Frances Cox 202/822-9491 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 4, 2008

Compete America Welcomes Administration Efforts to Extend Work Authorization for Certain Foreign-Born Students; Urges Congress to Act Quickly for Permanent High-Skilled Relief

Extension of Student Training Program Would Help Alleviate H-1B “Cap-gap;” Congress Still Needs to Act on Permanent Employment-Based Visa Reforms 

Washington, D.C. – Compete America welcomed an interim final rule released today by the Department of Homeland Security to extend the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program for certain foreign-born students graduating from U.S. universities from 12 to 29 months. 

The new rule allows certain graduates to transition more easily from a student visa to a work visa. Because the H-1B cap is hit months before students graduate, a 12-month OPT would expire before an H-1B can be obtained and become valid the following October.  The 17-month extension should allow U.S. employers to hire spring graduates and keep them in America until their H-1B visas becomes effective, provided that these students graduate with a degree in science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM) and are fortunate enough to win the H-1B lottery.

“We are encouraged by the Administration’s move to keep talented graduates of U.S. universities here in the United States, and look forward to reviewing the details of the regulation to assess how much relief this will provide,” said Robert Hoffman, Vice President for Government and Public Affairs at Oracle and Co-Chair of Compete America.  “In the meantime, this measure appears to be a needed band-aid on a much larger crisis. Congress must complement this initiative by permanently reforming the H-1B visa and green card systems, including a direct path to green card status for the best and brightest, or America will face a massive bottleneck of talent. If Congress fails to act, we run the risk of losing out on these highly trained graduates contributing to our economy.”

In addition to extending OPT, the final rule responds to the situation in which an F-1 student’s status and work authorization expires before he or she can begin employment under the H-1B visa program. The interim final rule addresses this problem by automatically extending the period of stay and work authorization for all F-1 students – not only those with STEM degrees – with pending H-1B petitions. The rule will also implement certain programmatic changes, including allowing students to apply for OPT within 60 days of graduation.

The measure also requires the student’s employer to participate in the E-Verify program to be eligible for the extension. Many employers have reported difficulties in reconciling errors in the E-Verify system.

The OPT extension comes just days before the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is expected to announce that the FY 2009 H-1B visa allotment of visas for highly educated foreign-born professionals has been exceeded – with visa “winners” once again determined by random lottery.  This will mark the fifth consecutive year that the cap has been reached on or before the beginning of the new fiscal year, and the second year in a row that the cap has been reached on the very first day petitions are accepted.  Compounding the problem are the massive, multi-year backlogs in the employment-based green card system, which prevent U.S. employers from retaining many key employees as permanent workers once their temporary status expires.
 
“Tens of thousands of critical positions at U.S. companies are sitting open right now, and yet Congress has not acted to reform the employment-based system for hiring these much-needed, highly educated professionals,” continued Hoffman.  “Congress needs to follow the Administration’s lead and solve America’s talent crisis once and for all.”

Compete America (www.competeamerica.org) is a coalition of corporations, educators, research institutions and trade associations concerned about legal, employment-based immigration and committed to ensuring that the United States has the highly educated workforce necessary to ensure continued innovation, job creation and leadership in a worldwide economy.

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