According to a survey by the Council of Graduate Schools, which represents more than 450 universities, the number of foreign students applying to graduate programs in American universities during this academic year rose 11% from last year. This reverses a two-year decline that followed the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Absolute numbers aren't readily available, because not all of the council's schools responded to the survey. But the council suggests that after the attacks in 2001, foreign students, particularly those in technical fields, had problems obtaining visas. Recent changes in government policies have made it easier to obtain H-1B visas.
Congress is now considering increasing the annual H-1B visa cap by at least 50,000 without—as IEEE-USA puts it—strengthening safeguards to protect foreign and domestic technology workers. As Wyndrum succinctly stated in a March 15 letter to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, "As the administration concluded last year, the program has major flaws that leave it vulnerable to fraud and abuse."
IEEE-USA's primary concern is a proposal to increase the H-1B visa cap from 65,000 to 115,000 and include an automatic escalator mechanism for future years, when current legislative provisions would expand permanent admissions of skilled foreign professionals. Among the proposals is a new student visa that leads to a green card for foreign nationals pursuing advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics at U.S. colleges.
Another proposal would expand employment-based immigrant admissions visas from 140,000 to 290,000. It also would exclude immediate family members from the limit, recapture unused immigrant visas from prior years, and exempt advanced-degree professionals from the cap.
IEEE-USA's position is that the permanent immigration of skilled engineers is better for the country's capacity to innovate and meet hightech workforce demands than another expansion of what it believes is a badly broken temporary H-1B worker program.