Major delays in student visas

Year to year declines in international students have concerned American universities. Now in addition are major delays in processing F-1 student visas this summer.

Universities have written to Washington to expedite visa issuances by the USCIS or else face a precipitous decline in the flow of international talent.

For undergraduates, new enrollments fell 2.9% from their peak in 2015-16 to 2016-17 and again by 6.3% the year after. Graduate new enrollments are following a similar trend, down 6.8% from their high point in 2015-16 to 2017-18, according to data from the Institute of International Education.

Harvard notes that the delays have “hindered or endangered their post-graduate work and, in some cases, their medical residencies.” This, in addition to the frustration caused to employers who’ve been waiting for new talent to add to the workforce.

Colleges believe the delays are due to new and complex visa screening procedures and changes to policies on how visa holders accrue “unlawful presence,” which largely stem from heightened anti-immigrant rhetoric and concerns about foreign students related to national security.

“Protracted visa delays. Harsh rhetoric against most immigrants and a range of other groups, because of religion, race, ethnicity or national origin. Together, such actions and policies have turned the volume all the way up on the message that the U.S. is closing the door — that we no longer seek to be a magnet for the world’s most driven and creative individuals,” wrote MIT President L. Rafael Reif in a letter to the university community on June 25.

From here.

Poland trying to bring back its citizens

Poland is introducing personal income tax exclusions to induce its people to return to the country. In 2004, when it entered the EU, 400,000 Poles lived outside the country. Millions of Poles have left – about 2.5 million, of which 750,000 are students studying in Germany and elsewhere. These expatriates are likely concentrated among the young and prime working age. The country’s entire population is about 39 million.

A new law will exclude many persons under 26 years old from an 18% income tax. From here.

 

Filipino workers around the world

No country has worked harder than the Philippines to export its people, and no people have proved more eager to go. since the mid-1970s the government has trained and marketed overseas workers not just drumming up jobs but fashioning a brand — casting the Filipino as a genial hard worker, the best in low-cost labor. in 1977 Wingtips, the magazine of Philippine Airlines, insisted that “Filipinos don’t pose the problems that guess workers from, say, the Mediterranean belt have in Western Europe.” they won’t riot or strike.

Critics later called the sale of the happy hard-working Filipino infantilizing, an effort to turn people into remittance machines.  But most Filipinos like that their country was known as the HR department of the world.

More than 2 million Filipinos depart each year, enough to fill a dozen or more Boeing 747s  a day. About one and seven Filipino workers is employed abroad. and the $32 billion that they send home accounts for 10% of the GDP. Migration to the Philippines what cars once were to Detroit: the civil religion. The Philippine Daily Inquirer runs nearly 600 stories a year on overseas Filipino workers or “OFW‘s”. Half have the fevered feel of gold rush ads. Half sound like human rights complaints.

Published in The Atlantic. Adapted from A Good Provider is one who Leaves: One Family and Migration in the 21st Century, by Jason Deparle, published 2019.

 

Filipino women packing pineapples in Hawaii, 1928.

 

 

 

question for today

“What obligation do you believe you have to your country?”

— from Table Topics

Dairy workers: at least half are immigrants

 

From 2017 interviews in Spanish with dairy workers throughout New York State: 90% are men, 61% from Mexico, 34% Guatemala, 2% Honduras, 2% Puerto Rico; 93% are undocumented; 73% speak little to no English; 62% are married; 70% have children.

Two-thirds had sustained a work injury; more than 80% were estimated to live and work on farms with too few workers to fall under OSHA’s jurisdiction for inspection and sanctioning (that is, below 11 non-family workers). Typically paid $9 an hour; 97% live in on-farm housing provided by their employers.

New York is a major dairy state. In 2015, it ranked fourth nationally in terms of milk production.

A national survey, done in late 2014, reports much less dependence on immigrant workers but shows better the impact of immigrant workers on the entire dairy industry. It reports that immigrant labor accounts for 51% of all dairy labor, and dairies that employ immigrant labor produce 79% of the U.S. milk supply. Dairy farm workers are paid an average wage of $11.54/hour. Dairy farms employed an estimated 150,418 workers in 2013. An estimated 76,968 of those are immigrants.

A bill was introduced in March, 2019 to expand the current H-2A visa program to allow for its use by dairy farmers. Under current law, dairy workers are not allowed to utilize H-2A visas because the dairy industry is not considered seasonal. The bill would allow for an initial three-year visa with an option to extend for another three years.

Insightful profile of an immigrant family

This Sunday’s NY Times Magazine contains an article on a Filipino immigrant family in Houston. Having read tons about immigration in the past 15 years, this article best captures in few words some truths about immigration.

The U.S. has by far the largest flow of permanent immigrants in the world. Note the word “permanent.” The article relates how a Filipino family switched from temporary immigration in the Persian Gulf to permanent immigration to the U.S. An underlying problem for the U.S. is that we do not know how to do — we feel very ambivalent about — temporary immigration, even though historically much of the former Mexican wave of immigration (declining since the 2000s) to the U.S. was in reality temporary in intent.

Permanent immigration is a multi-generational investment by both the host country and the immigrating households. Think of your image of immigration: most likely there a multi-generational dimension when you consider individuals you have known. The NY Times article addresses three generations. People living on the coasts have been used to the multi-generational story for years.

Immigrants are among the more ambitious within their country of origin. This Filipino family reflects that. This raises the issue of talent drain from the country of origin (which goes well beyond doctors).

The Trump administration has defined immigration opposition around somewhat manufactured law enforcement crises, and the Democratic presidential candidates are drinking the Trump cool-aid by focusing on law enforcement issues. Not a single one has articulated a sound vision for immigration.

Below the somewhat manufactured law enforcement crisis (which Dems including the Vermont congressional delegation have bought into) is an important underlying concern — it used to be called assimilation, but some years ago I began to see it as a question of civil (or civic) culture. U.S. born people want immigrants to have dual parent households, speak English, go to school, work, separate their trash, show up at community meetings, etc. Cultural expressions such as Cinco de Mayo and Asian dance performances are pleasant embellishments. You can see much of this work out in this article through the lens of young sisters and their parents.

Very few asylum applications are accepted

About 40,000 people applied for asylum on the Mexican border in 2018. About 5,000 were approved.

As of mid July there were about 18,700 asylum seekers on the Mexican side of the border. Only a few dozen cases are heard daily. The Wall Street Journal reports, “Since only about 20% of asylum claims are eventually approved in court, according to government figures, the Trump administration says the clear majority are spurious claims. Nearly half are denied but the rest are either not decided, abandoned or withdrawn.” That 20% figure appears high in light of application resolution figures provided by the Dept of Justice, below. the data are estimates based on tables in the article

 

 

Sharp increase in temporary worker denials

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services denied 32 percent of initial H-1B skilled temporary worker petitions in the first quarter of the 2019 fiscal year, up from 24 percent in FY 2018 and just 5 percent in FY 2012.

H-IB visas are used by companies to bring in for three years, extendable to six years, skilled professionals, such as Indian IT workers. The quota for these workers is always consumed in an annual competition to obtain the visas. For instance, In 2018, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced it had received 190,000 H-1B applications, or 105,000 more applications than the 85,000-annual limit would permit.

Under Trump, there has been a sharp increase in the frequency of denials of applications made within the quota.

Below are the denial rates for some major employers, 2015 vs. 2019.

 

Expect most climate change-related migration to be relatively local

Climate change is inducing several hundred thousand Bangladeshis to migrate within their country, but globally there will be little international migration due to climate change. This assessment is made by Valerie Mueller of Arizona State University. She says, “The research suggests that we are unlikely to see massive global migration movements, except among areas already experiencing conflict. It seems that, in the case of Syria and elsewhere, climate change may be a risk multiplier for conflict-prone migration…. People that move in response to a climatic event typically move short distances….. many climatic events, such as soil salinity from sea level rise, floods, landslides, hurricanes, heat stress, etc. are highly localized…. Often, migration in response to climate change is a method of last resort among those who lack alternative options to cope with a disaster. For example, in our study in Bangladesh, we find that some households diversify into aquaculture, in response to the rise in soil salinity from sea level rise and other human-induced causes, while others migrate.”

Source: interview here.