写给全美华人和留学生：美国政府新规会让OPT名存实亡，大家行动起来！

发一下新加坡男朋友写的，长得像论文。他不是走的留学生的路，但是也是拿着签证搬砖。私心想英语总比我好不少。在我的督促下，他花了好几天终于写完了，贡献一下评论。
最后几天了，希望再加把油。欢迎参考思路，注意不要一模一样！！！

I refer to the notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) as published by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on 9/25/2020 in 85 FR 60526, page 60526-60598 (DHS Docket No. ICEB-2019-0006), titled Establishing a Fixed Time Period of Admission and an Extension of Stay Procedure for Nonimmigrant Academic Students, Exchange Visitors, and Representatives of Foreign Information Media.

Introduction

I am a working professional in the information technology section in the United States. I am submitting this comment on behalf of myself, as a member of the working-class professionals. While I empathize with the various issues regarding security and enforcement issues, it is of my opinion that the rule proposed, as it stands, is not only overly cumbersome for its intended purpose, but is also detrimental to the general environment of the United States’ intellectual and professional realms.

As a working professional, one of the greatest benefits of working in the United States is the abundance of talent from the many members of my community that I have the fortune to work with. Not only have these colleagues of mine contributed greatly to the development of technology in the United States, but on a personal basis they have also enriched my intellectual understanding of my work. However, such a talented workforce is not possible without a robust platform for higher education and information exchange, which for many years the F and J visa categories have contributed greatly to. The issues as affected by this NPRM are thus ones that I am highly interested in and are ones I believe will shape the professional landscape of the United States for many years to come.

I do urge the department to consider my dissenting opinions, and either make sweeping changes to the proposed rule as I will suggest or, withdraw the proposal in its entirety.

Background

As I understand, the purpose of this NPRM is to address the concerns regarding the integrity of the F, J and I visa classes. Since my experience is directly related to the F and J classes, my comments will be focused those classes.

As I understand, the department’s main concern with the system hitherto is that it is challenging to monitor the status of persons on these classes of non-immigrants. As such, the department has instead opted to set a hard limit on the admission length of personnel on such visas, with an option to review the limit as the period of admission draws to a close.

While I do not question the intent of the department to curb abuses of these visa classes, I believe the department’s proposed solution is overly disruptive, ineffective, and costly. Furthermore, I believe that the department did fully evaluate the viable alternatives to main proposal in this NPRM, in contradiction of its declaration of compliance to Executive Order 12866[1].

I instead propose the following:

Firstly, the department should look into working with the Department of Homeland Security to revamp the SEVIS system to better fit its intended goal of tracking visa term abuses. This solution should be evaluated in its entirety, a revamp plan presented, and a cost analysis be performed side by side the other alternatives as presented in [2]. The proposal should then be re-evaluated with this option on the table. One further suggestion here is to have program directors publish a yearly letter of certification on SEVIS to the visa holder certifying his or her continued enrolment in the program in-lieu of a lengthier immigration process. The letter could then also be used to hold parties accountable in cases of abuse.

Secondly, I propose that the new measures imposed on USCIS be either cost neutral to USCIS or that additional budget be allocated to allow for a guarantee on processing times for the new measure. A reasonable response time from USCIS should take no longer than 1 month, to avoid the new measure being overly disruptive. However USCIS is extremely resource constrained at the time of writing[3], and additional consideration must be given here.

Thirdly, failing the two changes above, that an additional default program length of 7 years be considered for PhD students, with 3 additional years for students in technical fields, PhD or otherwise. These lengths take into account the average length of a modern PhD program[4], as well as the OPT program length for technical students.

Lastly, the department should also evaluate the economic costs of its measure and various alternatives as part of its cost analysis for EO12866. Given that we are in the middle of a pandemic with that is weighing down our economy, it is paramount that we do not make things worse with policy changes.

Analysis

I will now attempt to provide some brief analysis for my proposals.

With regards to my first proposal, I refer to the department’s own argument in [5]. Here, the department raises the point that it “believes it is appropriate for the DSO to recommend an extension of an academic program and an RO to recommend an extension of an exchange visitor program”. However, the proposed solution that the department provides, to have visa holders go through an extension application with USCIS regardless of the recommended program length directly contradicts the department’s stated belief as outlined above. Since the entire purpose of the F and J visa categories are to encourage international exchange through academic or practical programs, it only follows naturally that the department should not make policy that usurps the judgement of those who conducts these programs, lest it violates the spirit of the visas themselves.

As mentioned, I understand the department’s concern for national security. However, I do not believe that the mention of national security gives the department a blank check in implementing policies above all other considerations, especially so if there might be viable alternatives that could both preserve the intention of the visas to the greatest extent possible, yet addresses the department’s national security concerns. I believe a revamp of the SEVIS system is a viable alternative here that the department has failed to consider in [6], when rejecting the idea of making use of SEVIS data.

Furthermore, building upon SEVIS will allow the department to make use of years of experience in dealing with the system, and not have to reinvent the wheel. It is for these reasons that I believe that this solution is likely the one that will have the least cost, while being the least disruptive, and therefore will be the option with the highest net benefits. As per EO 12866, I urge the department to consider this path as part of its compliance to the said executive order. As mentioned above, the department could have the DSOs and ROs certify each year the program’s validity for the next year. The department can then have the data it needs to enforce abuses of the visa without a lengthy and complicated process.

On the point of lengthy and complicated processes, I shall elaborate on my second proposal. It is no secret that in recent times that USCIS has become severely resource constrained. It had to nearly furlough nearly 70% of its entire workforce in August, and was only able narrowly avoid that scenario with “unprecedented spending cuts and a steady increase in daily incoming revenue and receipts”[3]. One surely then need to ask if USCIS would be up to the job of implementing the new NPRM effectively given its current state.

In my opinion, USCIS would at best require a lot more funding than available, and at worst, would not be able to carry out its duties to its fullest extent. I want to point out that the latter is nothing short of disastrous. In this scenario, at the cost as presented by the department in the NPRM[7], USCIS would not only cause massive delays in the F and J visa processes, but also likely to fail to achieve the stated national security goals of the NPRM to begin with. Massive delays in the visa program would be highly disruptive. Even the department itself has stated that such levels of disruption in the NPRM is undesirable[8]. Furthermore, should USCIS be overwhelmed by the new policy in light of its resource shortage, the it would be unlikely that USCIS could process these cases with the level of detail that the department would require of it to achieve the department’s national security goals for the NPRM. At the very least, it’ll provide USCIS a perverse incentive to rush through a delicate process and could even cause side effects to USCIS’s other activities. It would then be a massive waste of taxpayer money, only to have a less effective and secure immigration system for the country. I’m sure that no one wants that.

As such, I’m proposing that the department carefully study the level of funding to ensure that USCIS can handle the increased load with a comfortable leeway to prevent us from regressing into the worst-case scenario. My suggestion of limiting the processing times to 1-month stems from this. The department should in my opinion, use this 1-month benchmark to estimate the amount of resources it needs. The department may or may not require a hard limit of 1 month for the processing itself, but I believe it should be the yardstick of a properly function process, and funding should be allocated as such. Cases taking more than 1 month should require a review to determine that 1) the delay is warranted and not caused by USCIS being unable to handle the load, and 2) failing that, USCIS’s budget be increased accordingly. I believe this would be the best way to ensure the integrity and efficiency of the United States’ immigration system. My fallback suggestion to the department is that otherwise (i.e. it is unable to follow the 1 month benchmark), the new policy must be designed to be budget neutral to USCIS to prevent a decrease in service levels. The consequences of the decrease are more than severe.

My third point is then that even if the department refuses to consider remediations to the issues above, against my recommendation, it should still set its new policy in the NRPM based on the prevailing trends in program length we see from F and J visas, to keep overhead to a minimum. As mentioned above, an average PhD now takes 7 years [4]. If the department’s goal is truly to reduce abuse of the visas, it should not be unreasonable for the default program length in the NPRM to be set based on what we see in reality. If a PhD program is on average 7 years, then it should be expected that a student who stays on a F1 visa with a program length of 7 years is not abusing the system. Similarly, a STEM student who is embarking on an OPT program is expected to be participating in the program for 3 years. It would not be illogical to assume that a program that matches the prevailing duration in practice is an abuse of the system.

As such, I urge that the department consider these prevailing durations as the default program length, instead of the rather arbitrary length of 2 and 4 years, with little flexibility in between. In doing so, I suggest that the department make yearly adjustments to this default program length, based on an independent and objective study on what the typical program length for the F and J visas are. As a start, in the absence of a proper survey, PhD programs should be 7 years, and the 3 years for STEM OPT should be considered.

My main motivation for this third point concerns the education system of the United States. The issue at hand is the quality of higher education in the country. In 2004, the country was shocked upon learning that 463 federal employees were enrolled in educational institutions that were unaccredited, with a payment of $169,470.74 total from the federal government to these institutions [9]. It became a scandal, and I argue that the situation had occur in no small part due to the financial incentives these institutions stood to gain from their unethical behaviour.

Similarly, I strongly believe that in policymaking, we do not want to alter the structure of the incentives at large in society that push decision makers to engage in unethical or detrimental behaviour. Unfortunately, I feel that without further changes like the first two changes I have suggested, the NPRM as it currently stands would provide such perverse incentives. The NPRM, by putting a limit on the duration for the visas, exerts a pressure on education institutions to keep their program within the durations for these visas; there will, with more bureaucratic overhead and an absence of guarantees from USCIS on processing times, be a huge amount of uncertainty for the practicality of programs exceeding the default status durations. In other words, no matter what the actual suitable program length be, schools will be incentivized to keep their programs within the durations as specified by the NPRM. One may argue that only foreign students would be affected, but it is not hard to imagine that the next step would be for schools to streamline their offerings, since that would be way more efficient that running two programs, one for domestic students, and one for foreign students. When that happens, the same situation will before American students as well.

Forcing an course into a set amount of time is never without trade-offs. It is simply not possible to rush results when it comes to education, without the quality of said education suffering. The department in my opinion should have no role in guiding how long education programs should take; it’s role is to regulate the status of foreign students participating in them. This opinion is what led me to my recommendation, that the default lengths in the NPRM should not be fixed, and should be dynamically pegged to what one would normally see happen in such programs instead, with lengths of PhDs and STEM OPTs be given special consideration.

In comparison to the above, my last point is relatively minor. All I suggest here is that a special situation warrants special considerations. We are currently in a pandemic, with a highly uncertain economic outlook. At this point of time I believe all policy should be drafted with extra care, and with consideration given to the current state of affairs. Here, given the state of the economy, my ask would be for the department to update its cost figures in its consideration for EO12866, staying true to the order. In the update, the department should conduct a wide-ranging study, with independent oversight, on the potential economic impact of each of the alternatives it offers. Any effective on the economy, positive or negative, should be factored into the cost of the respective policy alternative. I believe that only then can we get a full picture of the true cost of implementing the NPRM, something that is critical in current times.

Conclusion

In conclusion, while I understand the department’s position, I have major reservations about this NPRM. As a working professional I feel that without drastic revisions, the NPRM as it stands is likely to lead to perverse incentives, and an overall decline in the quality of the country’s education system, and consequently, the productively of the workforce. This is especially so in this day and age, where globally, there is an shift towards economies being more knowledge based, and the United States cannot afford to fall behind in this competition. I strongly urge the department to consider my recommendations, to explore them in full, and make major revisions to the NPRM to avoid implementing unsound policy.

[1] federalregister.gov
[2] federalregister.gov
[3] uscis.gov
[4]: cgsnet.org
[5]: federalregister.gov
[6]: federalregister.gov
[7]: federalregister.gov
[8]: federalregister.gov
[9]: gao.gov

转自某律所公众号《“限制留学生合法居留时间新规”7天后结束评论采集，送大家一份精华模板》，仅供参考

以下是Aries X的投稿内容

我从NAFSA Association of International Educators, NFAP National Foundation for American Policy, 一亩三分地等平台疯狂搜刮信息、参考了很多资料，自己写了4页半的google doc comment发上Federal Register了。

在这里给大家总结了一个comment template, 以供参考。现在还剩几天时间，大家要疯狂评论（没有上限），疯狂给州议员打电话，疯狂给大学校长/international office施压，疯狂鼓励身边朋友帮忙评论。



因为similar comments will be disregarded，我就把要点用中文写了出来，附上可以参考的资料。

开头写

I OPPOSE “Establishing a Fixed Time Period of Admission and an Extension of Stay Procedure for Nonimmigrant Academic Students, Exchange Visitors, and Representatives of Foreign Information Media” (DHS Docket No. ICEB-2019-0006).


可以提到104名议员也联名反对，给DHS施压：bit.ly/2Iswa79

I oppose this rule with the following reasons：

1

此规将给美国带来负面经济影响

大学国际生为美国贡献了$41 billion，养活了458,290个工作岗位；每7个国际生就会创造3个岗位 [1] [2] 。加拿大、澳大利亚、中国在美国的损失下吸引了更多国际生，经济正蓬勃发展 [3] [4]。

2

新规会让OPT和博士项目名存实亡

因为EOS processing time是6-8个月 [5] ，而我们只能毕业前120天申请。鉴于没有特殊经济原因的人还必须毕业后停止工作及离开美国，博士候选人必定死翘翘，因为博士项目通常需要5-7年完成。且新规会势必影响美国公司和雇主的工作和生产力。

3

DHS在越界

因为新规会让USCIS雇员决定一个学生是否在 “making good academic progress” 和 “have compelling academic reasons”。一个学生的学业情况学校应该最清楚、也最有决定权，一个untrained, unlicensed, unaccredited的USCIS雇员不应有这样的权力。

4

新规下申请EAD和EOS将耗费近 $2,000

(I-765 Application for employment authorization $410 + $85 of biometrics + I-539 Application for Extension of Stay $370 + $85 of biometrics for this + $1,000 for an attorney 因为新规把事情搞得很复杂，学校无法再协助学生），高额的费用下将没有人愿意为美国工作，长期之下对美国经济产生极大额负面影响。

5

此新规多此一举

虽然F/J不像其它签证类型一样有fixed time period of admission, 其它签证类型也不像F/J一样有SEVIS这样的跟踪系统。除此之外，DSO, CBP, POE, SEVP, ICE...全部都有学生的入境、离境、入学、就读专业、实习、就业、签证时长等等的信息。并且，SEVP也可以随时要求DSO提交学生的信息，学生毕业三年之内SEVP也依然可以作此要求 [6]。如此天网之下，发现一个overstay的学生不是轻而易举吗？为何要burden千千万万守规矩的学生和大学呢？其次，申请OPT就已经是审核学生是否有遵守规矩的过程了，否则他们的DSO也不会给他们OPT recommendation, USCIS也不会通过他们的EAD。为什么要劳烦USCIS的雇员看材料一模一样的EOS和EAD申请呢？这不是浪费时间和人力吗？

6

新规中提到的overstay report是有问题的

首先，数据是一个DHS不知是否离境和转换身份人数的高估 [7] [8]。其次，2016财年的overstay rate是2.99%，到2017年时下降到了2.25%，2018年1.99%, 2019年1.42%，从2016到2019年下降了整整54%，证明现有的规则是能有效抑制overstay的。与此同时，overstay report里的第31页的Table 7显示，2018财年的overstay rate从开始的2.11%降到1.63%, 1.35%, 1.01%到财年末的0.84%，也就是说，非常有可能是DHS年初的计算有误、年后慢慢更正，故不是签证持有人overstay。

7

总的来说，此规将是在给潜在的来美国学习的学生发送一个信息：你们的才能在这里不被欢迎。由此一来，国际生和外国才干给美国带来的辉煌、帮美国度过新冠疫情的身影将不复存在 [9] 。

DHS可以怎么做：

找出unaccredited 和 pay-and-stay schools及相关负责人，用数据做出更有针对性的抑制overstay的方法。

与DSO代表讨论和调查校园F/J compliance情况，从他们的角度了解什么措施更加有效。

也可以说吐槽一下说，你们是不是sa，国际生这么明显的好处你都看不见，要别的国家捞国际生、占你们的便宜？或者用一些手术的比喻说，如果你有肾结石，你一定是碎掉石头而不是切肾对么？如果有蛀牙，一定是拔掉那颗牙而不是拔掉大部分牙对么？对症下药懂不懂？为什么要burden千千万万无辜的学生、学校、USCIS雇员和美国公司呢？

最后一定要说明：I implore you to rescind these changes entirely and immediately and keep the D/S system.







参考资料：


[1] 国际生给美国经济的贡献：nafsa.org


[2] 国际生给美国的经济贡献2：nafsa.org


[3] 澳大利亚、加拿大和中国在抢国际生：nafsa.org


[4] Trump上台后国际生数量变化：nfap.com


[5] 各种USCIS申请的processing time: egov.uscis.gov


[6] 【重要】DS Rule comment和talking points：nafsa.org


[7] 2019 Overstay report: dhs.gov


[8] Overstay report的问题：nfap.com


[9] 移民（曾是留学生）在COVID-19期间的重要性：nfap.com

有点迟到，补充黄金范文：
I strongly oppose the new proposal and would like to recommend the DHS to revise the proposal for the following reasons:
The proposal, although only target on the immigration status of the foreign students, could deeply harm the well-established path of introducing higher talents to US economy. Such path contains (1) acquiring advanced degree in US; (2) obtaining working practice via Optical Practical Training (OPT); (3) starting the career in US and contributing to the national economy. I could explain how the proposal affects those steps one by one.
(1) Enrolling international students has already becomes an engine for the US economy. It provided more than $40 million dollars and supported more than 400 thousands jobs in the year 2018 [1]. While the fixed period of 4 years proposed by DHS covers the length of most education programs, it does not consider the possibility of finishing undergraduate study in more than 4 years (~ 1/3 in all college graduates [2]) and all PhD students. If the proposal comes into effect as is, a great percentage of international students will have to apply for visa multiple times during their program, while the visa application process has become the main reason (34% in 2016 fall and 87% in 2019 fall) for the international student declining from the peak in 2016 to 2019 [1]. What’s more, the visa application is the only reason among the top 12 reasons whose agreement rate had a clear and continuous rise during those period. Thus, the causality between the increasing complexity and time of visa application and the declining of incoming international students is obvious. Clearly, increasing the necessary times of visa application will extremely blow the motivation of studying in US for lots of future international students.
(2) The proposal asks F-1 visa holders to file applications for EOS and EAD to apply post-OPT. USCIS carries out the review of both EAD and EOS, whose criteria partially overlap with that of each other. It is a waste of resources. In fact, there was a ~ 40% increase (from 70 days in 2016 to 94 days in 2019) in the approval time of OPT from 2016 to 2019, while the total approval number and approval rate stayed the same, which clearly showing the lack of resource of USCIS [3]. Also, the approval of EOS is 5-10 months [4], and the proposal does not state whether the long wait will be counted into the 90-day unemployment period for post-OPT applicants. Even if it is not, nearly on employers could tolerate such additional hold for the position. Such concerns, if not addressed, could completely make the current OPT program impractical. The data shows that, in 2018, the OPT program provided 332K potential candidates applying H1B and L1 [3] (post-OPT approved in 2018 + STEM extension approved from 2016-2018), and the total applicants of H1B visa [5] and L1 visa [6,7] are roughly 419K and 95K (approval number/approval rate) in the same year. While the two groups of people do not accurately overlap with each other, the data infers that the OPT program is a major provider for US foreign employees. If the OPT program is made impractical, the artery of global talents to US economy is largely blocked!
(3) In the former section, I have discussed how important the OPT program is to the introduction of global talents. I always believe that there is a positive feedback loop between such talent collection and a welcoming and prosperous United States. 38% US Nobel prizes in natural science was won by immigrant scientists since the year 2000 [8], and more than half of the top American tech companies are founded by the first/second generation of immigrants [9]. Apart from those leaders in academia and industry, the high-skilled immigrants are the vital force to support the economic development, 57% of the technology workforce in the bay area are foreign born in 2017 [10]. The proposal affects the group of immigrants holding F and J visa, exhaustively covering those with or pursuing advanced education degrees, whose contribution to the aforementioned data does not need proof. “Immigrants, we got the job done”, but the proposal are getting those high-skilled immigrants down.
I understand the DHS’s purpose of decreasing the overstay rate of international students and visitors. However, the proposal is such a costly and severe action that aim to the wrong side of the problem. As a F-1 student who is currently with an on-going program, my stay in US is closely monitored by the univerisity’s international student office and recorded in multiple systems of CBP/POS, SEVP, SEVIS, USCIS. I could not think of a way to jump out of my program and overstay without letting the school suspending my F1 status. Once graduating, I might apply for post-OPT. Before I got my EAD approved, the school will only extend my D/S for only 90 days and will not update the D/S until the approval of EAD. Once I got employed, my staying status is determined by my post-OPT program and the STEM extension. Therefore, despite the D/S does not limit a fixed staying period, the staying of the visa holder is not without monitoring, auditing and regulation. In fact, the current system works just well. The overstay rate of F/M/J students decreases monotonically from 5.48% in 2016 to 3.09% in 2019 [11]. It is not the ways of treating visa holders that need to be improved. The methods to further decreasing overstay rate should be proposed in reinforcing the registration and verification of language schools and employers.

The current proposal is not only less efficient in mitigating the overstay rate, but also has a discriminative assumption to all of the international students and visitors. The fixed staying period only enforces some check points in their duration of stay, during which all of the possible transition has been well monitored by the current policy. Thus, the main result of the proposal is no more than forcing the visa holder out of US regularly for no substantial help to the overstay problem. It should be noted that everyone affected by this proposal has at least gone through the background checking once before their original visa is issued. Such proposal makes the visa no longer a welcome, but a label of “need check regularly” based on their origin prior to the latest background checking. As a 6th year PhD student holding F1 visa and plan to pursue a working opportunity with post OPT, I even prefer to check in regularly to the local police station or other authorities just like those who are out on bail. Afterall, it is not that different. We entered, and we learnt. We have us investigated, yet we are not trusted.

1. nafsa.org
2. nces.ed.gov
3. uscis.gov
4. egov.uscis.gov
5. uscis.gov
6. cato.org
7. fragomen.com
8. forbes.com
9. cnbc.com
10. svcip.com
11. dhs.gov

1point3acres.com 的范文：

感谢楼主的辛勤劳动， 在此添砖加瓦，做了以下修正版，希望对小伙伴们能有帮助：

I strongly oppose this new proposal and strongly recommend the DHS and related departments to revise the proposal based on the following reasons:

Briefly, the proposal aims to improve the efficiency to tackle the problem of unlawful presence/overstay of F, J, and I nonimmigrant students, scholars and visitors. However, the new measures introduce far more administrative and operational overheads, and adverse societal and economic impacts than the anticipated improvements. It claims to “provide the Department with additional protections and mechanisms exercise the oversight necessary to vigorously enforce our nation's immigration laws, protect the integrity of these nonimmigrant programs, and promptly detect national security concerns” [1]. However, such “additional protections and mechanisms”, are weakly justified with insufficient evidences, introducing unnecessary disturbance to irrelevant people who are largely already observing the current enforcements, and burden to USCIS officials, university administrative staffs, US employers and many other parties, and essentially having people to repeat exercising the prove-to-work measures, jeopardizing their existing effectiveness.

My reasons are below:

(1)
The proposal does NOT rigorously justify, with concrete data, analyses, or statistics, that it may bring improvement of effectiveness to reduce the overstay rate. On the contrary, the argument is mainly based on speculations like, citing [2]: "DHS believes that replacing admissions for D/S for F-1 students with admission for a fixed time period would help mitigate these national security risks by ensuring an immigration official directly and periodically vets applicants for extensions of stay".

Furthermore, the current D/S system is indeed helping to reduce the unlawful overstay rate of F/J students and scholars, as demonstrated by official DHS statistics, citing [3]: the overstay rate of F/M/J students, under the current D/S system, MONOTONICALLY DECREASED from 5.48% in FY 2016 to 3.09% in FY 2019, which translates to a 43.6% relative reduction.
. From 1point 3acres bbs
This proposal could adversely affect more than million people’s life [4] and impact all US taxpayers since it costs more than 237 million dollars per year for the next ten years [5]. It would be irresponsible to the public to make rules that are weakly supported by hypothesis and largely uncorrelated examples, to replace a proven-to-work system while additionally wasting resources, where such resources could have been deployed to promote gender/racial equality, healthcare, and other economic relief plans during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

(2)
The proposal attempts to downplay the potentially affected population, about “20% of the F/J non-immigrants, citing [4] as “a significantly smaller percentage of students are engaged in programs which may last longer than 4 years”. To be accurate, an “almost 40%” plus an “almost 38%” adds up to a “close to 78%”, meaning the remaining population is definitely “more than 22%”. Besides, neither 20% nor 22% is a significantly smaller percentage. In terms of absolute number of people affected, it is around 250 thousands of F/J non-immigrants who would need to file EOS. In fact, it is comparable to the population of a whole country Barbados, around 280 thousand in 2018 [6]. Besides, the effect of any rule/law should under-estimated since it only targets the minority (e.g., African Americans, 13% of the population [7], Hispanic and Latino Americans, 18% of the population [8]).

In addition, this attempt to downplay is again wrongly justified. Just to point one category of neglection, according to [9], for non-resident aliens who started 4-year postsecondary studies from 1996 to 2012, their average 4-year graduate rate is 45.1% and average 6-year graduate rate is 66.9%. This means that an estimated 21.8% of the “almost 40%”, translating to 8.36% of nonimmigrant students in the United States are lawfully staying in US, completing their studies with just more than normal time. Under the new rules, they have to unnecessarily file for EOS just to finish their degree, while having the legitimacy of their immigration status well monitored by their DSO and USCIS, especially when they apply for OPT after graduation.

Furthermore, this is only counting students taking 2 more years to finish 4-year college, not mentioning the more common case for master students to take more than 2 years to finish and way more common for PhD students to take more than 4 years.

Besides, 8.36% plus the “more than 22%” mentioned in the paragraph above is already “more than 30%”. That said, this attempt of downplaying is at least underestimating its necessary impact by half of its scale.

(3)
Among these “more than 30%” people, only an estimated 0.9% are unlawfully overstaying in the US. They could have been easily identified after excluding students who after 4-years, are still studying at the same institute, have already left US, or have graduated with approved EAD, have transferred to another institute and continue to be tracked. To put in simple words, one does not randomly ask more than 30% of the people in a country to report to the police just hoping to catch a few more criminal by chance, while the criminal would highly unlikely show up.

DHS and university DSOs are already monitoring F/J students very closely through CBP/POE, SEVP, SEVIS, USCIS. DHS has full access to an F/J non-immigrant’s entry/departure/enrollment/duration-of-stay history. They can utilize that information they have at disposal to create a smarter, cheaper, more effective way of figuring out who’s abusing the F/J non-immigrant programs and take appropriate actions.

(4)
The new rules introduce waste of resources to require F1 Post-OPT applicants to file both an EOS and EAD application. The EAD application is already investigating that the student is compliant with their legal status regulations and requirements by various measures already in place. First, their DSO is responsible to carefully check the applicant’s records before providing the necessary recommendation for their OPT application. Second, their EAD is only after the application being carefully reviewed by USCIS officials. The new rules require USCIS officers to review essentially duplicated sets of EOS applications, when they have already done their job.

Besides, asking a student to submit both an EOS and EAD is environmentally unfriendly since it unnecessarily wastes resources like paper and ink for printing, fuels consumed for mail to be delivered, and etc., and labor-intensive for the student, DSO, universities, and USCIS officials. . From 1point 3acres bbs

(5)
The Post-OPT processing time is already very slow (90-120 days [10]), and the current EOS processing time is even slower (7.5 to 10 months based on official USCIS estimates [11], as of 10/04/20). The new rule will further slowdown the processing time of USCIS on those applications. It is more likely that US employers would not provide job offers to F1 Post-OPT applicants merely because USCIS may not be able to process the doubled workload on time. Besides, it does not address how additionally applying for EOS would affect the current 90-day unemployment rule for Post-OPT participants.

It is highly possible that EOS is still pending when after maximum 6 months since the EAD and EOS applications were submitted, and the 90-day unemployment period ends. This not only harms the student, but also hurts the productivity and benefit of the US employer, such as wasting valuable resources recruiting talents that they eventually could not hire and not being able to fill the manpower gap if they could not find enough new employees. This also potentially lead to negative effects on the US economy and push top talents, who generates more economical growth on average, to other competing countries (e.g., Canada, Japan, EU countries), potentially hindering the “Make America Great Again” goal, especially when all countries around the world are competing for economic growth.

(6)
Some sections of the proposal are contradicting. In [12] the document states “F nonimmigrants with a timely filed EOS application and whose EOS application is still pending after their admission period indicated on Form I-94 has expired would be prohibited from engaging in employment until their EOS applications and applications for employment authorization based on either an internship with an international organization, CPT, pre-completion OPT, or post-completion OPT are approved.” This suggests that an F-1 Post-OPT applicant needs to have both EOS and EAD approved to start working.

However, [13] claims that “An F alien whose status as indicated on the Arrival-Departure Record (Form I-94 or successor form) has expired will be considered to be in a period of authorized stay if he or she has timely filed an extension of stay application pursuant to paragraph (f)(7) of this section until USCIS issues a decision on the extension of stay application.”, clarifying on the validity of authorized stay during pending EOS, while [14] says “An alien in F-1 status recommended for post-completion OPT must apply for an extension of stay and employment authorization and may not engage in post-completion OPT unless such employment authorization is granted.”, suggesting an F-1 alien with approved post-completion OPT EAD can engage in work before the EOS is approved. This contradicts with the statement in the paragraph above.

(5) and (6) indicates that the proposal in its current form essentially makes the OPT program an empty title and it should be carefully revised to not to do so.

1point3acres.com

根据地里的内容做了PPT 大家有需要可以去拿去给学校讲
drive.google.com

补充内容 (2020-10-15 01:48):
我拿到学校Graduate student government讲了。大家反响很好，美国学生都去评论了。大家也可以试试给学校的同学和老师讲讲。我在一个新的回复里写了几点，关于H1B新政策的评论，给他们参考去评论。