, 64% of GE’s, and 60% of Cisco’s. I’m not talking about silly patents filed with the U.S. Patent Office here, I’m talking about WIPO PCT applications — the patents that help our companies compete globally.

The point I would like to get across to those who are considering the Immigration policy towards tech/science students/workers is that they are and have always been one of the most productive and innovative segments of the society. America has gained/gains a lot due to the efforts of these immigrants and to demonize them/blame them is a clear case of being penny wise and pound foolish.

I accept that others might disagree with my views, and I do not want to clutter this post with more statistics and facts.
We Immigrants have always believed that America is a land of opportunity that rewards those who work hard, and have always lived/tried to live up to its Ideals..it saddens me to see us getting the short end of the stick sometimes.

[IMG][/IMG]

“What America’s basically saying is, ‘We’ve educated you, we’ve trained you, we’ve taught you all about our markets,’” says Vivek Wadhwa, a successful Indian-born tech entrepreneur turned Duke University professor, and the leading U.S. expert on Indian immigration. “‘Now you have to get the hell out of here. Go out and become our competitors.’

“We couldn’t have a more stupid national policy than we do,” Wadhwa adds. “These people don’t want to be competing with America. They want to be competing for America.”

The Reverse Brain Drain is real. For Decades the best and the brightest from all over the world came to America. In fact it was a huge Boon for America and a Crushing loss for their nation of Origin...which educated them (often on the taxpayer's dime), only to see its best minds leave to the US. Now...the trend might be changing...and if America is not willing to realize the huge benefits these immigrants bring to it..it will lose one of its greatest advantages.


Here is an excellent article about the issues Immigrants face and the antiquated immigration policies of America which is making tens of thousands of highly educated Immigrants go back to their home countries.


Home is where the brain is
~By Benjamin Schrier, Photograph by Michael Rubenstein | | August 13, 2009 , San Francisco Magazine.
http://www.modernluxury.com/san-francisco/story/home-where-brain

An excerpt from the article

He landed on the California coast in 2002, riding a shining wave of Indian immigration. It wasn’t the first of its kind. For decades, those swells traversed the Pacific and smashed to rolling white breakers south of San Francisco. India’s best and brightest swept inland, helped turn a valley full of orchards to Silicon. And Silicon turned to gold, as baby-faced kings with Coke-bottle glasses made millions overnight.

At 22, Gaurav left the noise and squalor of Mumbai far behind. He started out as a lonely grad student, dirt-poor, scared, and baffled that a few bananas could cost a whole dollar. With no car, he walked everywhere, miles at a time. But soon he found himself breathing the rarefied air of Google, high-tech’s Shangri-La. He put down roots and thrived, grew his dark hair long, bought a Prius.

They kept coming to the Bay, men and women just like him, drawn to the univer­sities’ regal gates, the salaries unimaginable in India, and the chance to work on technology’s cutting edge. By 2005, more than half of all the engineers in Silicon Valley were foreign-born, and a full quarter of those were Indian.

But times are changing. American jobs for American workers! cry the protectionists, as they always do when the going gets tough. Go back to where you came from! cry modern-day Know Nothings, as they always do when people are scared enough to listen. And for the first time in American history, the immigrants are going back, by the tens of thousands. Some go by choice, as India's pull grows stronger by the day. Some—casual­ties of contracting payrolls and unforgiving visas—have no choice. To Delhi, to Bangalore, to Chennai trickles the lifeblood of innovation.

When the human waves came crashing through, we reaped the benefits. In the fat years of harvest, we grew complacent. But waves that scramble up the beach, no matter how massive, always recede. We turned our backs on the ocean, and forgot about the undertow.