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foreign grads hurt the us economy? Will More Foreign Grads Hurt the US Economy? – Visa USA Expert
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foreign grads hurt the us economy? Will More Foreign Grads Hurt the US Economy? – Visa USA Expert
foreign grads hurt the us economy? This is a series of posts addressing the arguments of immigration reform and how these arguments may affect the US economy and student visas.

foreign grads hurt the us economy? Will More Foreign Grads Hurt the US Economy? - Visa USA Expert

Foreign Grads Hurt the US Economy?This is a series of posts addressing the arguments about foreign grads hurt the US economy? It discusses immigration reform and how these arguments may affect laws and these laws will affect students here in the US on visas. In the next few posts I’m going to talk about the size, characteristics, and geographic distribution of foreign students in the US.The main point is that the higher powers here in the US are discussing a variety of ideas on how to reform our current immigration system; what would these reforms mean to you as a student visa holder coming to the US to go to college?STEM Degrees = $$$ and JobsWhen asking if foreign grads hurt the US economy, many of these ideas revolve around proposals to improve how we can keep foreign students pursuing advanced STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) in college here in the US. These students are especially valuable, like their American students counterparts, because when they graduate they have the skills critical to building a vibrant knowledge economy – here in the US or back in their home country.No matter where you are from as a foreign student, your nation has most likely adjusted their immigration policies in recent years to attract highly-educated students like yourself. And maybe you have decided that you want your degree to be in a STEM field. I think that is awesome!But, some American powers that be fear that the more foreign fresh STEM graduates will depress wages (because you will work for less) and you will crowd out opportunities for American employees (because foreign students mostly are attending and living in very heavily populated areas in the US).Here is some preliminary analysis done by the Brookings Institute (considered a liberal or centrist think tank in Washington, D.C.) about the numbers. Even though it’s a few years old, it does indicate there will be a heavy flow of foreign students out of college and into heavily populated areas.When I talk about additional material from author Neil G. Ruiz, I’m getting this information from here.Large Cities = Large Number of Incoming Foreign StudentsTo understand why students on visas may be affected by immigration reform, take a look at the graph and pay particular attention to the large blue circles indicating where the majority of foreign students decide to live and go to college (such as New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco).The F-1 visa program allows foreign students to go to college full-time including language training programs in the US. Back in 2010, there were 342,968 incoming F-1 students working on their bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral degrees and this made up 51% of all the F-1 visas issued that year.Here is where the arguments against letting STEM students get their green cards right after graduation (instead of the typical 10 years it takes currently) begin: Of the 100 metropolitan areas where the most foreign students decide to attend college and live, 65 of these are in the top 100 in population size. This means that if foreign students are allowed to graduate and stay in the US and get their green card as a reward for choosing a STEM degree, the populations of these areas will simply keep increasing more and more. Some lawmakers believe that all that growth will not benefit Americans nearly as much as it will benefit foreign students because it will reduce wages and force American graduates to not continue on do their graduate work in a STEM area. That’s one of the arguments against making it easier for you to get green cards after you graduate.It’s also interesting to see that in these populated areas, the 35 areas with the highest number of foreign students (not in the top 100) have only 2.7% of the US population. But for some reason these areas attract 15.3% of all incoming foreign students. This is what I talk about in my next post: Smaller metro areas have the highest concentration of foreign students – is this a bad thing for the US economy?Go USA!All information presented here is from my personal research and my attempts to save you time and money when pursuing your dream of coming to the USA to study. Do not take any of this information as LEGAL advice – I am not an attorney, nor do I play one on TV. This information is gathered from a variety of sources including many U.S. Government websites and I urge you to validate this information as much as possible, just as I do when posting on this blog.