Student Union
- By Aline Barros
H-1B Visa Halt Will Deter Foreign Students, Experts Say
A Trump administration order to suspend H-1B, J and other temporary work visas will further deter international students from seeking higher education in the United States, education experts say.
The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) – an advocacy organization of public research universities, land-grant institutions, state university systems, and higher education organizations in all 50 states – said they are "deeply" concerned about Monday's presidential proclamation.
“We can’t afford to cede ground to international competitors at this critical time,” APLU president Peter McPherson said on the association’s website. “Suspending new visas in these areas will hamstring our economic recovery and diminish our standing as the world’s most innovative economy.”
Among the organization’s 246 members with significant numbers of foreign students are California Polytechnic State University, University of Missouri-Columbia and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
H-1B visas cover highly skilled occupations that require at least a bachelor’s degree or equivalent. The suspension affects applicants, not existing visa holders.
J visas include exchange visitors, such as foreign nationals participating in programs as interns, trainees, teachers, camp counselors, au pairs or summer workers.
“We also urge the administration to bolster efforts to keep foreign-born graduates in the United States. We draw the world’s brightest minds to our university campuses, and we should make every effort to ensure they make discoveries, start businesses and create jobs in the United States," McPherson said.
President Donald Trump's executive order is intended to protect U.S. workers, the White House said.
“That’s gonna help out recent grads who are American and legal immigrants, and also people who’ve been sidelined by the pandemic who might be able to step in and will now have a chance at some of these seasonal jobs that are now not gonna be filled with foreign workers,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at Center for Immigration Studies.
“This move is going to help our recovery in that way, by putting people back to work who otherwise would not have had the chance to get these jobs.”
But Cato Institute immigration policy analyst David Bier said the order is economically baseless.
"It will hurt the recovery and U.S. workers,” Bier said. “Foreign workers create demand for other better jobs for U.S. workers elsewhere in the economy.
“Restricting migration will not lower unemployment, but it will harm American businesses — that are struggling to make it through this period — who employ both Americans and immigrants," he said.
U.S. companies are allowed to employ foreign workers who hold H-1B non-immigrant visas. The holders are allowed to stay in the U.S. for only 60 days without being paid. As the COVID-19 pandemic has shuttered businesses, many H-1B visa holders have lost their jobs and, unlike American workers, don't qualify for unemployment benefits.
Experts say the U.S. technology industry will suffer drastically if H1-B visa holders lose their legal work status in the U.S.
“If the U.S. government really bans H1-B, J-1, etc., the U.S. science will be dead soon, which means the U.S. industry and technology, too,” tweeted Yukiko Yamashita, a developmental biologist at the University of Michigan who will move to the Whitehead Laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, this fall.
If the US government really bans H1-B, J-1 etc., the US science will be dead soon, which means the US industry and technology, too (for those who don't care about science but care about money). 1/
— Yamashita Lab (@yamashitaflylab) June 14, 2020
Around “50 percent of my lab members have been immigrants throughout my time as a professor (and if you include second generation of immigrants, number goes up),” wrote Yamashita in an email to VOA. “Many other labs are that way. And professors in my current institute are also 40-50 percent foreign born.
“This country is 'importing' highly educated people to support their science/ technology, and this is not something one can replace by hiring domestic people only. (not enough qualified people),” wrote Yamashita, a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grantee.
“This is yet another example of the unwelcoming message the United States continues to send to prospective students and immigrants around the world," Jill Allen Murray, deputy executive director for public policy of NAFSA: Association of International Educators, wrote to VOA. "While the administration claims that the purpose behind this proclamation is to address the needed economic recovery post-COVID-19 pandemic, these restrictions will have the opposite effect.
“Immigrants in this country create jobs, not take them,” Murray wrote.
She added that if the country continues to be unwelcoming, foreign workers “will take their talent, jobs and economic contributions elsewhere.”
H-1B workers who are already in the U.S. were not part of this week’s proclamation. Foreign students in the U.S. on F-1 visas or arriving in the fall, or students on Optional Practical Training (OPT) visas, were also not included.
But OPT, the program that allows foreign students an extended visa to stay in the U.S. for up to three years after graduation, is also under review. OPT is popular among science, technology, engineering and math students who hope to remain in the country on H-1B visas.
According to a NAFSA: Association of International Educators study, international students at U.S. colleges contribute nearly $41 billion to the country's economy and support 458,290 jobs.
FWD.us, a political organization founded by tech and business leaders, said on its blog that OPT suspension will force highly educated workers to leave the country.
“This would be a significant mistake that will hurt our economy long term while providing no substantial impact on job or wage growth in the short term,” the organization wrote.
Sarmat Misikov contributed to this report.
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US advisory council ends Nigeria visit, signs student exchange deal
Members of a U.S. presidential advisory council have approved a student exchange deal between an American college and a Nigerian university as part of the council's effort to strengthen collaboration on education, health, entrepreneurship and development between Africa and Africans living abroad.
The council also visited a health facility supported by the United States Agency for International Development in the capital.
Nigerian authorities and visitors chatted with members of the U.S President's Advisory Council on African Diaspora Engagement as they toured a healthcare facility in Karu, a suburb of Abuja, on the last day of the council's three-day visit to Abuja and Lagos.
The facility is one of many supported by the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, to improve the management of childhood illnesses, family planning, immunization and delivery.
The tour was part of the council's effort to promote African diaspora-led investments in technology entrepreneurship, education and healthcare delivery.
"They're doing a phenomenal job there, it really gave us a sense of what the healthcare system is in Nigeria," said Deniece Laurent-Mantey, executive director of the advisory council. "This is our first trip as a council to the continent and we chose Nigeria for a reason — the diaspora in Nigeria is very active, very influential, and they're really a source of strength when it comes to our U.S.-Africa policy. And so for us coming to Nigeria was very intentional."
The council was created by President Joe Biden in September to improve collaboration between Africa and its diaspora in terms of economic and social development.
Akila Udoji, manager of the Primary Healthcare Centre of Karu, said officials in Nigeria were pleased that the council members were able to visit.
"We're happy that they have seen what the money they have given to us to work with has been used to do, because they have been able to assist us in capacity-building, trainings, equipment supply and the makeover of the facility," Udoji said.
Earlier, the council signed a deal for a student exchange program between Spelman College in the southern U.S. city of Atlanta and Nigeria's University of Lagos.
Laurent-Mantey said education exchanges are one of the council's top priorities.
"In Lagos, we had the president of Spelman College — she's also a member of our council — she signed an agreement with the University of Lagos to further education exchange programs in STEM and creative industries between those two universities," Laurent-Mantey said. "And I think for us it's very important, because Spelman College is a historically Black university, and so here we are promoting the importance of collaboration between African Americans and Africans."
In March, the advisory council adopted its first set of recommendations for the U.S. president, including the student exchange initiative, advocating for more U.S. government support for Africa, climate-focused initiatives, and improving U.S. visa access for Africans.
The council met with Nigerian health and foreign affairs officials during the visit before leaving the country on Wednesday.
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5 killed, dozens injured in clashes over Bangladesh jobs quota system
At least 5 people were killed and dozens injured in two separate incidents in Bangladesh as violence continued Tuesday on university campuses in the nation's capital and elsewhere over a government jobs quota system, local media reports said quoting officials.
At least three of the dead were students and one was a pedestrian, the media reports said. Another man who died in Dhaka remained unidentified.
The deaths were reported Tuesday after overnight violence at a public university near Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka. The violence involved members of a pro-government student body and other students, when police fired tear gas and charged the protesters with batons during the clashes, which spread at Jahangir Nagar University in Savar, outside Dhaka, according to students and authorities.
Protesters have been demanding an end to a quota reserved for family members of veterans who fought in Bangladesh's war of independence in 1971, which allows them to take up 30% of governmental jobs.
They argue that quota appointments are discriminatory and should be merit-based. Some said the current system benefits groups supporting Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Some Cabinet ministers criticized the protesters, saying they played on students' emotions.
The Bengali-language Prothom Alo daily newspaper reported that one person died in Dhaka and three others, including a pedestrian, were killed after they suffered injuries during violence in Chattogram, a southeastern district, on Tuesday.
Prothom Alo and other media reports also said that a 22-year-old protester died in the northern district of Rangpur.
Details of the casualties could not be confirmed immediately.
While job opportunities have expanded in Bangladesh's private sector, many find government jobs stable and lucrative. Each year, some 3,000 such jobs open up to nearly 400,000 graduates.
Hasina said Tuesday that war veterans — commonly known as "freedom fighters" — should receive the highest respect for their sacrifice in 1971 regardless of their current political ideologies.
"Abandoning the dream of their own life, leaving behind their families, parents and everything, they joined the war with whatever they had," she said during an event at her office in Dhaka.
Protesters gathered in front of the university's official residence of the vice chancellor early Tuesday when violence broke out. Demonstrators accused the Bangladesh Chhatra League, a student wing of Hasina's ruling Awami League party, of attacking their "peaceful protests." According to local media reports, police and the ruling party-backed student wing attacked the protesters.
But Abdullahil Kafi, a senior police official, told the country's leading English-language newspaper Daily Star that they fired tear gas and "blank rounds" as protesters attacked the police. He said up to 15 police officers were injured.
More than 50 people were treated at Enam Medical College Hospital near Jahangir Nagar University as the violence continued for hours, said Ali Bin Solaiman, a medical officer of the hospital. He said at least 30 of them suffered pellet wounds.
On Monday, violence also spread at Dhaka University, the country's leading public university, as clashes gripped the campus in the capital. More than 100 students were injured in the clashes, police said.
On Tuesday, protesters blocked railways and some highways across the country, and in Dhaka, they halted traffic in many areas as they vowed to continue demonstrating until the demands were met.
Local media said police forces were spread across the capital to safeguard the peace.
Swapon, a protester and student at Dhaka University who gave only his first name, said they want the "rational reformation of the quota scheme." He said that after studying for six years, if he can't find a job, "it will cause me and my family to suffer."
Protesters say they are apolitical, but leaders of the ruling parties accused the opposition of using the demonstrations for political gains.
A ruling party-backed student activist, who refused to give his name, told The Associated Press that the protesters with the help of "goons" of the opposition's Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-Islami party vandalized their rooms at the student dormitories near the Curzon Hall of Dhaka University.
The family-of-the-veterans quota system was halted following a court order after mass student protests in 2018. But last month, Bangladesh's High Court nulled the decision to reinstate the system once more, angering scores of students and triggering protests.
Last week, the Supreme Court suspended the High Court's order for four weeks and the chief justice asked protesting students to return to their classes, saying the court would issue a decision in four weeks.
However, the protests have continued daily, halting traffic in Dhaka.
The quota system also reserves government jobs for women, disabled people and ethnic minority groups, but students have protested against only the veterans system.
Hasina maintained power in an election in January that was again boycotted by the country's main opposition party and its allies due to Hasina's refusal to step down and hand over power to a caretaker government to oversee the election.
Her party favors keeping the quota for the families of the 1971 war heroes after her Awami League party, under the leadership of her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, led the independence war with the help of India. Rahman was assassinated along with most of his family members in a military coup in 1975.
