Trump administration weighs suspending program for foreign students

[SpankMe]

Source: NBCNews.com

At the direction of the White House, the Department of Homeland Security has sent recommendations for further restricting legal immigration during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to one former and two current administration officials.

The program, known as Optional Practical Training, or OPT, is an incentive for foreign students to come to U.S. universities, as it provides some cushion between school and employment. Talk of suspending OPT has pitted business interests against immigration hard-liners like President Donald Trump's senior adviser Stephen Miller, the officials said.

"Suspending or ending OPT makes no practical sense — it solves no problem, it reduces the quality of America's higher education system, and it threatens the international exchange of ideas so vital to academic freedom," said Julie Schmid, executive director of the American Association of University Professors.

Representatives of the White House and DHS did not respond to requests for comment.

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/trump-administration-weighs-suspending-program-foreign-students-prompting-backlash-business-n1207251

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Killing America, one policy at a time

[Iliyah]

1. Except for Russia, et al. . .

[jimfields33]

2. I doubt this program will happen anyway for a few years

Nobody is going to want to travel outside their own country until this virus is over.

[a la izquierda]

9. You're joking right?

The university for which I work- as well as countless others throughout the world- are scrambling to figure out how to deal with foreign students who are either stranded here or who are trying to get visas to study here or elsewhere (myself included).

[jimfields33]

10. I guess.

Why are you chatting about an old thread?????

[DBoon]

3. "threatens the international exchange of ideas so vital to academic freedom"

Mission accomplished.

See Hungary for another example.

[Igel]

7. Consider the direction.

These are students who come here to study. After they graduate--or while still students--they can work for up to three years in STEM fields.

They finish, they have two choices: Stay in the US or leave.

If they stay, there's no international exchange of ideas. Students trained in the US stay in the US.

If they leave, there's an international exchange of ideas. Students trained in the US go home, taking with them their practical training skills.

In 2016 almost half of the OPT students were from the PRC. A number have been caught with data-packed drives from the labs they worked at, containing not just the data from their projects from data from other lab groups' projects that shared the same network.

In 2018 the number of PRC students was less than the number of students from India, but that was the result of a drop off and greater background checks looking for associations that the current administration considered unsavory.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

4. Let him. Biden can open up when the orange virus is removed from the WH Jan 2021. . nt

[Renew Deal]

5. This is another bad idea

We want people coming here, thinking, and inventing things. Otherwise, they can conduct their research elsewhere.

[Evolve Dammit]

6. With our death toll far exceeding all other countries, I wouldn't be coming here.