When we hit the academic brain drain tipping point in the US, talent isn't going to just start trickling away, it's going to be like a greedy cup siphon. Countries preparing to attract these people now will reap a windfall the US has carefully cultivated over a century. This administration has demonstrated the federal government cannot be trusted to keep it's commitments and long-term plans, and it will now take a generation of stability to disabuse people of that notion.
This rhetoric is insulting to Americans. We're not talking about something "carefully cultivated over a century." U.S. didn't have OPT until 1992!
The foreign-born population in the U.S. was around 5% when tech giants like Apple, Microsoft, HP, and Intel were founded. And most of the immigration to the U.S. up to that point was low-skill immigration, with ad-hoc measures to take skilled immigrants here and there. That approach worked fine to develop the U.S. into a leading technological power.
I'm an American who's not insulted by the parent comment, but am tired of your constant weirdly racist anti-immigration posts. Aren't you an immigrant or child of immigrants from Pakistan or India? I recognize your username but forget which exact unique form of hypocritical xenophobia you hold.
The US has benefited massively from having years of the best and brightest from all around the world come to the US to research medicine, engineering and science. It's not about the one guy who's CEO of some tech company, it's about the thousands of graduate students, post docs and researchers doing the actual work to move humanity forward one lab-rat or laser measurement or petri dish at a time.
The 20th century was full of authoritarians attacking the intelligencia. A nation of uneducated peasants is easier to control and exploit. History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.
The US multination corporations have benefited massively. The common American shares a lower portion of the wealth than ever before. Wealthy foreigners are taking an outsized portion of higher learning seats, and driving up prices. Then they take the white collar jobs. This clearly is keeping downward pressure on the average American economically, more so for the disenfranchised.
With 0 immigration, even sending most of the white collar immigrants back, the US would still be the greatest nation on the planet, except the common American would enjoy more of the spoils. If these immigrants were so valuable, other the countries would be competing hand over fist to bring in as many as possible as quickly as possible, but they're not.
It’s precisely because I’m an immigrant that I chafe at the narcissism of immigrants who want to overstate our contribution to the U.S. as it exists today. The U.S. was already a fully formed, technologically advanced superpower by the time my family got here in 1989. Desis like me came here because our effort goes a thousand times farther within the system—constitutional, legal, cultural, etc.—that Americans created than it does in the countries we created. We shouldn’t be blowing smoke up our own asses and pretending that we had more to do with it than we did. It’s obnoxious, diminishes the contributions of others, and is contrary to our own interest, because it gives us a false sense of what made America into such a place that we were willing to leave our family behind to come here.
Yes, the U.S. benefited from key foreign talent acquisitions like bringing over German scientists after World War I. The 1952 H-1 Act and some ad hoc programs brought over college professors and people like that. But “mass skilled immigration” in the form of H-1B, OPT, etc., didn’t happen until the early 1990s. We should evaluate these programs on their own terms, not link them into some grandiose fictional narrative. Especially now where AI is going to displace many knowledge workers.
I think you're underselling the value in that time and place of the "just plain folks" who immigrated here — such as your family and, in earlier generations, mine.
My immigrant ancestors were farmers, ordinary workers, and small-business people. Not one of them had much education. But in the main they had reasonable shares of motivation, family orientation, and work ethic. They had the gumption to leave their various countries and come here where opportunities were greater — just as you said was the case for "desis like [you]."
My people filled a need when they came to the U.S. at various times in the 19th and 20th centuries. I imagine your people did the same. Sure, in purely-economic terms they didn't make the economic contributions that their descendants have. But life isn't a snapshot, it's a movie.
Yes, a Syrian immigrant who made it through the very strict immigration filters we had in place in the 1950s. (Also an odd example because Jobs had no contact with his father and was raised and socialized entirely by his American mother.)
The post-1990 program is very different in scope. The 1947 rules provided for a six-month work eligibility that was granted to very few people: https://thepienews.com/us-launches-re-evaluation-of-opt/. Today, OPT is three years and granted to 300,000 people.
IMHO it would be better to limit their stay to 4 years after which they need to exit the country for 3 months to prevent them applying for citizenship. After those three months they can apply for an extension for another 4 years.
Not any more. Just like the lake/gulf of america, the politically correct term is now "Super Intelligence". Use it or out yourself as an agitator and say goodbye to whatever visa rule, license, grant, tax exemption or government contract underpins your business.
You don't think it's in AI companies long term interests to lack human talent to do science or math and destroy the us educational system? Followup do you think AI companies are paying into the current regime?
We are actively watching SI diverge from strictly relying on human knowledge to now creating its own repository of knowledge (see current math research) while training on synthetic data using RLVR over human curated data and human supervision. I don't think you realise that this trend is only going to continue to the point human language is going to stop being a crutch it relies on, in fact Astra can reason without CoT now.
Not at all. Trump ordered everyone , during his speech at the United Nations , to use "SI" from now on, instead of "AI". That was one of his important priorities.
If you see someone use "SI" they are sending you a signal. Just politely correct their mistake.
The concept of virtue signaling should probably be renamed to "in-group signaling". The idea is that this person is signaling they support Trump. So, I guess, maybe loyalty is the virtue they are signaling.
Blaming the government is a cop out. The american government is an expression of the will of the american people. For all the screaming, a politicaly significant percentage of the population supports every decision being made by this administration. There is an election comming up. I want to be proven wrong. But i suspect the ussual patterns will emerge and little will change. Too many people are too comfortable with the current situation.
The thing about dumb people is that the dumber they are the easier it is to convince them that changing their position is against their interests.
This has been something that's been foisted upon the American public through its politics, propaganda, media, and other systems for decades. As a result they have been fleeced through the visage of democracy that has been capped and gerrymandered away from them.
We are now in a situation where the entire fate of the country rests on ~250k people who live in some of the poorest, most homogeneous, media-blasted parts of the country.
While I agree with much of what you wrote the percentage of people supporting every (or even most) decision of this administration is very small. But a large portion of the population doesn't like the alternative any better.
They said a few years ago that Trump and Biden have a chance only if they run against each other.
So it is more nuanced. We will see what the candidates in 2 years look like.
The vote is skewed because of the large number of Latinos and East Asians that have flowed into the country over the last three decades. If you tally the vote by ethnicity you'll see there's a large amount of support from the white majority (which is getting smaller every year) for these measures.
I do not think you can get the support level for specific measures from a vote. A vote is a single, crude A vs B on a large set of measures. And when a vote is between two options seen as largely abhorrent the winning basket can be a very strange one. My 2c.
Interesting perspective. Incidentally, taking this view to its logical conclusion puts into perspective what a lot of US adversaries say regarding civilian targets in the US.
“Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. F*ck Hope.”
― George Carlin
This is such a crazy statement. Democracy in the US is dead. People are incredibly dumb and I believe you have the causal relationship reversed, even for relatively smart people.
The will of the American people is deeply influenced by interested parties dumping money into various areas. Rich elite own almost all media and even "democratized" social media is heavily influenced. You can't even use a search engine these days.
Ultimately, the 70% plus "will" of the people is money out of politics, stock bans for elected officials, no foreign wars and universal healthcare. Things both parties unite to curtail
Democracy isn't dead, but in the US, it's sure in troubled water. The two-party system encouraged people not to think for themselves but instead have to choose between two parties that, at least initially had common ground but now are diametrically opposed to one another. Now one of the two parties is pretty weak, having lost ground, giving the impression that it had lost touch with the common people and focused on loud but semi-fringe issues. One party owning the system has the same look as Democracy is dead.
Not to mention that even with a strong leader in both parties, we are on a race to the bottom, each election oscillating between the two parties, each spending lots of money and focus undoing what the other party did. When the two parties had common ground, this was much less of an issue.
In the end, this isn't going to get fixed, the US is going to just keep printing money, blowing up the deficit until the last few countries outside the US who trust us no longer do. We'll be in too many wars, in too many places, with too few friends. End up the same way the USSR was when they were in Afghanistan for too long.
I don't think even if you pulled money out of politics, banned stock trading for elected officials, no foreign wars, universal health care - that we would right the ship. Our problems are fundamental. Our early leaders warned us against a two-party system, trying to show us the problems it would lead to, and we ignored it.
Yes, US will print money to inflate debt until it can no longer do so. Yes, the realignment after it cannot get treasuries sold externalkyexternally, will be painful. But this has happened before (in the world) and will happen again. The country doesn't have to fail in the way of the USSR.
And once the dust settles the long term state will probably be better for many countries, US included. My 2c.
Perhaps it is too pessimistic, but it's the default state to fail, die in some sense, just like any other organic thing. The world doesn't have a good record of these things we've created lasting very long.
The hopeful part of me thinks that what will emerge from the disorder will be better, just like anything else that survives today that was once part of something else.
That isn't what I said. 50% of the country can not read. People, myself included, are susceptible to influence. Democracy is dead because of money in politics, low intelligence of voters and a 2 party system that heavily manages the ideas and people that appear on the ballot.
IMHO its mostly been proven that special intrests , corporations hold more influence than the electorate. To that extent that bot wings of the uniparty basically persue the same agenda with very little variation in econ/pol while distarcting everyone with nonstop culture war bs.
Ergo its more feasible to playact at parades thsn it is to have a proper industrial policy for example that would mean hosing Wall Streeet profits to do. so.
At least here in Scandinavia, the US is quite popular for the most ambitious and driven students that are interested in entrepreneurship. They apply to top US schools on either coasts via exchange programs, or a full degree, exactly because the schools are so close to the startup scene. Imposing a $100k fee to hire those, would effectively make such types of graduates very unattractive to startups.
US keep pursuing this political agenda that goes against the whole foundation of the country rise as world superpower. I wonder how long it needs to last before Europe starts to roll serious academic policy that attracts the orphaned talent refused by US.
The Netherlands started well with the Tulip Fund but a systematic effort is needed. Korea is expanding his VISA grants for AI or tech top talents. Its the first time in decades where top world talent does not point altogether towards US and will be interesting to see which policy from other countries will reveal to be more effective. It's a tight window to take advantage of before the change in US administration so an economical effort in a short time period is required.
I don't think this would negatively affect the crème de la crème, they would even have a high demand in US companies especially in STEM fields with higher salaries after finishing the studies.
US is popular for higher studies for students all around the world not only because of the opportunities, but also English being the language for studies. I'm not sure how it works in EU countries. Does Netherland or South Korea offers degree programs completely in English?
Yeah, all higher studies and institutions are in English and you can get around in public with just English. Most expats will rarely hear or need Dutch (The language of The Netherlands).
That is an overstatement. Dutch is the primary language everywhere like the native language of any country. It is true that in major cities most people speak excellent English and you can definitely manage easily without speaking Dutch.
But Dutch is spoken absolutely everywhere and most signage is only in Dutch. Also, as soon as you get a bit outside of the big cities, you find many people with a middling level of English, similar to most other countries in Europe. Even in cities, many working class people and actually most immigrants from non English speaking countries only speak Dutch.
How about the language usage at workplace after graduation? Would one have to learn Dutch or still continue everything with English?
Also is it easy to get a job after graduation in Netherlands in STEM field? As an example if someone graduated in medicine (doctor, nurse, etc.) then wouldn’t proficiency in Dutch be mandatory to work?
It's probably not that big of a problem in the absolute top companies but once you go anywhere else they'll prefer Dutch natives and you'll face hurdles trying to get promotions. This is a big reason why expats end up leaving the country. It also causes resentment from both sides in daily life.
That’s what I thought as well. Also, in US one could start work in New York after graduation and if a better job offer comes they can move around the country in different states where as in EU, you graduate and start working in Netherland and assume one learns Dutch, then they are restricted to Netherland in terms of language if they get a job offer in another EU country like Italy or Germany or France, then they would have to learn that languages as well I guess
Yeah it's not great, I don't think it's hopeless everywhere but if you got the ability to work in the UK it prevents most these problems. English language really benefits some countries.
Every top university worldwide open to international talent offers the programs in English, from South Korea to Europe, Singapore etc. The challenge would have to keep the talents in country after the university, and language barrier, especially in South Korea plays a role. But US administration is making also harder for companies to hire international talents, and many of those have in any case offices in Europe to avoid the issue. In any case the silicon valley and industrial/tech hubs have historically born around university excellence campus, which is what the US policy is currently degrading. In Europe, beside the UK, there are at least Zurich ETH and TU Delft that have the potential to growth enormously by taking advantage of that.
Luck? They killed 95% of the existing inhabitants, used a huge agricultural, mining, and forestry base to spread productivity, built national infrastructure with enslaved and indentured labor. They stayed out of two crippling wars as long as they possibly could, and ultimately were the only major power that was able to mostly avoid damage from the war.
After which they invited the best scientists from the axis to come build things for them. They then used their position to topple governments around the world for their companies, annex territory (see: Hawaii), and press their interests globally.
What about these steps is luck? Evil, sure, but luck?
2 World Wars broke out that had impacts on us, it left a ton of our peers completely devastated and we were not. UK did not end food rationing until 1954. By that time, US was building suburbs out, sending a ton of GI to higher education and Marshall plan had our completely functioning factories turning out goods by metric tons an hour.
So can you please explain me the rise of Switzerland, Singapore and South Korea? No natural resources, no energy independency, small countries surrounded by enemies. And why Russia that has all the natural resources of the world is such a failed state? Starting conditions are something that was valid around 2000 years ago in the civilization and empires rise and fall. Not actual anymore.
I'm not a believer in geographic destiny but the fact that Russia is still relatively rich (compared to e.g. CAR or Uganda) shows that natural resources are quite handy. Switzerland does have quite some hydro energy (potential) and because of its resource poverty many Swiss had to leave the country during the 19th century (and these swiss actually created wealth in many of these places). There's millions of americans with swiss ancestry.
Nobody will tolerate being forced to use "EU government phone" instead of iPhone or Google Android. They will just revolt against their own government instead.
Eh? I'm guessing you've never spoken to a European. Especially since Trump's second term (though not just because of Trump), Europeans generally have a bad view of US tech companies.
Irrelevant. The EU is not taking American tech, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon away from 330 million Europeans and replacing it with..nothing? without widespread outrage. In a lot of ways it would cause a societal collapse.
Maybe that’s true in your close people bubble. Don’t generalise it to every European. I’m pretty sure there a big Trump fans base in Poland, Hungary and Germany to name a few.
My understanding is that since OPT was created via executive magic instead of Congress the department overseeing the program is woefully understaffed and underfunded. Visa work in the US really is at the intersection of DHS, DOL and DOS at the end of the day. It may be that the executive needs to rethink this for better department communication, collaboration and efficiency and investment is genuinely necessary given the scale of these programs compared to their inception.
If the US imposes this charge, they will go somewhere else. Europe, maybe. China, maybe. We won't get the immediate benefit of their work like we do now. This will kill some graduate programs and constrain a lot of others. It is hard to see any positive benefits from this move.
If I were China, I'd move on this aggressively. If I were any country with a strong interest in STEM, I'd do the same. In fact, just the mention of this action should spur a somewhat aggressive response.
China has already been aggressively funding Chinese language education in Africa.
I suggested to a friend of mine that he consider a CS masters in China. He's semi fluent, but lacks a CS background. I imagine he could figure it out though
If I were a younger man and in better health, I’d seriously consider going to China. Obviously, there are some downsides to living there, but I’d like to think I could have overcome them.
Someone argue this is fine since there used to be no OPT long time ago and US is doing fine. But the key is here is NOT if there is OPT or H1B but rather about that 100K cost. It is much better to cancel the OPT/H1B than charge this fee. Because for the former you do not lower the bar, but the latter doesn’t stop the people coming through the program but you only get low tier of talent, which is the least you want in the competitive world. Also it does not reduce spying but rather make it easier.
By setting up a jobs market for foreigners but not for Americans, and by allowing corporations to install immigrant intake machines at the expense of Americans? Yes. That's what needs fixing.
I'm in favor of legal immigration. I'm not in favor of H1Bs and the "default" pathway.
If we don't get educated and employed as Americans, then yes, we'll be committing suicide.
If someone's post-graduate work is that important, and that particular individual is so unbelievably critical to that particular post-doc work, then surely the fee would be worth it. If it's not, then advantaging the market for post-docs in America to actual Americans seems like a good thing, something governments are meant to do for their citizens.
Is there a reason the American government shouldn't be allowed to act on behalf of its citizens and must act in favor of everyone else?
This comment is an excellent of scarcity mentality* (I can't decide if that's an insult; if it is, I apologize).
It's in America's best interest as a nation to have as large a pool of smart students to choose from as possible. The loser nations are the ones whose brightest minds leave (aka: "brain drain")
If the people of a nation capable of attracting foreign students are resentful about it, the real problem probably lies elsewhere (eg: inequality, economic depression, or broken media environment)
Keeping highly educated and productive foreigners, whom which another country paid to raise and school, IS America acting on behalf of its citizens. These grads will pay tons of tax, create economic activity, perhaps even new companies. And it cost America zero. It’s an insanely good deal.
Even if we admitted 100% of qualified American citizens who apply, there wouldn’t be enough filled slots to run the programs and do the research.
Moreover, educating foreigners in America does benefit Americans: we get the research, schools get their foreign tuition dollars, local landlords and business absorb their cost of living expenses, local governments get tax money from them, they have kids and they become Americans. Or, if they go home they have great stories to share about how amazing America was for them, inspiring a new generation to come here and grow our country.
When the American government acts as it does now, all that happens is that economic activity moves somewhere else. There is no void filled by Americans, there’s just a void.
This government is doing everything they can to make the lives of my students a living hell. First it was the kidnappings and deportations, if that wasn’t enough.
Then they defunded their projects, even projects that had already been under way, so they destroyed a bunch of in-progress research that can’t be restarted.
Then they started fucking with internships, trying to make it so that foreign students can only get an internship if it’s part of the degree program, which most are not.
And of course they completely slowed the document processing down to a snail pace so that students can’t even get to campus on time for the start of the semester.
Now this. Absolutely insane. America had a higher academic system second to none, people came from around the world to attend our schools, made America better, and brought America back to the places they came from in a positive light.
I have one student who fled civil war, he started learning about CS from a country he took refuge in, made his way to America over years, started at a state school and then worked his way up to the graduate level where he busts his ass working in a kitchen every day to be able to afford it. Today he’s publishing papers at top conferences in CS. Every day he is eager to learn and grateful for all opportunities he’s given.
And this government wants to chase that kind of student out of the country.
Meanwhile my American students show up to class and ask me “is this class hard?” And then they drop it once they find out it takes work, like gasp opening a paper book and reading it faints.
It’s going to take decades to repair this damage and I hope all of you here who voted for it (I know there are plenty) understand the damage you caused with your choice. I wish you’ll help fix it because it’s going to take everyone.
International Students made college so much fun, for a kid who grew up poor, causally studying history with a girl from Japan was out of the realm of possiblity.
This was not only free for me, but I got a large cost of living grant on top of tuition itself being free.
Community College was amazing. For international students it's a very easy way to get a visa. The requirements are basically making tuition payments on time.
Well it's over now. Even if the tides shift again you'd have to be silly to risk coming to such an unstable place.
The US is ruining itself by ruining the minds of the current and next generations of students.
I finally realized that this is irrecoverable from, when you all laughed and derided Vivek Ramaswamy for saying it as it is. You have simply been enjoying the fruits of labour of your forbears and immigrants and have no plans to sustain it for the future.
Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG. A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers…. This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken [sic] from slumber before & we can do it again…but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.
Regardless of your political leanings, American culture has been devaluing knowledge, education and everything else to do with them for a while now.
When we hit the academic brain drain tipping point in the US, talent isn't going to just start trickling away, it's going to be like a greedy cup siphon. Countries preparing to attract these people now will reap a windfall the US has carefully cultivated over a century. This administration has demonstrated the federal government cannot be trusted to keep it's commitments and long-term plans, and it will now take a generation of stability to disabuse people of that notion.
This rhetoric is insulting to Americans. We're not talking about something "carefully cultivated over a century." U.S. didn't have OPT until 1992!
The foreign-born population in the U.S. was around 5% when tech giants like Apple, Microsoft, HP, and Intel were founded. And most of the immigration to the U.S. up to that point was low-skill immigration, with ad-hoc measures to take skilled immigrants here and there. That approach worked fine to develop the U.S. into a leading technological power.
I'm an American who's not insulted by the parent comment, but am tired of your constant weirdly racist anti-immigration posts. Aren't you an immigrant or child of immigrants from Pakistan or India? I recognize your username but forget which exact unique form of hypocritical xenophobia you hold.
The US has benefited massively from having years of the best and brightest from all around the world come to the US to research medicine, engineering and science. It's not about the one guy who's CEO of some tech company, it's about the thousands of graduate students, post docs and researchers doing the actual work to move humanity forward one lab-rat or laser measurement or petri dish at a time.
The 20th century was full of authoritarians attacking the intelligencia. A nation of uneducated peasants is easier to control and exploit. History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.
The US multination corporations have benefited massively. The common American shares a lower portion of the wealth than ever before. Wealthy foreigners are taking an outsized portion of higher learning seats, and driving up prices. Then they take the white collar jobs. This clearly is keeping downward pressure on the average American economically, more so for the disenfranchised.
With 0 immigration, even sending most of the white collar immigrants back, the US would still be the greatest nation on the planet, except the common American would enjoy more of the spoils. If these immigrants were so valuable, other the countries would be competing hand over fist to bring in as many as possible as quickly as possible, but they're not.
It’s precisely because I’m an immigrant that I chafe at the narcissism of immigrants who want to overstate our contribution to the U.S. as it exists today. The U.S. was already a fully formed, technologically advanced superpower by the time my family got here in 1989. Desis like me came here because our effort goes a thousand times farther within the system—constitutional, legal, cultural, etc.—that Americans created than it does in the countries we created. We shouldn’t be blowing smoke up our own asses and pretending that we had more to do with it than we did. It’s obnoxious, diminishes the contributions of others, and is contrary to our own interest, because it gives us a false sense of what made America into such a place that we were willing to leave our family behind to come here.
Yes, the U.S. benefited from key foreign talent acquisitions like bringing over German scientists after World War I. The 1952 H-1 Act and some ad hoc programs brought over college professors and people like that. But “mass skilled immigration” in the form of H-1B, OPT, etc., didn’t happen until the early 1990s. We should evaluate these programs on their own terms, not link them into some grandiose fictional narrative. Especially now where AI is going to displace many knowledge workers.
I think you're underselling the value in that time and place of the "just plain folks" who immigrated here — such as your family and, in earlier generations, mine.
My immigrant ancestors were farmers, ordinary workers, and small-business people. Not one of them had much education. But in the main they had reasonable shares of motivation, family orientation, and work ethic. They had the gumption to leave their various countries and come here where opportunities were greater — just as you said was the case for "desis like [you]."
My people filled a need when they came to the U.S. at various times in the 19th and 20th centuries. I imagine your people did the same. Sure, in purely-economic terms they didn't make the economic contributions that their descendants have. But life isn't a snapshot, it's a movie.
Coincidentally the mid 90s was when the US GDP really started to outpace the EU
You can’t see any change in the trend line in the mid 1980s: https://www.aei.org/economics/eu-vs-usa-part-v/. The growth slope for the U.S. has been very consistent since the early 1980s.
> when tech giants like Apple
Founded by the child of a Syrian immigrant?
Yes, a Syrian immigrant who made it through the very strict immigration filters we had in place in the 1950s. (Also an odd example because Jobs had no contact with his father and was raised and socialized entirely by his American mother.)
> U.S. didn't have OPT until 1992!
...which was created to streamline somewhat similar rules that had been in place since 1947.
The post-1990 program is very different in scope. The 1947 rules provided for a six-month work eligibility that was granted to very few people: https://thepienews.com/us-launches-re-evaluation-of-opt/. Today, OPT is three years and granted to 300,000 people.
IMHO it would be better to limit their stay to 4 years after which they need to exit the country for 3 months to prevent them applying for citizenship. After those three months they can apply for an extension for another 4 years.
F-1 visas are categorized as non-immigrant visas. No amount of years in the U.S. would make them eligible for citizenship.
[flagged]
>automated by SI
calling it SI is the version is equal to the 3 meme from Inglorious Basterds[0]
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/shittymoviedetails/comments/1q0hrdj...
You made a typo. The term used by practioners of the art and generally understood worldwide is "AI", not "SI"...
Not any more. Just like the lake/gulf of america, the politically correct term is now "Super Intelligence". Use it or out yourself as an agitator and say goodbye to whatever visa rule, license, grant, tax exemption or government contract underpins your business.
Fortunately I am Canadian and enjoy my freedom to say "AI" ... like the rest of the world.
Imagine my confusion when people started throwing around the officially accepted, in my native language, abbreviation for artificial intelligence.
You don't think it's in AI companies long term interests to lack human talent to do science or math and destroy the us educational system? Followup do you think AI companies are paying into the current regime?
'SI' are we really calling llms this?
We are actively watching SI diverge from strictly relying on human knowledge to now creating its own repository of knowledge (see current math research) while training on synthetic data using RLVR over human curated data and human supervision. I don't think you realise that this trend is only going to continue to the point human language is going to stop being a crutch it relies on, in fact Astra can reason without CoT now.
nah, that abbreviation already had a well known meaning in science: the international unit system
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI
Not at all. Trump ordered everyone , during his speech at the United Nations , to use "SI" from now on, instead of "AI". That was one of his important priorities.
If you see someone use "SI" they are sending you a signal. Just politely correct their mistake.
No. No one is seriously calling it this. It's virtue signaling.
I love how words are politics. Be it white or Black.
It’s political because the President said if you don’t use “super intelligence”, you’re considered “THE ENEMY” (his words and emphasis)
such is the nature of shibboleths
I don't see the virtue in it?
It's not for you, it's for them (the weird folks).
The concept of virtue signaling should probably be renamed to "in-group signaling". The idea is that this person is signaling they support Trump. So, I guess, maybe loyalty is the virtue they are signaling.
Why? Are you a traitor?
/s
https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/trump-anyone-sa...
The one constant of Trump is he'll fuck anyone over. He's not capable of having buddies, unless you count Epstein.
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Blaming the government is a cop out. The american government is an expression of the will of the american people. For all the screaming, a politicaly significant percentage of the population supports every decision being made by this administration. There is an election comming up. I want to be proven wrong. But i suspect the ussual patterns will emerge and little will change. Too many people are too comfortable with the current situation.
The thing about dumb people is that the dumber they are the easier it is to convince them that changing their position is against their interests.
This has been something that's been foisted upon the American public through its politics, propaganda, media, and other systems for decades. As a result they have been fleeced through the visage of democracy that has been capped and gerrymandered away from them.
We are now in a situation where the entire fate of the country rests on ~250k people who live in some of the poorest, most homogeneous, media-blasted parts of the country.
Yeah. America is a symptom of Americans...
While I agree with much of what you wrote the percentage of people supporting every (or even most) decision of this administration is very small. But a large portion of the population doesn't like the alternative any better.
They said a few years ago that Trump and Biden have a chance only if they run against each other.
So it is more nuanced. We will see what the candidates in 2 years look like.
The vote is skewed because of the large number of Latinos and East Asians that have flowed into the country over the last three decades. If you tally the vote by ethnicity you'll see there's a large amount of support from the white majority (which is getting smaller every year) for these measures.
~47% of Latinos voted for trump in 2024. What are they skewing exactly?
I do not think you can get the support level for specific measures from a vote. A vote is a single, crude A vs B on a large set of measures. And when a vote is between two options seen as largely abhorrent the winning basket can be a very strange one. My 2c.
Interesting perspective. Incidentally, taking this view to its logical conclusion puts into perspective what a lot of US adversaries say regarding civilian targets in the US.
“Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. F*ck Hope.” ― George Carlin
And yet they lie and scheme and have propaganda campaigns designed to confuse the ordinary person.
Many of whom suck, but others are just e.g. scared old ladies who got told that God hates abortions after decades of their church not seeming to care.
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This is such a crazy statement. Democracy in the US is dead. People are incredibly dumb and I believe you have the causal relationship reversed, even for relatively smart people.
The will of the American people is deeply influenced by interested parties dumping money into various areas. Rich elite own almost all media and even "democratized" social media is heavily influenced. You can't even use a search engine these days.
Ultimately, the 70% plus "will" of the people is money out of politics, stock bans for elected officials, no foreign wars and universal healthcare. Things both parties unite to curtail
> Democracy in the US is dead. People are incredibly dumb[...]
So what alternative or incremental improvement to democracy would you propose? And more importantly, how would you like to get there?
Not OP, but I genuinely think ranked choice voting would have a positive impact.
Democracy isn't dead, but in the US, it's sure in troubled water. The two-party system encouraged people not to think for themselves but instead have to choose between two parties that, at least initially had common ground but now are diametrically opposed to one another. Now one of the two parties is pretty weak, having lost ground, giving the impression that it had lost touch with the common people and focused on loud but semi-fringe issues. One party owning the system has the same look as Democracy is dead.
Not to mention that even with a strong leader in both parties, we are on a race to the bottom, each election oscillating between the two parties, each spending lots of money and focus undoing what the other party did. When the two parties had common ground, this was much less of an issue.
In the end, this isn't going to get fixed, the US is going to just keep printing money, blowing up the deficit until the last few countries outside the US who trust us no longer do. We'll be in too many wars, in too many places, with too few friends. End up the same way the USSR was when they were in Afghanistan for too long.
I don't think even if you pulled money out of politics, banned stock trading for elected officials, no foreign wars, universal health care - that we would right the ship. Our problems are fundamental. Our early leaders warned us against a two-party system, trying to show us the problems it would lead to, and we ignored it.
I think this is a bit too pessimistic.
Yes, US will print money to inflate debt until it can no longer do so. Yes, the realignment after it cannot get treasuries sold externalkyexternally, will be painful. But this has happened before (in the world) and will happen again. The country doesn't have to fail in the way of the USSR.
And once the dust settles the long term state will probably be better for many countries, US included. My 2c.
Perhaps it is too pessimistic, but it's the default state to fail, die in some sense, just like any other organic thing. The world doesn't have a good record of these things we've created lasting very long.
The hopeful part of me thinks that what will emerge from the disorder will be better, just like anything else that survives today that was once part of something else.
In about a month we'll see if dementia don and goons are able to kill off the oscillation and cement their power.
"Democracy is dead" because I disagree with the policy preferences of the majority of voters.
They aren’t wrong about the influence of money though.
That isn't what I said. 50% of the country can not read. People, myself included, are susceptible to influence. Democracy is dead because of money in politics, low intelligence of voters and a 2 party system that heavily manages the ideas and people that appear on the ballot.
IMHO its mostly been proven that special intrests , corporations hold more influence than the electorate. To that extent that bot wings of the uniparty basically persue the same agenda with very little variation in econ/pol while distarcting everyone with nonstop culture war bs. Ergo its more feasible to playact at parades thsn it is to have a proper industrial policy for example that would mean hosing Wall Streeet profits to do. so.
At least here in Scandinavia, the US is quite popular for the most ambitious and driven students that are interested in entrepreneurship. They apply to top US schools on either coasts via exchange programs, or a full degree, exactly because the schools are so close to the startup scene. Imposing a $100k fee to hire those, would effectively make such types of graduates very unattractive to startups.
US keep pursuing this political agenda that goes against the whole foundation of the country rise as world superpower. I wonder how long it needs to last before Europe starts to roll serious academic policy that attracts the orphaned talent refused by US. The Netherlands started well with the Tulip Fund but a systematic effort is needed. Korea is expanding his VISA grants for AI or tech top talents. Its the first time in decades where top world talent does not point altogether towards US and will be interesting to see which policy from other countries will reveal to be more effective. It's a tight window to take advantage of before the change in US administration so an economical effort in a short time period is required.
I don't think this would negatively affect the crème de la crème, they would even have a high demand in US companies especially in STEM fields with higher salaries after finishing the studies.
US is popular for higher studies for students all around the world not only because of the opportunities, but also English being the language for studies. I'm not sure how it works in EU countries. Does Netherland or South Korea offers degree programs completely in English?
> Netherland
Yeah, all higher studies and institutions are in English and you can get around in public with just English. Most expats will rarely hear or need Dutch (The language of The Netherlands).
> Most expats will rarely hear or need Dutch
That is an overstatement. Dutch is the primary language everywhere like the native language of any country. It is true that in major cities most people speak excellent English and you can definitely manage easily without speaking Dutch.
But Dutch is spoken absolutely everywhere and most signage is only in Dutch. Also, as soon as you get a bit outside of the big cities, you find many people with a middling level of English, similar to most other countries in Europe. Even in cities, many working class people and actually most immigrants from non English speaking countries only speak Dutch.
How about the language usage at workplace after graduation? Would one have to learn Dutch or still continue everything with English?
Also is it easy to get a job after graduation in Netherlands in STEM field? As an example if someone graduated in medicine (doctor, nurse, etc.) then wouldn’t proficiency in Dutch be mandatory to work?
It's probably not that big of a problem in the absolute top companies but once you go anywhere else they'll prefer Dutch natives and you'll face hurdles trying to get promotions. This is a big reason why expats end up leaving the country. It also causes resentment from both sides in daily life.
That’s what I thought as well. Also, in US one could start work in New York after graduation and if a better job offer comes they can move around the country in different states where as in EU, you graduate and start working in Netherland and assume one learns Dutch, then they are restricted to Netherland in terms of language if they get a job offer in another EU country like Italy or Germany or France, then they would have to learn that languages as well I guess
Yeah it's not great, I don't think it's hopeless everywhere but if you got the ability to work in the UK it prevents most these problems. English language really benefits some countries.
Most Dutch will only speak English to non-Dutch. Which is really annoying if you’re there trying to learn Dutch
Same in Sweden, welcome!
Every top university worldwide open to international talent offers the programs in English, from South Korea to Europe, Singapore etc. The challenge would have to keep the talents in country after the university, and language barrier, especially in South Korea plays a role. But US administration is making also harder for companies to hire international talents, and many of those have in any case offices in Europe to avoid the issue. In any case the silicon valley and industrial/tech hubs have historically born around university excellence campus, which is what the US policy is currently degrading. In Europe, beside the UK, there are at least Zurich ETH and TU Delft that have the potential to growth enormously by taking advantage of that.
US rise as a world superpower was luck as opposed to something deliberate, just like most rises are.
Luck? They killed 95% of the existing inhabitants, used a huge agricultural, mining, and forestry base to spread productivity, built national infrastructure with enslaved and indentured labor. They stayed out of two crippling wars as long as they possibly could, and ultimately were the only major power that was able to mostly avoid damage from the war.
After which they invited the best scientists from the axis to come build things for them. They then used their position to topple governments around the world for their companies, annex territory (see: Hawaii), and press their interests globally.
What about these steps is luck? Evil, sure, but luck?
2 World Wars broke out that had impacts on us, it left a ton of our peers completely devastated and we were not. UK did not end food rationing until 1954. By that time, US was building suburbs out, sending a ton of GI to higher education and Marshall plan had our completely functioning factories turning out goods by metric tons an hour.
You missed reserved currency advantage
It's not luck it's starting conditions. People have written books about the benefits of geography and natural resources.
So can you please explain me the rise of Switzerland, Singapore and South Korea? No natural resources, no energy independency, small countries surrounded by enemies. And why Russia that has all the natural resources of the world is such a failed state? Starting conditions are something that was valid around 2000 years ago in the civilization and empires rise and fall. Not actual anymore.
I'm not a believer in geographic destiny but the fact that Russia is still relatively rich (compared to e.g. CAR or Uganda) shows that natural resources are quite handy. Switzerland does have quite some hydro energy (potential) and because of its resource poverty many Swiss had to leave the country during the 19th century (and these swiss actually created wealth in many of these places). There's millions of americans with swiss ancestry.
Every country should block american big tech to create tech jobs for their people. This fixes americas immigration problem too
Nobody will tolerate being forced to use "EU government phone" instead of iPhone or Google Android. They will just revolt against their own government instead.
They would actually. But it wouldn't be the "EU government phone". It'd be Jolla, and then competitor after competitor would form.
Maybe they'll buy a Chinese one, since their iPhone and many of it's components was already built there.
The physical hardware is a nearly irrelevant commodity compared to the software and the ecosystem.
Most Europeans hate american gov and companies so much. They just need a good alternative to jump the ship.
Eh? I'm guessing you've never spoken to a European. Especially since Trump's second term (though not just because of Trump), Europeans generally have a bad view of US tech companies.
> never spoken to a European
Irrelevant. The EU is not taking American tech, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon away from 330 million Europeans and replacing it with..nothing? without widespread outrage. In a lot of ways it would cause a societal collapse.
Maybe that’s true in your close people bubble. Don’t generalise it to every European. I’m pretty sure there a big Trump fans base in Poland, Hungary and Germany to name a few.
If memory serves, they've tried this several different ways but keep getting injuncted since it amounts to a tax and not a reasonable processing fee.
My understanding is that since OPT was created via executive magic instead of Congress the department overseeing the program is woefully understaffed and underfunded. Visa work in the US really is at the intersection of DHS, DOL and DOS at the end of the day. It may be that the executive needs to rethink this for better department communication, collaboration and efficiency and investment is genuinely necessary given the scale of these programs compared to their inception.
Ohh so this is a tax but inflation isn't? I don't ever remember voting for an inflation tax. Our government is so corrupt.
I have trouble following the logic of this comment
speedrunning brain drain, you spend decades building a moat based on stability and proceed to end decades of work in 24 months.
https://commission.europa.eu/topics/research-and-innovation/...
If the US imposes this charge, they will go somewhere else. Europe, maybe. China, maybe. We won't get the immediate benefit of their work like we do now. This will kill some graduate programs and constrain a lot of others. It is hard to see any positive benefits from this move.
If I were China, I'd move on this aggressively. If I were any country with a strong interest in STEM, I'd do the same. In fact, just the mention of this action should spur a somewhat aggressive response.
China has already been aggressively funding Chinese language education in Africa.
I suggested to a friend of mine that he consider a CS masters in China. He's semi fluent, but lacks a CS background. I imagine he could figure it out though
If I were a younger man and in better health, I’d seriously consider going to China. Obviously, there are some downsides to living there, but I’d like to think I could have overcome them.
I remember while growing up hearing talk on the news about brain drain.
Thanks Trump; next do EV cars worldwide.
That felt dirty as a Canadian.
I did also wonder what the Riddler had to do with Canadians going to the States...
Someone argue this is fine since there used to be no OPT long time ago and US is doing fine. But the key is here is NOT if there is OPT or H1B but rather about that 100K cost. It is much better to cancel the OPT/H1B than charge this fee. Because for the former you do not lower the bar, but the latter doesn’t stop the people coming through the program but you only get low tier of talent, which is the least you want in the competitive world. Also it does not reduce spying but rather make it easier.
We are committing suicide as a nation.
Look at their handlers.
By setting up a jobs market for foreigners but not for Americans, and by allowing corporations to install immigrant intake machines at the expense of Americans? Yes. That's what needs fixing.
I'm in favor of legal immigration. I'm not in favor of H1Bs and the "default" pathway.
If we don't get educated and employed as Americans, then yes, we'll be committing suicide.
If someone's post-graduate work is that important, and that particular individual is so unbelievably critical to that particular post-doc work, then surely the fee would be worth it. If it's not, then advantaging the market for post-docs in America to actual Americans seems like a good thing, something governments are meant to do for their citizens.
Is there a reason the American government shouldn't be allowed to act on behalf of its citizens and must act in favor of everyone else?
This comment is an excellent of scarcity mentality* (I can't decide if that's an insult; if it is, I apologize).
It's in America's best interest as a nation to have as large a pool of smart students to choose from as possible. The loser nations are the ones whose brightest minds leave (aka: "brain drain")
If the people of a nation capable of attracting foreign students are resentful about it, the real problem probably lies elsewhere (eg: inequality, economic depression, or broken media environment)
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarcity_(social_psychology)
Keeping highly educated and productive foreigners, whom which another country paid to raise and school, IS America acting on behalf of its citizens. These grads will pay tons of tax, create economic activity, perhaps even new companies. And it cost America zero. It’s an insanely good deal.
Even if we admitted 100% of qualified American citizens who apply, there wouldn’t be enough filled slots to run the programs and do the research.
Moreover, educating foreigners in America does benefit Americans: we get the research, schools get their foreign tuition dollars, local landlords and business absorb their cost of living expenses, local governments get tax money from them, they have kids and they become Americans. Or, if they go home they have great stories to share about how amazing America was for them, inspiring a new generation to come here and grow our country.
When the American government acts as it does now, all that happens is that economic activity moves somewhere else. There is no void filled by Americans, there’s just a void.
This government is doing everything they can to make the lives of my students a living hell. First it was the kidnappings and deportations, if that wasn’t enough.
Then they defunded their projects, even projects that had already been under way, so they destroyed a bunch of in-progress research that can’t be restarted.
Then they started fucking with internships, trying to make it so that foreign students can only get an internship if it’s part of the degree program, which most are not.
And of course they completely slowed the document processing down to a snail pace so that students can’t even get to campus on time for the start of the semester.
Now this. Absolutely insane. America had a higher academic system second to none, people came from around the world to attend our schools, made America better, and brought America back to the places they came from in a positive light.
I have one student who fled civil war, he started learning about CS from a country he took refuge in, made his way to America over years, started at a state school and then worked his way up to the graduate level where he busts his ass working in a kitchen every day to be able to afford it. Today he’s publishing papers at top conferences in CS. Every day he is eager to learn and grateful for all opportunities he’s given.
And this government wants to chase that kind of student out of the country.
Meanwhile my American students show up to class and ask me “is this class hard?” And then they drop it once they find out it takes work, like gasp opening a paper book and reading it faints.
It’s going to take decades to repair this damage and I hope all of you here who voted for it (I know there are plenty) understand the damage you caused with your choice. I wish you’ll help fix it because it’s going to take everyone.
International Students made college so much fun, for a kid who grew up poor, causally studying history with a girl from Japan was out of the realm of possiblity.
This was not only free for me, but I got a large cost of living grant on top of tuition itself being free.
Community College was amazing. For international students it's a very easy way to get a visa. The requirements are basically making tuition payments on time.
Well it's over now. Even if the tides shift again you'd have to be silly to risk coming to such an unstable place.
The US is ruining itself by ruining the minds of the current and next generations of students.
I finally realized that this is irrecoverable from, when you all laughed and derided Vivek Ramaswamy for saying it as it is. You have simply been enjoying the fruits of labour of your forbears and immigrants and have no plans to sustain it for the future.
From Ramaswamy nailed the education challenge - https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/ramaswamy-n...
Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG. A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers…. This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken [sic] from slumber before & we can do it again…but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.
Regardless of your political leanings, American culture has been devaluing knowledge, education and everything else to do with them for a while now.
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