
Foreigners Attending US Grad Schools Way Down: Wake Up, Xenophobes - vaksel
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/23/foreigners-attending-us-grad-schools-way-down-wake-up-xenophobes/
======
mustpax
As a foreigner who has been successfully ousted from the U. S. by the H1-B
quota, let me tell you that life is better in Canada.

The permanent residence program for skilled labor in Canada is infinitely less
cumbersome and convoluted than the green card track in the U.S. More
importantly, it only takes about a year or so, regardless of your nationality
(hi Indians).

As for taxes, I was paying taxes in California, so the difference in total
taxes is really not that much. Plus you get free healthcare. The healthcare
benefits I get from my employer on top of government healthcare really goes
above and beyond what I've seen in the U.S.

So, yeah folks, please do as I did, vote with your feet. No one deserves to
have their hard work viewed as parasitic.

~~~
pkaler
_As for taxes, I was paying taxes in California, so the difference in total
taxes is really not that much. Plus you get free healthcare. The healthcare
benefits I get from my employer on top of government healthcare really goes
above and beyond what I've seen in the U.S._

Just to be clear, Canadian Health Care is not "free". It is publicly-funded
and privately-delivered through a single-payer insurance system. For example,
my MSP payments are $250 or so for each quarter.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Canada>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Health_Act>

I think we should be extra clear about how the Canadian system actually works
especially given the debate currently in the US.

~~~
potatolicious
Good point, but the point still stands: "free" in this case doesn't mean not
paying for it, but rather that it's a flat-fee service with no exhaustible
upper bound on usage (e.g. if you get hospitalized 5 times in a year the
insurance company won't bail).

In the Canadian system there is no chance that the insurance company will
weasel out of a payment using a litany of the common excuses that are used in
the USA. If you are covered, _you are covered_ , and that's peace of mind you
can't even buy with money in America.

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pg
One advantage of funding so many startups is that we can observe trends among
them. Immigration issues seem to be the single biggest external source of pain
for startups right now.

The second biggest is the iPhone app store approval process. And the two have
a lot in common: absolute judgements made by people who don't really
understand what they're judging, and who are not subject to any kind of
external forces themselves.

~~~
e40
There are several people I'd like to hire, but can't because they're outside
the US. It's really too bad, because they're a perfect fit for our team. We've
been looking in the US but can't find anyone that fits nearly as well. <sigh>

~~~
nir
Why don't you hire them to work remotely then?

~~~
e40
We may, but remote is not nearly as good as local, and when they are 8 time
zones away it is _much_ less effective than them being somewhere in the US.

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jhancock
This is a highly uneven article.

"It’s happening: Lou Dobbs’ dream come true and Silicon Valley’s worst
nightmare."

ok, lets start the article by sprinkling some politics on it.

"We’re already seeing the reverse brain drain as smart immigrants take their
US educations and experience building companies and creating technology back
to their home countries."

ok, maybe this is happening. Any numbers on that? Any success figures on
people who were in the U.S. and went back to their home country to
successfully found a startup and create jobs?

"But now, xenophobia and the lack of any sensible H-1B visa policy is keeping
the world’s brightest minds from coming to the U.S. in the first place."

Really? Sure, the visa programs are tight. The sentence starts with "But now"
as if something happened. Maybe something did happen. The economy is certain
way down. China is way up. India is doing pretty well too. But did I miss
something? Have visa policies been changed in the last 18 months?

That's just the first 3 sentences. This article has a lot of spirit but not
much substance.

~~~
bbgm
It was much easier to get a green card when I applied (pre 9/11) than it is
today. I know some people with amazing qualifications, successful track
records, who've been in the green card process for years. Plus the "are you a
permanent resident" question is far more of a blocker now than it used to be.
Combine that with opportunities back home and in other countries and you have
a problem.

I don't have numbers, but there is enough anecdotal evidence out there. It's
not necessarily a bad thing for the home country, but not having options is
frustrating.

~~~
jhancock
Should the "are you a permanent resident" question continue to be a roadblock?
Its my understanding the visa programs are meant to help out the U.S. long
term by bringing in immigrants that makes the U.S. their home (my favorite
reason) and short term to fill immediate skill shortage. If you do not intend
to stay by being a permanent resident, why should the government lend a hand?

This is a serious question? Any answers on this? Maybe a better question is
what are reasons that people do not want to become a permanent resident?

~~~
hristov
I think the problem is that people do want to become a permanent resident, but
cannot. "Permanent resident" is a specific immigration term which essentially
means "person that has a green card." I know many people that want to make the
US their permanent home but are simply not able to get a green card.

~~~
potatolicious
Agreed. I came from Canada to work in the USA on a temporary visa (the TN if
anyone's interested). I like the country, but as of right now I'm tied to my
employer and have no freedom of movement - and even if I was on a H-1B, where
there's a shot at PR, I would still be chained to my employer for effectively
the next decade or so.

This is no way to treat skilled labour trying to enter your country.

------
helveticaman
"And nearly every CEO will tell you how much added cost and hassle there is in
hiring a foreign-born worker—they do it because they physically can not find
enough appropriately skilled workers in the U.S."

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. A lot of people say killing the
H1B program would instantly create 50,000 new jobs for Americans. Ask the next
person that tells you this to solve a deeply technical problem for you, just
to see if he _can actually perform the immigrant's work_. There should be a
notion of the difference between skilled and unskilled labor.

~~~
nearlyacanuck
If you kick out all the Indians/Chinese/Russians then American kids will all
switch from law school to doing physics PhDs to take all the superbly paid
jobs in American industry. It's only the presence of foreigners that is
causing Americans to fail science and forcing them to aim for law and MBAs in
their struggle to find a job.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
I'm pretty sure you're being sarcastic and expressing your point in that
manner, but the downvotes show that here on HN many people have a sarcasm
detector that doesn't work. Think "Sheldon" from "Big Bang Theory."

Of course, I choose to believe that you are intelligent, therefore cannot
possibly mean what you appeared to say, and hence must have been being
sarcastic. If I'm wrong, then perhaps you could clarify.

~~~
nwatson
quote from grandparent: "It's only the presence of foreigners that is causing
Americans to fail science and forcing them to aim for law and MBAs in their
struggle to find a job." ... I agree with parent, obvious sarcasm. Great
point.

~~~
nearlyacanuck
That is one problem with moving to Canada - you will have to become bilingual
in sarcasm+irony. There are federal programs to help with this, or you can
inrole in monty python-immersion school.

------
mattlanger
"Make no mistake: This is a huge blow for the United States, and particularly
Silicon Valley."

This is not a new phenomenon: graduate programs saw a similar decline
immediately following Sept. 11, and it only turned around a few years later
when certain internationally hostile components of the Patriot Act and other
national security legislation were reversed.

Second: there is nothing about this blow that is "particular" to Silicon
Valley. When graduate students are being denied visas, _all_ programs and
professions suffer. Our culture and economy are as adversely affected by a
scarcity of engineering candidates as it is by a dearth of humanities
scholars.

~~~
ahoyhere
As a person with a foreign national husband (then-boyfriend) of several years,
I can tell you that even the _visiting_ process for foreigners has gotten
worse since 2006.

We looked into him moving to the US and it was beyond ridiculous. So I moved
to Austria.

Yeah, by "foreign national" I meant Austria. Nothing like coming back home
from your trip to Vienna and being questioned for 10 minutes about where you
met your boyfriend, and where did he grow up... like I have been. What could I
have gotten up to, sneaking in 10 pounds of pure, medical grade schnitzel?

I agree with the article's premise. The xenophobia in the US is astounding,
and getting worse.

~~~
ido
> As a person with a foreign national husband (then-boyfriend) of several
> years, I can tell you that even the visiting process for foreigners has
> gotten worse since 2006.

But as far as I know EU citizens (which most definitely includes Austrians) do
not require a visa to visit the US for up to 3 months - is that incorrect?

~~~
ahoyhere
Even EU citizens had to fill out special paperwork on the plane, and then get
your fingerprints and iris scan taken.

Now you have to fill out special paperwork online, and get a "preapproval for
travel" (it sounds so draconian, you can't believe), and fill out paperwork on
the plane, and scan your iris, and give a fingerprint, and they can still
reject you at the border for no reason.

It's fucking nuts.

There was a case not long ago at Dulles International, in VA (but really, the
major airport for DC), with an Italian law student arrested and sitting in
jail for nearly 2 weeks for no reason at all. He was visiting his American
girlfriend and his English was bad, so they tossed him in jail on suspicion of
wanting to overstay. They would not let him return to Italy on the next
flight, they just tossed him in jail, in a foreign country.

If his girlfriend's family hadn't been well-off and connected to the state
senator, who could say what would have happened?

That's the airport I fly through. My husband speaks perfect English, but how
scary is that?

Reference: <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/us/14visa.html>

(And, on a personal opinion note - Dulles is really the airport for the
nation's capitol, but it's more like the nation's asshole. I have been to
almost all major city airports in the US and it is by far the worst. It is
staffed entirely by horrible, unthinking, semi-literate power-crazed thugs -
men and women. They yell instead of putting up guides or signs. They yell
louder if you do not understand English. And that's where I got questioned for
15 minutes after returning from _Vienna_. And this is the face we show to
hundreds of thousands of foreigners every year, traveling to witness the
greatest country in the world.)

~~~
ido
I didn't know it was that bad, I have visited the US last in '97 and have
traveled extensively in other countries since then (I also live in Vienna
BTW).

I assumed that as long as you are not coming from some 3rd world country it
wouldn't be significantly worse than entering the EU, but now I am rethinking
previous plans of visiting the US.

I don't need to go there that badly & risk that sort of madness.

------
geebee
I do think there's some real hyperbole in this article. A 3% decline (that
appears to be the figure cited in this article) _may_ be a troublesome trend,
but I'm not sure I'd call it "way down".

The author also cites the loss of diversity in graduate programs. All I have
is personal experience: as an American in a PhD program in Engineering at
Berkeley, I became very, very accustomed to being the only person in the room
who spoke english as a first language. People who were born in California (or
came up through the Californian educational system) are definitely a minority
in these graduate programs (This is rare - Indians a not tiny minority in the
grad programs at IIT. I doubt that French citizens a tiny minority at the
École Polytechnique?). Personally, I think it would be a _good_ trend for the
US if 60% of the students in our graduate STEM programs had come up through
our own educational system.

I read so much bile in both directions - and by throwing out the "xenophobe"
accusation I think that the author of this post just added a bit more bile. I
can understand why someone might start to equate criticism of the H1B program
with xenophobes after glancing at some of the comments (and let's be fair
here, there's often a tremendous amount of anti-americanism in these comments
on H1B issues as well), but I insist that a person can reasonably want to see
a higher percentage of US citizens in STEM programs in american universities,
and should be able to advocate this without being called a xenophobe.

------
pmorici
Isn't Lou Dobb's thing usually rallying against illegal unskilled immigrant
labor particularly from Mexico? What does that have to do with the skilled
H-1B issue. I admittedly don't watch Dobbs, ever, but it seems like techcrunch
is just trying to pick a fight.

------
drawkbox
Tesla brought us many great things and he was an immigrant. With that I would
just add that it is not just immigrants from China and India that we should be
courting and treating better.

We should be getting immigrants from all over the world not just the larger
cheaper labor markets. Tesla was from Serbia (Croatia now). We should not have
any precedence or preference to where smart immigrants are from.

But remember this, the larger the group of people, the more there are better
skilled workers. But also the larger the group of people the more there are
mediocre or substandard skilled workers.

This doesn't mean that every skilled person we let in will be good. Sure there
will be more quality candidates from larger populaces than the US, but there
will also be that many less skilled workers to the scale of the originating
country compared to the US.

I am all for open immigration for skilled people and I think other countries
should have the same policies. Largely on the latter point, they are just as
xenophobic as the US is on this matter.

------
ujjwalg
I completely agree with Sarah. Being a PhD student about to finish in sciences
and starting my own company which is already ramen profitable, the biggest
concern of mine is how can I stay in US, after I am done with my PhD. I am not
that worried about funding, revenues, marketing as much as I am worried about
immigration. I wish there was something like PG mentioned in the founders visa
article or things are much easier if you are a PhD in STEM in US. I am
preparing myself to move back at this point.

~~~
caffeine
Canada, baby! Or the UK. The UK is a great place to be.

------
yummyfajitas
This article ignores the fact that student visas are a ridiculously expensive
way to recruit foreign talent.

A PhD student costs $20-50k/year ($20k stipend, training costs which vary by
field, even private universities are heavily subsidized by the govt), so
figure costs of $100-250k/student. If 50% of student visas become citizens,
that's a _cost_ of $200k-500k per new skilled citizen.

Visas for skilled workers are a much more cost effective way of recruiting
high skill talent. Auctioning off citizenship/visas would also be more
effective.

Student visas are nothing but a subsidy to the college industry.

~~~
ardit33
huh? Foreign students have to pay tuition just as everybody else, even worse,
they don't get 'in-state' breaks, or federal loans, or any other help american
students get.

All scholarships they get are merit based, (either academic, or sports),
otherwise they will have to pay their own schooling.

~~~
yummyfajitas
PhD students (the ones I was referring to) don't pay tuition and get stipends
of about $20k/year. The real cost is about $30-50k/year.

Even students who pay tuition are not paying the full cost of their education
in most cases. College is highly subsidized and 'in-state' tuition breaks
comprise only a portion of that subsidy.

It's bad enough that we subsidize college. It's even more wasteful to funnel
money to colleges as an alleged way to recruit high skill workers. It's simply
not necessary; if we want high skill workers, all we need to do is pick a
number and issue that many visas. We can probably even make it revenue
positive by issuing visas by auction, rather than by queuing.

------
rams
vaksel, Do you work for TechCrunch ? You seem to regularly submit TC articles.
Just curious. thx.

~~~
davidw
A lot of people have techcrunch in their "feed readers", and it's an obvious
karma generator, for those who are into that kind of thing.

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00joe
Reading Techcrunch is like watching Fox News - Breaking News!!!!!! OMG the
world is going to end!!!!!!!!!!!!!

