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！

Warald借楼发帖~~
【update 2021-07】拜登政府宣布：这个新规取消！戳这里看通知。


【update 2020-10-27】
DHS留学生新规公示结束了，我的一些想法

【update】

如何写评论的黄金范文一篇：https://www.1point3acres.com/bbs/thread-673147-1-1.html

《104名美国国会议员联名写信，反对缩减国际学生停留时间的DHS新规》

公示链接：https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/09/25/2020-20845/establishing-a-fixed-time-period-of-admission-and-an-extension-of-stay-procedure-for-nonimmigrant页面右侧，点击绿色按钮 “SUBMIT A FORMAL COMMENT” 即可评论！

-----

发生什么事了？

9月24日，美国国务安全部宣布了一个新的规定，要把国际学生和访问学者的居留时间缩短为2-4年。
9月25日，新规进入公示流程，在Federal Register网站上，所有人都可以留言评论。国土安全部会收集评论，决定是否通过新规 以及 如何改动。

留学生和访问学者并非美国永久居民，居留时间被设置限制，乍听合理，但实际上并非如此。

新规会造成什么影响？

先对比一下现状和新规的不同之处。

现状：

举个例子：小张在美国大使馆拿到了F1签证，有效期为1年。那一年之后，即使签证已经失效，只要小张留在美国境内并保持学生身份，则依然属于合法居留。只要OPT和OPT extension被批准了，小张就可以在美国工作了。

新规：

F/J签证持有人在美国合法居留时间改为：
1. 攻读学位所需时间，并且上限不超过4年；
2. 某些特定情况下，比如敏感专业、国家安全考虑等，最多只有2年。

期满之后，必须申请延期停留（Extension of Stay，简称EOS）。

假如小张同学就读一个2年制硕士项目，其合法居留时间为2年。毕业时身份就过期了。即使小张的OPT或者OPT延期被批准了，他也必须申请EOS才能合法留在美国；在EOS被批准之前，即使有OPT，他也不能工作。


EOS本身存在重大问题：

1. EOS目前需要等半年以上。随着大量F1签证加入队列，以后要等更久了。
2. 美国政府可以以敏感专业、国家安全等理由，延缓甚至拒绝某些人的EOS申请。中国留学生很容易成为牺牲品。


EOS会导致OPT和OPT Extension名存实亡。

目前，只要OPT（包括OPT延期）批准了，国际学生就可以开始工作。
将来，还需要EOS被批准，只有OPT是不行的。

EOS如果拖上一年，国际学生和雇主都只能干等着，试问，有几家公司愿意等？
EOS如果拖很久，变成像绿卡排期一样，猴年马月才批，那以后留学生就很难留在美国了。

OPT和OPT延期政策，无论有没有都形同虚设、名存实亡。


一亩三分地在组织留学生写评论了，目前进展如何？

有很多同学已经行动起来了，已经在公示里留言。给这些同学点赞！

但因为新规复杂，很多同学并没有意识到自己也会受到影响，或者还不知道这个消息。

一亩三分地微信公众号里 @Sorryking 留言：

现在这一条新闻在一亩三分地的热度还远远不如五年前的【OPT延期】那条。这是一个很大的危机。如果【新规】真的实施了，opt将成为历史。

一亩三分地网站里：

@gjia0214：当年OPT extension的public comment也是30天，一共收到了5w条评论，显示的有4w多条，希望大家努力多多评论，加油！
@lbytenwater：当年OPT延期平均一天将近1700条，我们还远没有达到。【注：本文写作时，公示开放已经2天半，有1349条评论提交】

总而言之，我们需要广大留学生的积极参与！也需要各界的支援！


我已经是h1b、绿卡甚至公民了。新规与我何干？

过去几年，各州都有人反对AA法案和对亚裔的逆向歧视，美国也不断有绿卡改革的呼声。近期，华人社区更是捐款百万美元帮USWUA状告美国政府微信禁令。

这些进展，跟美国华人维权意识加强有关，也离不开人数日益壮大的华人群体。

留学生是美国华人人口的重要源头。留下的人多了，将来你需要支持的时候，更容易找到更多支持者；而源头断了，等你需要人帮忙的时候，号召人也难。
2019年，华盛顿州华人组织 Let People Vote（LPV） 成功把逆向歧视华人的I-1000法案拖回公投，LPV在一亩三分地里多次募捐，得到支持。近期的微信诉讼募捐，留学生们也积极参与了。

帮助留学生，壮大美国华人社区，也会帮助你自己。


那我如何帮忙？

不需要您捐款。也不需要您上街游行。

只需要您拿出十分钟，打开下面链接，点击 submit a formal comment，对这个新规表示反对。仅此而已。
https://www.federalregister.gov/ ... re-for-nonimmigrant


我反对新规，打算去评论，我应该写什么？

NAFSA（国际教育者协会）已经给国会写信反对，他们在Issue Brief文件里列举了几个要点。

1. International students and exchange visitors are the most tracked by ICE. 现在的SEVIS系统已经很好了，国际学生从进入美国，其行踪和状态就被一路跟踪，没有必要修改已有的政策。
2. An exact expiration date would increase backlogs at USCIS. 对应着前文说的EOS会严重拖延。USCIS平均处理时间在过去两年里已经减缓了46%。
3. D/S does not increase visa overstays. 国土安全部认为国际学生overstay严重，所以要推行新规，但有学者指出其数据是错误的。
4. D/S is good policy that allows for the flexibility necessary for pursuing education. 新规把学习时间一刀切，而现实中，攻读学位所需时间会因选课、转专业、转学等因素或者个人原因而变化，本科并非都是4年，博士一般至少5年，就连硕士也并非都2年读完。

注：D/S是现行制度Duration of Status的缩写，I-94上面有。
Issue Brief 链接如下，针对以上要点，都给出了英文小段落，很容易读，可以在此基础上自行发挥。
https://www.nafsa.org/sites/defa ... rmation%20FINAL.pdf

此外，地里群众们还写过：
1. 现行规则已经很好了，新规对USCIS是 unnecessary burdens，而USCIS本来就缺钱，靠政府资助才没有furlough employee。
2. 对国际学生是extra cost，也有很多留学生家里不富裕，靠各种基金会赞助。
3. 新国际学生传递很不友好的信息，国际学生给美国大学带去funding，如果去其他国家，美国大学缺钱也会裁员。
4. Overstay到底发生在那些学校？这些cost是花在检测所有人上更合算？还是重点花在那些没有e-verify或者非acreddited的学校更合算？

大家并不需要面面俱到，每个人都有自己的视角。
如果您想了解新规细节，提交评论的公示页面里有新规全文。

下面这个帖子里，一亩三分地很多用户给出要点和自己写的评论作为参考。
https://www.1point3acres.com/bbs/thread-672141-1-1.html


有没有现成的模板，我直接copy提交？

Twitter上有移民律师说政府看评论的时候会"discount ones that are very similar"，所以建议大家别复制粘贴一样的。

重在提出合理的质疑和反对意见。写清楚即可。


写给受新规影响的留学生们：

这几天，经常看到以下留言：

1. 我xxx是不是就就没事了
2. 我xxx那该怎么办

文章说的很清楚了。除非你就是读完书立刻离境，否则你就会受到影响。

新规通过之后，立刻生效，以后也很难改了。以后遇到不公平对待，打官司难度，比现在写评论大了无数倍。
而且，对通过了公示的政府规则发起诉讼，难度极大。前不久，哈佛和MIT能在法庭上挡住国土安全部“禁止国际学生全上网课”的规则，很大原因是该规则没走公示流程、有不合规的嫌疑，而且，“疫情期间逼学生上课”这个话题很容易激起美国社会各界全面反对，但“通过EOS导致国际学生OPT和OPT延期名存实亡” 则不会。
到时候，大家在一亩三分地的发帖，除了“H1B三抽不中心累”、“OPT等了三个月还没批”、“绿卡要猴年马月”，还会再多一条：“OPT一年前就批了，EOS今年还在排队中，预计明年能批，公司等不及了，咋办？”

别人帮我们是情分，但自己的利益必须自己争取。

你有没有认真写评论？有没有从不同角度写多条评论？你有没有联系学校相关人员，呼吁他们采取行动？

你有没有转发这个消息，在学校群里，在朋友圈里，发动大家参与？有没有找CSSA等学生团体？

有没有跟房东、美国同学、其他国家留学生谈这件事？

在寻求帮助的同时，力所能及的事，咱自己先做了。

- Warald
一亩三分地地主

=== 原文 ===

DHS Proposes to Change Admission Period Structure for F, J and I Nonimmigrants

Release Date: September 24, 2020
链接：
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2020/09 ... and-i-nonimmigrants


补充内容 (2020-9-25 08:45):
新规明天（9月25日）开始为期30天的公示，大家多多参与反对！！！


补充内容 (2020-9-25 11:11):
公示链接：https://www.federalregister.gov/ ... re-for-nonimmigrant
页面右侧，点击绿色按钮“SUBMIT A FORMAL COMMENT”即可评论！
补充内容 (2020-9-26 03:00):
1. 所有人都可以写评论，评论不记名、不论身份，所有评论都有效力！
2. 可以多次写评论，30天内每天都可以来写，可以写N多条！
3. 重复评论会被降权或直接忽略，所以不要直接复制粘贴其他人的评论，要有所修改！

补充内容 (2020-9-26 03:05):
建议大家可以写邮件、打电话给自己学校的ISSO，留学生学业被耽误、中断、留学生就业受到打击，对学校的财务、科研、声望也都有严重的负面影响，学校代表留学生发声反对会更有力度！

已经在实习或工作的同学，也可以向公司反映这一政策改变的可能，未来新规一旦实施，失去talented international students对企业来说也是重大损失！呼吁企业支持高科技人才和劳动力！！！

补充内容 (2020-9-26 05:03):
楼里已经有多位同学发布了有参考意义的很棒的评论，置顶位置有限无法一一列出，写评论没思路的同学可以多翻一下楼，借鉴一下写的好的同学的评论！注意修改，避免雷同！

补充内容 (2020-9-26 10:08):
大家写评论时不要只站在声援留学生的角度，要站在为美国/美国公民好的角度去写，强调留学生对美国高校和企业的贡献，促进美国科技、经济的发展，为美国人创造并提供更多就业岗位，留学生是MAGA的一部分！！！

补充内容 (2020-9-26 23:56):
https://www.regulations.gov/dock ... PS&D=ICEB-2019-0006 此链接可以看到目前已post并已public显示的所有评论.
https://www.federalregister.gov/ ... re-for-nonimmigrant 此链接可以看到目前已post评论总数（包含已post但尚未public显示的评论）

数据更新有滞后性，评论需经人工审核后才能显示，非工作时间无人审核评论内容、无人实时更新数据，因此已显示评论显著少于已post评论！


补充内容 (2020-9-27 06:45):

@marta_yu

美国移民律师Greg Siskind在他的twitter上发表了NFAP撰写的有关DHS刻意夸张留学生overstay的数据，并且以此作为这次更改行政条例的主要依据，下面总结几点大家可以作为论据。原文中13页数据充分，欢迎大家reference
主要的几点在于：
1. 留学生overstay的数据包含了由于DHS无法证实其中已经离开美国但没有record的数据点，因此是非常不准确的，不能作为修改行政法规的依据

2. overstay在中国和印度留学生群体中不到1%和2%。整体上从2015FY到2020FY来看，overstay的概率一直都是处于较低水平（@南极小企鹅：实际上overstay rate正在逐年下降，提供一个页USCIS自己的统计数据 https://www.dhs.gov/publication/entryexit-overstay-report  table.4 Non immigrant students  2017年的overstay rate 是2.35%， 2018 是2.11%，2019是1.52%。逐年下降的数据说明SEVP的运用以及近年来学生签证监管的收紧，已经是下降的趋势）

3. DHS这次的EOS会增加留学生1000刀左右的负担，并且增加USCIS每年300,000份的申请负担。现在EOS(即I539)，就是F/J延长境内身份转换的审批时间已经很久，表明USCIS没有能力有效的处理这么大的case load

4. 建议通过推广学校E-Verify来加强对留学生境内身份的管理，而不是通过EOS这样效率低下，时间冗长的方式来增加留学生负担，降低美国大学竞争力

链接如下
https://nfap.com/wp-content/uplo ... eptember-2020-1.pdf


@血祭天国：亲身经历：给校长发邮件，校长会把邮件转发给很多的学校领导层，比你单单给iss发邮件有用太多！记住，给学校校长发会有比较好的效果和反应，这样相关部门才会引起足够重视和采取行动！

更新：有两名议员已经在帮美国大学采取行动 https://www.1point3acres.com/bbs/thread-674932-1-1.html

覆巢之下，焉有完卵？辅车相依，唇亡齿寒！

周五一亩三分地公众号也会发文章，专门说这件事，希望能引起大家的重视。


【update1】一亩三分地公众号里推送的文章。
朋友圈传播效果好，请大家帮忙转发，号召更多人参与！
公众号文章1链接：https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/mv2OwwMMAaXurnAk4cgmTg
公众号文章2链接：https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/IfS8nGs6Mhgzcy85z9tugw

【update2】

很多同学留言：我是xxx情况，我是否受到影响？

先做个统一说明：如果你马上毕业或者OPT即将用完，近期内会离开美国，不打算留在这里，那对你没什么影响。其他人等，只要持F或者J签证（包括OPT），你就受到影响，因为这个新规是针对所有国家所有人的！通过后很快生效！

不要抱着侥幸的心理觉得“我这种情况不会有事的”。一旦新规通过，只要你有身份上的变化，触发了“重新申请”，你就可能受到刁难。到时候，那就是美国国土安全部按章办事，无懈可击。

【update3】

提问：这个新规对于世界所有国家，所有F和J签证持有人，都适用吧。为什么我们中国人圈子要这么担心？

回答：Warald相信：新规无论怎么写，具体实施的时候，英国人、法国人、澳大利亚人，都不会有什么影响的，甚至印度人都可能没事。

但是中国人就不一定了。

@QueenieV 在地里做了深刻的分析：

全世界被check的F签里面，有70%以上是中国留学生的，而中国留学生占所有留学生总数的1/3左右，可见被刁难的概率之高、签证的待遇之差！同样的专业和学位，其他人水过，中国人却被长check！

可以想见新规一旦实施，中国留学生可能每两年、甚至不足两年就需要离境签证或境内extension，对其他人来说可能只是浪费时间和金钱，对中国留学生来说却可能造成学业、工作被迫中断，一去不复返的严重损害！

对于opt和opt extension，通常EOS（注：新规里要求的延期申请）审核需要6至12个月的时间，在此期间你无法工作，你的opt或extension就相当于名存实亡、形同虚设！

【update4】

提问：为什么要分析最坏情况，用最大的恶意来揣测美国政府？美国政府加强学生和访问学者签证政策的管理，有什么不妥吗？

回答：2020年，在见证了特朗普的一系列禁令以后，Warald已经不敢用”常规思维“来做善意推测了。

移民与国籍法（INA）颁布于1952年，其212f条款给与总统以”国家利益会受到重大伤害“ 为理由，而禁止外国人入境。这个接近70年老的”古典“，多年来没有人触及，早就埋没在故纸堆里了，特朗普把它翻出来，针对中国留学生，发布签证和入境禁令。非常可笑的是，时至今日，美国政府都没给出“参与中国MCF战略的实体名单”！

此外，总统行政命令（Executive Order），往届总统很少发布，特朗普却在滥用，时不时就签署一个。

正是他这些不断挑战常规的极端行为，让我不得不考虑”最坏情况“。

如同 @lbytenwater 在地里的发言：

我觉得大家似乎对这个法案的危害没想明白....其实说到底，这个法案就是可以给DHS一个 驱逐F/J签证持有人的借口....以前因为F/J的时间是 D/S，不好驱逐，咋办呢？就把F/J的时间改为限期就完了.....以后七子的人交EOS你觉得还会批么？

【update5】

有人提问：像这种public comment只是走走形式，还是如果大家都反对，政府真的会参考？

大神 @putout 的解答如下：

评论和行政机构的答案都会分类公布出来。慎重考虑评论中的观点是他们的法律职责。当然最终他们还是可以说“我们考虑后还是觉得利大于弊，执行此规则”。关键是这种公共证据以后可以在任何诉讼中调入。一个很关键反抗行政规则的诉讼渠道就是告行政机构没有妥善考虑某类公共评论。这时法官就可以通过评论和回答和行政机构在庭上的解说来判断是否当时认真地参考了评论中的立场，并且回答的原因或解决办法是否合法。

【update6】
发动周围的人参与，不只是孤军参与！

2015年OPT延期公示帖子里，有当年大家作战的经验总结：https://www.1point3acres.com/bbs/thread-147140-1-1.html
2015年，有的同学甚至发动自己的美国房东 来留评论。

机智的 @LeoMeow 说：

刚刚给哈佛大学ISSO打了电话（虽然本渣并不是哈佛毕业的…但是我觉得哈佛有力度我就要打！），哈佛大学办公室的老师说他们几个星期前已经注意到了这条新规，川普政府几年来一直试图进行修改，现在终于发布并进入public comment阶段，他们将会开会研究应对策略，并且愿意联合更多的大学一起反对，他们对国际留学生非常同情、理解并且支持！

大家给自己的大学、或者任何你能想到的、会愿意站在留学生这一边的大学都可以打电话，google一下直接就有他们的ISSO电话号码，他们一般也不会刨根问底确定你一定得是他们学校的学生才可以表态，你就直接说我是一名留学生，我对此非常担忧！打个电话只需要几分钟，就可以引起更多的大学的注意和关切！就像7月份的网课禁令一样，越多大学联合起来反对、起诉，力量就越大，政府就会输！！！大家分散火力，覆盖更多的大学，壮大反对的力量，一起把这个bullshit给怼回去！！！！！

【update7】

关于如何写评论

@marta_yu

美国移民律师Greg Siskind在他的twitter上发表了NFAP撰写的有关DHS刻意夸张留学生overstay的数据，并且以此作为这次更改行政条例的主要依据，下面总结几点大家可以作为论据。原文中13页数据充分，欢迎大家reference

主要的几点在于：
1. 留学生overstay的数据包含了由于DHS无法证实其中已经离开美国但没有record的数据点，因此是非常不准确的，不能作为修改行政法规的依据

2. overstay在中国和印度留学生群体中不到1%和2%。整体上从2015FY到2020FY来看，overstay的概率一直都是处于较低水平

3. DHS这次的EOS会增加留学生1000刀左右的负担，并且增加USCIS每年300,000份的申请负担。现在I539，就是F/J延长境内身份转换的审批时间已经很久，表明USCIS没有能力有效的处理这么大的case load

4. 建议通过推广学校E-Verify来加强对留学生境内身份的管理，而不是通过EOS这样效率低下，时间冗长的方式来增加留学生负担，降低美国大学竞争力

全文链接：https://nfap.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Analysis-of-DHS-Data-on-International-Students.NFAP-Policy-Brief.September-2020-1.pdf

如何写评论的黄金范文一篇：https://www.1point3acres.com/bbs/thread-673147-1-1.html

@dmax123 给出了一个很好的要点总结，可以作为写作的方向：

NAFSA之前在给国会的一封信中列举了几条反对意见：

• International students and exchange visitors are the most tracked by ICE.
• D/S is good policy that allows for the flexibility necessary for pursuing education.
• D/S does not increase visa overstays.
• An exact expiration date would increase backlogs at USCIS.
• D/S has proven to be the best policy for international students and exchange visitors.
  

每一条都有很详细的论述。。。可以参考一下。。。原文在这里

@gjia0214 提醒：

如果我们的评论仅仅表达不喜欢，不满意是没法阻止这个rule成为final rule的。

更加有效的评论可以是：

• 论证DHS rule 里所提及的目标并不合理（这个有点难，但是确实有data表示，这几年overstay率已经在稳步下降了）
• 论证DSH提出的rule无法完成DHS的目标（这个暂时没想到什么主意，希望大家集思广益，如果能提几条D/S并没法有效降低over stay rate会很有帮助）
• 论证DHS的rule并非是一个有效或者高效的方案，提出altenative solution （这个可以作为可以重点打击的点，其实根本没必要取消D/S，proposed rule里其实还包括一些额外条款，比如限制多次降级或同l级 transfer education program，限制language school的时长等的已经可以有效并的降低overstay了，取消ds完全多次一举）
• 个人觉得，指出rule可能造成的经济损失，等等也可以作为不错的理由。比如：原rule里有提到这个rule可能影响国际生源，但是并没有很好的论证这一点，仅仅qoute了一个10年前的文章大家来美国上学是因为其他的理由而不是因为D/S，所以取消D/S并不会影响招生（典型的混淆充分条件和必要条件，D/S当然不是来美的理由，但是没有D/S谁还敢来？
  

还有，即使反对声很强烈，DHS是可能还是可以通过minor change而使之通过，所以我们要盯住这个rule提出的的核心手段——取消D/S，狠打这一点，让他们必须做major change而不是minor change。

另外，如果读了rule原文，你会发现DHS有提很多alternative solution，包括一些less severe的alternatives，但都被插科打诨式的论证为非有效措施了。

关于这个rule最大的concern应该就是eos会导致opt等政策形同虚设，我觉得也有必要强调这一点附加opt的重要性，要让DHS明白，他们想干什麼，我们都猜到了。

近期也准备发邮件给学校和isss，他们的评论也会非常有说服力，大家一起努力！

【update8】

有人说：

老实说我觉得这件事的热度好低，我看了一眼朋友圈，除了自己，只有两个人关心这件事，其他在美国的伙伴（包括phd）都是岁月静好快乐周末

. 1point 3acres 引用 @LeoMeow 的回复：

不要气馁，今天才是30天的第一天，它不热咱们就努力把它炒热，并且可以求助更多的利益相关方，比如学校ISSO，让更多大学和教育界的有分量的力量介入。由于从小到大的环境和教育，很多中国人确实公民意识、参政议政能力比较薄弱，但无论别人怎么样，起码咱们已经觉醒的这一部人要尽力而为，就算这鬼东西真的通过了，它是over my dead body过去的，我已经问心无愧！

虽然这项新规并非只针对中国留学生，是对全世界所有国家留学生都有影响，但是鉴于一直以来中国留学生F签（以及其他类型签证）被check的比例是全世界最高的（之一），拿到长有效期签证的比例是最低的（之一），以及现在提出的新规定当中还有可以利用national interest/national security等因素为由而使签证有效期短于两年的内容，加上当下的中美关系的影响，对中国留学生比对其他人可能更加不利，学习、工作都有可能被耽误甚至被迫中断，所以强烈呼吁大家引起重视，在public comment阶段团结行动、多多反对。

补充内容 (2020-9-26 02:05):
全世界被check的F签里面，有70%以上是中国留学生的，而中国留学生占所有留学生总数的1/3左右，可见被刁难的概率之高、签证的待遇之差！同样的专业和学位，其他人水过，中国人却被长check！

补充内容 (2020-9-26 02:08):
可以想见新规一旦实施，中国留学生可能每两年、甚至不足两年就需要离境签证或境内extension，对其他人来说可能只是浪费时间和金钱，对中国留学生来说却可能造成学业、工作被迫中断，一去不复返的严重损害！

补充内容 (2020-9-26 02:28):
对于opt和opt extension，通常EOS审核需要6至12个月的时间，在此期间你无法工作，你的opt或extension就相当于名存实亡、形同虚设！

关于OPT的几个要点（非专业人士，请自行核对）：
1. 目前的学生的身份有效期会被update至i20的program end date，最长不超过4年
2. 减少grace period至30天
3. OPT 可以最早提前120天提交申请，最晚program结束后30天内申请
4. 申请OPT同时需要申请EOS
5. 毕业后申请opt+eos拿到ead但eos还在pending会有个类似于cap-gap的东西可以工作，但是如果eos pending超过180天，就不可以继续工作了（这个不是很确定，需要further verify以下）
6. 好像还包括有一个关于对申请h1b的同学的（maybe 利好）政策，大概跟auto-extension有关，但没怎么看明白

我觉得这个能rule会带来更大的不确定性，而且会让ucsis变得更慢，public comment只有30天，大家可以积极去留言。



补充内容 (2020-9-25 09:43):
补充以下
第五条，毕业申请opt和eos必须要等opt和eos同时批了才能开始工作，这条如果通过，影响会非常恶劣，opt名存实亡？申请opt extension + eos会有180天的cap-gap，然如果超过180天 eos还没批下来，要停止工作

明天这个规定会正式在federal register 发表，之后有三十天public comment period (到10月25日)。链接应该明天会放出来。
强烈支持楼主和Warald说的，希望大家都去comment.
comment不是真指望Stephen miller 那帮人回心转意，而是因为按法律联邦政府必须阅读所有comment，归类，然后答复。comment的人多了就更有可能拖垮他们，这样如果民主党上台，一月这个规定自然就不了了之。
大家认识的教授，同学，朋友也可以鼓励他们去comment。如果学校有工会(grad student union)，一般会专门有几个人负责international student advocacy, 鼓励他们群发邮件，发动其他学生的力量一起来反对。我学校的工会代表所有研究生TA，不管你交没交due。

另外，看到twitter上有移民律师说政府看评论的时候会"discount ones that are very similar"，所以建议每个人都personalize your comment a bit，别复制粘贴一样的。
https://www.federalregister.gov/ ... re-for-nonimmigrant

发现了一条影响可能及其恶劣的规定：

A. Prohibiting F nonimmigrants whose admission period, as indicated on their Form I-94, has expired while their timely filed EOS applications and applications for employment authorization based on either an internship with an international organization, curricular practical training (CPT), pre-completion Optional Practical Training (OPT), or post-completion OPT are pending to engage in such employment until their applications are approved;

也就是说，如果你毕业前按最早的时间去申请opt和eos（目前规定可以提前120天），你需要等opt和eos同时批准才可以工作。

目前eos审批大概需要半年到一年左右，到时候因为大量学生需要申请eos可能会更加backlog导致更久，假如你毕业前120天申请eos+opt，opt用4个月审批下来，eos一年才批下来，不知道有哪个公司愿意等人一年。。。而且opt生效，eos批准期间的失业期怎么算也没有讲明
-baidu 1point3acres白。

另外

B. Providing that F nonimmigrants who have timely filed an EOS application and whose EOS application is still pending after their admission period indicated on Form I-94 has expired will receive an automatic extension of their F nonimmigrant status and, as applicable, of their on-campus employment authorization, off-campus employment authorization due to severe economic hardship, or Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics Optional Practical Training (STEM OPT) employment authorization, as well as evidence of employment authorization, for up to 180 days or until the relevant application is adjudicated, whichever is earlier;

对已经有opt到时候需要extend的同学，需要申请opt extension + eos，这个可以有180天cap gap，但如果超过180天，eos还pending，那就要停止工作。


我觉的这个rule对opt的处理很有问题，像是用这种方式让opt变得跟没有一样。 对A这个政策，文中采取一段含糊其词的话解释了：
DHS believes that continued employment authorization for aliens wishing to work as an intern for an international organization, engage in CPT, or in pre-or post-completion OPT present materially different circumstances from those pertaining to aliens who are experiencing emergent circumstances, severe economic hardship, or engaging in on campus employment, and that the same automatic extension policies therefore should not apply to them.

same automatic extension policies 是指不需要等eos批过就可以开始工作，类似于cap-gap


补充内容 (2020-9-25 12:29):
全文比较长，NAFSA有个小总结，应该会持续更新，大家可以看一下。
https://www.nafsa.org/profession ... ace-duration-status

hhhhh258 发表于 2020-9-25 21:44
如果这项计划真的实施，会影响现在F签证的年限吗？

F签证不是重点，重点是你在美的身份需要extension。你只能最多待4年，然后就需要extension。如果需要opt，那EOS审核需要6个月-12个月时间，那么你的opt就相当于名存实亡不能工作。

感觉这个可以long check加超短签证时间直接吧全部人都卡成黑户啊。并且之前H1B也出现过有人给extension一年不到所以拿到H1B extension之后立马就要file新的extension并且不能工作，这个政策感觉完全可以复制这个骚操作把国际学生全部卡死...

这个问题已经很严重了。基本上所有的留学生都会受到影响。

- 读书学生需要延期。申请签证的时候一般项目会有个估算时间，比如一年半之类的，但是实际情况经常会需要毕业延期。以前毕业延期就找学校部门更新一下I20就好了，现在需要走政府部门的审批……政府部门的审批有多慢就不说，还会增加被拒风险。
- 毕业以后申请opt。申请F1签证来美国的时候，签证肯定是按照项目时间来给的，所以毕业申请opt的时候，要先申请i94，确保自己能继续待下去，然后再申请opt。现在opt的申请时间已经够长了，再加上这个额外的申请，如果早期没准备好的话，可能都会错过入职时间……

刚刚给哈佛大学ISSO打了电话（虽然本渣并不是哈佛毕业的…但是我觉得哈佛有力度我就要打！），哈佛大学办公室的老师说他们几个星期前已经注意到了这条新规，川普政府几年来一直试图进行修改，现在终于发布并进入public comment阶段，他们将会开会研究应对策略，并且愿意联合更多的大学一起反对，他们对国际留学生非常同情、理解并且支持！
大家给自己的大学、或者任何你能想到的、会愿意站在留学生这一边的大学都可以打电话，google一下直接就有他们的ISSO电话号码，他们一般也不会刨根问底确定你一定得是他们学校的学生才可以表态，你就直接说我是一名留学生，我对此非常担忧！打个电话只需要几分钟，就可以引起更多的大学的注意和关切！就像7月份的网课禁令一样，越多大学联合起来反对、起诉，力量就越大，政府就会输！！！大家分散火力，覆盖更多的大学，壮大反对的力量，一起把这个bullshit给怼回去！！！！！

Lana007 发表于 2020-9-26 05:01
OPT打算申请OPT extend的同学向学校提交I-983后，学校不是就会给新的I20了吗？那么这个end date一定会是2年 ...

i20不能做为你身份有效的证明，i94才是你身份有效的证明。
目前i94是ds所以你只要有有效i20就可以待在美国
但是这个rule就是要取消ds，改称你的i-20 program end date，
学校可以给你延期i-20，但是管不了i94，只要涉及到延期i94就必须file EOS。

NAFSA之前在给国会的一封信中列举了几条反对意见

International students and exchange visitors are the most tracked by ICE.

D/S is good policy that allows for the flexibility necessary for pursuing education.

D/S does not increase visa overstays.

An exact expiration date would increase backlogs at USCIS.

D/S has proven to be the best policy for international students and exchange visitors.

每一条都有很详细的论述。。。可以参考一下。。。原文在这里

sukiyy 发表于 2020-9-25 17:05
那请问大神 像这种public comment只是走走形式 还是如果大家都反对真的会参考。

评论和行政机构的答案都会分类公布出来。慎重考虑评论中的观点是他们的法律职责。当然最终他们还是可以说“我们考虑后还是觉得利大于弊，执行此规则”。关键是这种公共证据以后可以在任何诉讼中调入。一个很关键反抗行政规则的诉讼渠道就是告行政机构没有妥善考虑某类公共评论。这时法官就可以通过评论和回答和行政机构在庭上的解说来判断是否当时认真地参考了评论中的立场，并且回答的原因或解决办法是否合法。

许多同学都有在这个网页上留言，也有在跟学校international student office留言。许多同学说，我该说什么，这里我就来归纳总结一下在这个帖子里面，大家的论点和证据，给大家灵感：

先谢谢大家的评论，我是搬运工而已，当然自己润色了一些。我就抛砖引玉一下，大家可以补充。

第一句一定要写 I strongly oppose/disagree with this new rule proposed by DHS and USCIS.

然后可以列出论点：

论证DHS rule里所提及的目标并不合理：
The goal that aims to eliminate the overstay amongst the F1/J1 visa holders are not feasible.
The proposed rule does not decrease overstay. In fact, it actually increases the chance of overstay. Requiring students to reapply for the EOS every 2 or 4 years, many more students are subject to unexpected overstay due to the prolonged processing time.
The rate of overstay amongst F1/J1 has not been increased (according to NAFSA)

论证DHS提出的rule无法完成DHS的目标:
DHS and USCIS are not able to achieve the goal proposed by this rule.
B1/B2 visa holders are also required to file the EOS, but the overstay problem amongst them still exists.
After the EOS identified the persons who overstay, no removal process was addressed in this proposal. Thus, within this new rule, the overstay problem still won’t be eliminated. —-need to be verified/just to give you an idea

论证DHS的rule并非是一个有效或者高效的方案:
The rule did not propose an effective way to eliminate overstays.
Alternative methods can be used (e.g. limit the time that a student can attend a language school).
Better utilize the current resource, such as the SEVP and SEVIS program to identify the F1/J1 visa holders who overstay
The new rule should target specific schools or programs (e.g. no accredited schools) where more students there are likely to overstay. And this new rule should not target the international students’ community as a whole.

论证DHS的rule可能造成的经济损失:
The rule may severely affect the economy or the income source the school who has a big international community.
Discourage current and prospect international students (e.g. current: not choosing the schools in the US for their postgraduate studies; prospect: not choosing the schools in the US at all)
The tuition from the international students is the main source of income of many universities. With the budget cut recently due to COVID, discouraging more international students from coming lead to a greater disruption of school’s operation.

论证DHS的rule可能造成的人才流失:
The rule may severely affect the talented students.
The prospect students are likely to choose schools from a different country. This will significantly affect the universities in the US as there are more 30% PhD students, who contribute to the science, literatures, and art to the US society.


论证申请OPT如何形同虚设/无法保证在180天内EOS会办下来/论证DHS的rule会给USCIS造成更大的backlog
The rule will severely affect the students who are currently or planning to apply for the OPT/OPT stem program. These students need to apply for both OPT/OPT stem and the EOS. Given the current process time of EOS (6.5 months to 1 year), it is likely that these students will be out of status (more 180 days after they filed EOS and OPT) before they can receive their approval of EOS. This will cause these students to lose their status and their jobs. Some of their jobs are essential, such as healthcare. If this rule was passed, it would crumble the already weaken healthcare system.
When applying for OPT/OPT stem, the USCIS already verifies applicant’s legal status. There is no need to verify the applicant’s legal status again using EOS.


论证2年或者4年的rule涉嫌种族歧视: The rule that differentiate groups of students who can renew their stay every 2 years vs. every 4 years was based on their country of origin. This rule is subject to racial discrimination. The students should not be punished by which country they were born into.

论证这个rule的cost vs. benefit:
. ----It’s unclear that how the new rule’s cost vs. benefit analysis was done?
Things we know: The cost of filing the EOS
Things we do not know: 1) The cost to update the file of each student, the cost of school’s compliance, the cost of additional background, the cost to the schools which will lose a lot of students

论证2年或者4年的rule如果给申请人增加不必要的burden:
This rule put unnecessary burden on the international students.
Financial burden
Anxious of uncertainty

论证30 grace period非常的短 (这个可以based on personal experience)

新规不能用在“老人”身上，我就copy/paste @putout 的观点
The proposed rule removes the possibility of future students from being admitted to the United States for "duration of status" ("D/S"). More importantly, however, it intends to convert existing students in the US who have already been admitted for D/S to a fixed time period of admission. In my opinion, this latter act is illegal as it an ex post facto rule applied retroactively. It runs counter to the principle that administrative rules cannot take retroactive effect unless Congress has provided for this through relevant legislation.

In Bowen v. Georgetown University Hospital, the US Supreme Court held that executive agencies should not be presumed to have the power to promulgate retroactive rules unless that power is expressly authorized by Congress. In the field of immigration regulation, Congress has rarely allowed retroactive rule-making except for applicants who obtained immigration benefits through fraud or misrepresentation, or when some material evidence later comes to light. A change of regulation alone cannot be used to justify revisiting adjudicated outcomes made prior to the new rule. Furthermore, applicants have always been given the opportunity to be notified and respond to the relevant agency if the outcome of an adjudication is to be revisited. This position has had found consistent support in federal case law and precedents of the Board of Immigration Appeals.

The proposal to retroactively and uniformly convert existing D/S admissions to a fixed time period would be an ex post facto revisiting of adjudicated outcomes of the CBP and/or USCIS. Students who have been admitted under D/S will already have made plans for their course of study under the assumption that this will be the condition of their admission. It cannot be argued that a fixed period to the end of the relevant I-20 is a similar condition to D/S. Under D/S, the admitted student is able to extend his or her stay through the educational institution, such as when a course of study is extended or a transfer of school/level of study occurs. By admitting the student for D/S, the relevant agency has already adjudicated that these routes are lawfully available to the student for the maintenance of status during their period of stay. A fixed time period of admission is not a comparable condition of admission as it places a hard limit on how much time a student has available to maintain status and be supervised solely by their educational institution before seeking further agency adjudication on their immigration status.

In summary, the proposal to convert existing students admitted for D/S to a fixed time period of admission is an illegal retroactive application of a new rule on already settled adjudications.


先写这么多，欢迎大家补充

刚刚给UCLA 校长信箱发出，希望有用！大家可以拿去改改给自己学校发！
UCLA Should Stand Out to Protect its F and J Visa Holders!

Dear Chancellor of UCLA,

My name is XXX , and I just obtained my Ph.D. degree from the UCLA department of XXX. I am writing this email to express my serious concern about the recent rule proposed by DHS, which aims to change the admission period of F and J visa holders. This new rule is now under the comment period until 10/26/2020.

This proposal can be found here:

https://www.dhs.gov/news/2020/09 ... and-i-nonimmigrants

Under this new rule, F and J visa holders (international students, research scholars) can only stay in the US for at most 2 or 4 years, up to the end date of their programs. Instead of the previous rule of "duration of study".

In this way, the undergraduates and Ph.D. students may have to leave the US and spend a long time (usually one month, but getting longer and longer now) to renew the visa and reenter the US. Undoubtedly, this will disrupt their plans to study and conducting research at UCLA, as well as the UCLA professors.

Worse still, this new rule also affects the OPT and OPT extension application, in which applicants also need to file a Form I-539 to extend their current visa status. This extension of stay (EOS) usually takes 6 months to 12 months, during which the applicant cannot work with OPT or OPT extension.

Overall, I believe that this new rule will seriously affect the current and upcoming international students and scholars, as well as the academic research happening at UCLA. Furthermore, UCLA and other top US universities will not be their top choice of study and research anymore since they cannot work in the US after graduation! This will have a catastrophic effect on the academic research and revenue of UCLA.

Therefore, I strongly suggest that UCLA should stand out and unite other universities to say no to this new rule! Again, this new rule is now under the comment period until 10/26/2020.

Sincerely,
XXX

serein 发表于 2020-9-28 01:24
我也猜测是这样，那样就好，还担心自己评论被吃了，以及人数这么少，希望审核结束之后会数目暴增。

可以记下评论的tracking number，如果里面并不包含任何inappropriate的内容却被无故过滤、删除的话，那足以证明他们程序违规/违法，没有严肃、妥善、合法地对待评论中的反对内容并强行执行新规的话，地里大神说都可以作为将来打官司的证据的

我觉得我们也可以提建议要求延长评论期。250多页的rule，作为直接受到影响到学生群体，需要充分的时间去了解，理解规则。学校方也需要充分了解规则才可以做出更加有效的评论，才能把规则更完善（的剔除）。
如此重要的规则竟然只留了30天做评论是不够的，其他法案，比如关于航空公司疫情期间service animal给了60天进行评论。
Pandemic也导致关心此项政策群体没法便利的去咨询和查阅资料。
基于此项规定并非紧急却又如此重大的本质，再加上即将到来的holiday season和学期末，我们需要至少九十天来进行review!!!

刚才看到有人提到overstay rate 下降，提供一个页USCIS自己的统计数据：
https://www.dhs.gov/publication/entryexit-overstay-report

table.4 Non immigrant students
2017年的overstay rate 是2.35%， 2018 是2.11%, 2019是1.52%。逐年下降的数据说明SEVP的运用以及近年来学生签证监管的收紧，已经是下降的趋势。

大家直接联系学校负责国际生/i20/visa的办公室和校长办公室，把弊端给他们说清楚，动之以情，我上周五发的邮件，今天已经都收到了回复，说学校已经在联系不同层面的人，同时也鼓励我们提交自己的comments

补充内容 (2020-9-29 07:00):
补齐这个数据点，nyu周日晚上回复在newsletter里表明了反对态度，今天打电话和校长办公室回信都说ogs会keep international students updated

new proposal 文章开头是阐述提出proposal的motivation， 如果我们可以去challenge 其motivation不够强烈，也可以说明这个proposal 弊大于利。 一些想法供参考
比如文章说此举其中一个目的是为了应对 nonimmigrants present national security concerns。反对观点如下
1. 非常敏感专业比如学校公司都不会去招外国人也不会有签证。
2. 一般高科技领域签证都是经过background check，如果给了签证，说明领事馆认为并没有security concern。  而且一般领域的科研成果本来也都是public avaliable的，发在paper里的。
3. 就算有个别人有威胁national security， 这个新的propsoal 也无去通过限制2年或四年的期限来把他identify 出来，有两年时间对于有安全威胁的人足够去达到目的而不是去file eos，这样只会block 正常留学生。去identify 有安全威胁的人是要在他入境之前做的事情。

还有比如B. Risks to the Integrity of the F, J, and I Nonimmigrant Classifications 里提到一个是对 Designated School Officials（DSO） 以及  学生和本身的concern。
其中对DSO 是“DHS is also concerned that DSOs at these schools were complicit in these abuses... some DSOs intentionally recorded a student's status inaccurately...” ，
对学生concern是“To extend their stay, these aliens enrolled in consecutive educational programs, transferred to new schools, or repeatedly requested DSOs to extend their program end dates”。
学生想abuse， 一定需要通过DSO来帮助。 那么去更为严格的去决定DSO 的资格，以及对现有DSO 加强审查以及规范DSO 行为，是比把所有留学生列入审查更直接、高效的做法。因为一个不合格的dso可以帮助很多想abuse的学生。

学校iso今天发的邮件：
"By now you may be aware that on Friday September 25, 2020 the Department of Homeland Security published a proposed rule that seeks to eliminate the practice of Duration Of Status and replace it with a date certain I-94 end date among other changes.  What this means is that instead of being admitted for the duration of the program of study (D/S), individuals applying for admission in either F or J status would be admitted for the length of time indicated by the program end date noted on their Form I-20 or DS-2019, plus a period of 30 days following their program end date.  All requests for extensions would need to be approved by USCIS or U.S. Customs and Border Protection and not through school officials, as is the current procedure. We write to let you know that at this time this is only a proposed rule and not a final rule and that, if implemented, it will only take effect after the APA public notice and comment procedures, a 30-day comment period that is followed by a period of time to review the comments and make changes.  It is unclear if this will become a final rule at all, and, if so, when that would occur.  In addition, it is also a possibility that it could be stopped through legal action after it is implemented.


. 1point 3acres In the interim, we are working with our colleagues in the office of Federal Government Relations at the University of California, Office of the President (UCOP) to put together a statement that jointly reflects the comments of all ten of the UC campuses and to fundamentally advocate against this rule.  Like you, we have serious concerns about the implementation of such a rule.  I personally worked with international students during a period when visa documents had a specified expiration date and am fully aware of the challenges posed by that approach and the advantages that come with a model that uses the Duration of Status (D/S) approach.  


We will keep you apprised of any developments in this area. In the interim, we want to assure you that the campus leadership has your best interest in mind.  We understand the value of having international students and scholars on our campus and the many contributions you make to the intellectual life of the university.  We will make every effort to advocate for regulations that advance international education."


【大家都可以首先尽可能的争取学校的支持！在这件事上学校和留学生的利益是一致的，学校的支持能量是巨大的！】

看了一下帖子的更新，想到学校之前发的邮件里提到了几个组织，感觉可以发到楼里作为参考，毕竟学生的能力都很有限的，联系这些组织或机构或许能得到些帮助
以下截取自邮件原文：

The University of Utah and ISSS will be working with larger University coalitions, such as the PAC-12, The Association of American Universities (AAU), and other organizations, such as NAFSA: Association for International Educators, to take action against this proposed rule.

apocalypsetank 发表于 2020-9-29 11:41
而且一旦通过了，看目前这架势，许多小伙伴恐怕是按第三条直接弄个2年，这基本没办法安心读书了。

我把你在另一个帖子的文字贴过来了，感觉是一个非常典型的例子，证明这个垃圾法规一定不能通过！

@ apocalypsetank ：H1b的I-94上面有明确的截止日，最多一次给3年。几年前h1b容易而且延期还会放水所以还好，现在每次折腾延期都要掉N层皮，而且是和新的h1b一样审核。F1要也这么搞，甚至2年一延期，现在也收得这么紧，那几乎没人可以安心读书了。

所以这个法规会影响所有在美的学生，不管是OPT，还是只读书，都会收到巨大影响。一定不能让法案通过！否则以后真的没法安心读书了！


@apocalypsetank 补充：

h1b延期其实比F/J还好些，因为经常有常规加急处理可选，不至于拖N个月没消息误事。

F/J 要是这么搞，I-539表不但没常规加急，现在还要去打一次指纹。就是这个打指纹，让之前H4 和 H4 EAD可以蹭H1加急的福利再也没了，疫情一来因为打不了指纹更是积压了一大批案子。这么搞的话处理时间真不敢想了。

美国移民律师Greg Siskind在他的twitter上发表了NFAP撰写的有关DHS刻意夸张留学生overstay的数据，并且以此作为这次更改行政条例的主要依据，下面总结几点大家可以作为论据。原文中13页数据充分，欢迎大家reference

主要的几点在于：
. Waral dи,1. 留学生overstay的数据包含了由于DHS无法证实其中已经离开美国但没有record的数据点，因此是非常不准确的，不能作为修改行政法规的依据

2. overstay在中国和印度留学生群体中不到1%和2%。整体上从2015FY到2020FY来看，overstay的概率一直都是处于较低水平

3. DHS这次的EOS会增加留学生1000刀左右的负担，并且增加USCIS每年300,000份的申请负担。现在I539，就是F/J延长境内身份转换的审批时间已经很久，表明USCIS没有能力有效的处理这么大的case load

4. 建议通过推广学校E-Verify来加强对留学生境内身份的管理，而不是通过EOS这样效率低下，时间冗长的方式来增加留学生负担，降低美国大学竞争力

链接如下
https://nfap.com/wp-content/uplo...eptember-2020-1.pdf

看到一个数据： F1/J1 签证的overstay人数只占总overstay的3% 大家可以用这个数据来反对这个政策 冲啊！
97%的F/J签证持有人是遵守规矩的，占绝对的大多数。同时占总overstay数的10.3%也不能算大多数，不应该成为新政的打击对象。


【根据DHS自己的官方数据：https://www.dhs.gov/publication/entryexit-overstay-report 18年到20年overstay rate逐年下降，低至1.52%】

亲身经历：给校长发邮件，校长会把邮件转发给很多的学校领导层，比你单单给iss发邮件有用太多！记住，给学校校长发会有比较好的效果和反应，这样相关部门才会引起足够重视和采取行动！@QueenieV @admin @Warald

白宫援引国土安全部对2018财年逾期滞留数据统计称，有20个国家的公民逾期滞留比例超过10%。这些人通过商务旅游、学生等非移民签证进入美国却并未按时离境，有些国家的滞留比例高达50%甚至70%以上。上榜国家包括：索马里、老挝、海地、也门、乍得、利比里亚、所罗门群岛、贝宁等国，留学生滞留率在10%以上的国家还包括了蒙古、越南、菲律宾等多个亚洲国家。

根据DHS统计的近几年F-1逾期居留数据的变化，可以看出其实从2016财年到2019财年数据已经大幅下滑了53%。具体到中国和印度两个留学生大国，2019财年来自中国和印度两个国家的F-1逾期居留率分别为0.65%和1.92%。

近期美国国家政策基金会的一项新分析得出结论：DHS的这份逾期居留报告存在严重缺陷，不应作为这次新规制定的合理依据。DHS系统本身存在统计缺陷，统计并不能反映出真实的逾期居留人数，而是DHS对实际逾期居留加上他们无法确认的人数的总和，所以这个统计可能远远超出真实的数据。

参考链接：https://nfap.com/wp-content/uplo ... eptember-2020-1.pdf

FYI, 以下为agency应该如何回复comments的guideline

chenwenda419 发表于 2020-10-1 03:01
可以分享一下内容吗？希望得到学校立场信息

Dear International Students and Scholars,

On Friday September 25, a proposed rule to eliminate ‘Duration of Status’ (D/S) admission for international students, scholars, and their dependents was published in the Federal Register. ‘Duration of Status’ is a unique type of entry available to international students and scholars that allows admission to the United States for the length of an academic program, and critically, allows academic programs to determine that length.

The University of Illinois strongly opposes this proposed change. We greatly believe in the value our international students and scholars bring to our campus and community, and creating uncertainty over our students’ ability to complete their programs is an unreasonable action. We hope that this proposed rule will be eliminated or significantly changed following the public comment period which is currently underway, and we will be submitting a letter outlining our concerns as well as working with a number of educational and professional associations on these advocacy efforts. If you wish to review these proposed rules in full and submit a comment, you can do so on the Regulations.gov website.

We at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign affirm our support for international students and scholars. Your exceptional talents, contributions, and perspectives are critical to making the University of Illinois a world-class institution and a global leader in international education.

Sincerely,

我们学校的新update，


Duke is opposed to the proposed rule and the Office of Government Relations is working closely with the Office of Visa Services on the university’s response. In addition, we are closely coordinating our advocacy on this matter with other universities and national associations, which are also mobilizing to oppose the new rule.  We will also be working with Duke offices to communicate directly with current and prospective students who may be impacted by this change and will keep you updated on any movements.

大家给学校发邮件啊！我前两天给学校发的时候还是只有我一人bring up the concern，现在官话就出来了。大家联合学校去oppose！

lts1992 发表于 2020-09-30 15:26:13
我查找了一下英文的新闻，貌似是除非移民局接受，否则涨价维持不变。应该是力度比较低的禁令吧。。

应该是直接禁令，除非上诉成功。

我再贴一个链接，是从这次参与微信禁令的律师所转来的。这次是一个典型的小民众告倒DHS的案例，其中的判决和具体的原因都值得仔细思考。

我贴一段：转自公众号英卓

由八个代表低收入移民申请人的公益组织发起，状告国土安全部未经合法程序就提高申请费的诉讼昨晚取得了阶段性胜利。移民局原定10月2日生效的申请费涨价计划昨晚被加州北区联邦地区法庭的法官Jeffrey White 叫停。

法官颁发临时禁令的一个主要原因是国土安全部代理部长Chad Wolf的任命未经合法程序，所以他签发的涨申请费的法规也不完全合法。另外，国土安全部声称申请人的弹性很大，无论申请费涨多高，都并不会影响申请递交的数量。法官认为国土安全部没有收集支撑这一观点的数据，因而违反了《行政程序法》。第三，法官认为国土安全部没有充分考虑涨价和取消申请费豁免对低收入的移民申请人所产生的负面影响。

暂停执行申请费涨价的禁止令在全国范围内有效。除非国土安全部上诉成功，临时禁令被第九巡回法庭解除，同学们还是按照现行的规定来支付申请费。


mp.weixin.qq.com/s/ebAdbd_wzum3a_V7ubswkA


大家继续努力，会有回报的。
“法官颁发临时禁令的一个主要原因是国土安全部代理部长Chad Wolf的任命未经合法程序，所以他签发的涨申请费的法规也不完全合法”。
完全废除新规是有希望的！！

hlc1209 发表于 2020-09-30 13:31:32
“重磅! 移民局申请费涨价被紧急叫停 价格不变! 联邦法官称: 川普任命的国土安全部长或不合法”

这个应该算好消息吧，移民局这个rule走了90天的public comments 后来还是起诉成功。以前一直以为走了notice and comment 就一般不能按APA诉讼打赢呢...
https://www.courtlistener.com/do...urce-center-v-wolf/

借楼发帖！ 今天去参加了一个Presidents’ Alliance组织的反对那个opt rule活动，里面share了一个总结了很多反对ideas的google doc，我觉得对大家应该都有用。就不设置积分限制了，https://drive.google.com/drive/f ... C5Ug6gIXzKE1Uy4oYM8 求大家帮顶呀~~~~谢谢~

家属写的，请大家参考

Comments on DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY 8 CFR Parts 214, 248 and 274a.12, ‘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’
This proposal says the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) or U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) immigration officers cannot directly evaluate the maintenance the lawful nonimmigration status of F, J and I nonimmigrants and thus, poses a challenge to the Department’s Department of Homeland Security or DHS) ability to effectively monitor and oversee F, J and I nonimmigrants because their unlawful presences, if occur, are difficult to be found due to the lack of filing applications or petitions, such as extension of stay. Thus, DHS proposes to amend the regulation by changing the admission period of F, J and I aliens from duration of status to an admission for a fixed time period to provide the additional protections and mechanisms to exercise the oversight necessary to vigorously enforce US immigration laws, protect the integrity of nonimmigrant programs and promptly detect national security concerns.

I strongly agree that a healthy and comprehensive regulation of nonimmigrants benefits the US national security, exchange of ideas, research, mutual enrichment and nonimmigrants. However, I strongly disagree the method, which tries to change the duration of status (D/S) to extension of stay (EOS) because (1) EOS is not an effective way. (2) EOS will lead to inevitable, irreversible and extensive losses to nonimmigrants and United States, and benefit other nations. (3) Currently, overall D/S is a proper way that benefits nonimmigrants, institutes, universities and exchange of ideas, research and mutual enrichment. (4) Personally, a method based on D/S is much better than EOS for the purpose of avoiding unlawful presence of nonimmigrants. Below I will demonstrate the reasons of four points shown above.


1. EOS: Not An Effective Way
(1) The new EOS has an expensive time cost. Right now, the burden of USCIS is very heavy. The processing times of other application are very slow. For example, the Post-OPT process typically takes 90-120 days[1] and the green card process takes 9.5 to 31 months (field office at Dallas https://egov.uscis.gov/processing-times/). The estimated EOS processing time is even slower (5-10 months https://egov.uscis.gov/processing-times/). In practice, this slow processing of EOS is equal to forcing nonimmigrants to leave US. Moreover, adding EOS to USCIS will directly and significantly increases the time cost of other applications and labor works of USCIS officers due to the enormous population of nonimmigrants (I do not know the exact numbers. But we can infer this number from [2], which finds the nonimmigrant admissions of 2018 is more than 170 million).   

(2) The new EOS has an enormous money cost. Based on Table 12 of this proposal, the estimated cost will range from 229.9 million to 237.7 million dollars per year for the next ten years. This cost will both come from the nonimmigrants and US tax-payer, such as US companies, institutes and universities and the part of US tax-payer can be used to promote other more meaningful things (such as education, medical care, racial and gender equality).

(3) The new EOS is repeatable to the current nonimmigrant regulation rules. The status of nonimmigrants is already monitored by DHS, USCIS and university DSO, which will be shown below in D/S part. Thus, EOS, the repeated rules, is a waste of public resources of university and government. Moreover, this repeatable step leads to a big confusion for nonimmigrants, university/institute and UCSIC officers, and the possible inconsistences on documents of EOS and current nonimmigration system will lead more works and troubles for nonimmigrants, university/institute and UCSIC officers.

Thus, the EOS is not an effective way and certainly results in inevitable, irreversible and extensive losses to nonimmigrants and United States, and benefit other nations.

2. EOS: Causing Big Loss To nonimmigrants and U.S. and Benefiting Other Countries

(1) EOS will result in a big loss for nonimmigrants. The long pending time (5-10 months as mentioned above) for the nonimmigrants actually asks the nonimmigrants to leave the U.S. once after 2 or 4 years periods. To avoid the leaving, the nonimmigrants have to apply EOS 10 months before the due date of the 2 or 4 years periods, otherwise the nonimmigrants will take a great risk about their lawful presence. In fact, most of the F students (including their spouse, same for J and I nonimmigrants) and some of J and I nonimmigrants will face this awful situation, such as, master students working with OPT after two-year study, transferred students, two majored students, Ph.D. student in study, work and postdoc step, and visiting scholars and I representatives staying for more than 2 years.  Thus, EOS is very awful for nonimmigrants and indicates the U.S. is not friendly to nonimmigrants. Moreover, EOS will cost significant extra money and time of nonimmigrants. The students cannot study and work (for those who is in CPT or OPT status or work in the universities/institutes) when their EOS applications are pending in a very long time period.   

(2) EOS will lead to a big loss for United States. The U.S. have been benefited due to its open policy of nonimmigrants back to the beginning of 20th century. But the unfriendly EOS sends a bad message to the world and nonimmigrants that nonimmigrants are not welcomed by U.S., which is conflicted with their ideas, which are exchange of ideas, research, mutual enrichment. Less and less nonimmigrants are willing to and can come to U.S., and the exchange of U.S. and other nations will also greatly decrease due to EOS. When this unfriendly impression is formed, it is very difficult to revise, just like the open and friendly impression of U.S., which has lasted at least for decades. Besides this long-term loss, the U.S. employer will take short-term loss as well. For example, when the EOS applications of F students are pending, they need to go back to their own countries. Note that there should be a large amount of pending EOS cases. Thus, the leaving of those F students will lead to direct loss to the universities (a large amount of tuition and fee), housing and car market, etc. For OPT students, they have to wait for the EOS so that they can work for the companies. Thus, the companies have to take the cost on time, products, orientation and others that can be barely calculated. Similarly to F students, pending EOS of J scholars/students will also harm the universities/institutes and drag down the researches.

(3) EOS will benefit other nations. The nonimmigrants are potential elites of the world. Most of them will or have already earned a master or Ph.D. degrees. The loss of nonimmigrants means the loss of elites in U.S. and increasing numbers of elites in other countries. Within 10-20 years,  there will be consequences in all kinds of fields, especially in top sciences and technologies.

3. D/S: A Proper Policy Right Now For Nonimmigrants That Benefits Nonimmigrants And U.S.

Right now, the D/S is a proper policy for nonimmigrants and U.S.

(1) D/S offers nonimmigrants a flexible time and thus, it fits almost all the cases of nonimmigrants. For example, F1 students may pursue bachelor, master and doctoral degrees with typical 4 years, 2 years and 5-6 years periods, respectively. However, many of them may transfer university, pursue second major, change major, suspend studying due to illness and accident, or take extra credits, etc. Thus, those students may require half or one year more than the typical periods or more time.  The F2 spouses can also join with F1students with the same periods in D/S so that the family can be united. For J scholars, they also need flexible time because the scientific and technical problems usually take longer time than people’ expect. For the I representatives, their works are more irregular and sporadic. Thus, a flexible time fits them.

(2) Even though D/S offers a flexible lawful presence period, the nonimmigrants are well and closely monitored by DHS and university DSOs through CBP/POE, SEVP, SEVIS, USCIS. For example, for F students/spouses, the lawful presence periods are listed in I20 with SEVIS number. The entrance to the U.S. is recorded by I-94. The International Student Service Office (ISSO) will record the passport, visa, I20, I-94, phone number, permanent and U.S. address. And nonimmigrants need to update passport, I20 and address before they are expired or changed. For opt status, by applying EAD cards, the employer of OPT nonimmigrants are also monitored by USCIS and ISSO. All the changes related to passport, visa, I20-OPT, phone number, email address, physical address and employers need to be updated to USCIS and ISSO. To maintain the D/S, some limits of credits and scores and full-time student status are required. Thus, the F nonimmigrants are well tracked and monitored by university or DHS. For the J scholar/students, they need DS2019 form with clear lawful presence periods. They need to update their passport, visa, DS2019, phone number, email and physical addresses to the relative offices of universities. For the I nonimmigrants, I believe there is a similar regulation that tracks and monitors the I nonimmigrants very closely.

(3) Due to the current monitor system with D/S, the overstay rate of F/M/J students and scholars are decreasing from 5.48% in FY 2016 to 3.09% in FY 2019, i.e. 43.6% relative reduction of overstay rate in 3-4 years based on the DHS reports [3]. This tremendous decrease of overstay rate proves that the D/S system is a highly efficient way to monitor and track nonimmigrants. However, the proposed EOS is lack of data support.

(4) Leaded by the DHS and executed by the plenty of universities/institutes, the D/S system not only monitor the nonimmigrants well but also saves the physical and time costs of nonimmigrants. Unlike the USCIS, the university record all the information for free. The EOS concentrates the monitoring work of all nonimmigrants to one government department so that the approval requires a lot of time (estimated 5-10 months as mention above). However, distributing the execution of monitoring nonimmigrants to plenty universities greatly decreases the cases on one person, thus, highly decreases time cost and increases the efficiency and intensity of supervision.

Thus, based on the three reasons above, the D/S system monitor the nonimmigrants friendly, strictly and efficiently and cheap. It should not be replaced by EOS, which is unfriendly, expensive and inefficient.

4. A Monitoring Method Based on D/S

Shown in former section, the D/S system works very well for regulating nonimmigrants both in nonimmigrant aspect and U.S. aspect. My personal opinion is that the current D/S system is proper to nonimmigrant regulation and thus, it should not be replaced. The overstay rate has already gone down significantly, so that one should just keep the D/S system. Moreover, one should focus on how to improve based on D/S system by the following two points.

(1) The purpose of new proposal is decreasing the number of unlawful presences. To achieve this goal, the best way is keeping D/S system. As shown in former section, the university, such as ISSO, exactly know, track and monitor the F and J nonimmigrants’ status. Thus, the universities only need to report the expired nonimmigrants to DHS and DHS can check them with CBP or related departments. For the I nonimmigrants, there should also an organization or office that regulate and monitor them. So, like the universities, this organization or office need to report expired I nonimmigrants to DHS.

(2) A friendly, flexible and sympathetic policy for nonimmigrants will help the U.S. to attract outstanding people of other countries. In turn, the nonimmigrants will be grateful, follow the regulation rules and contribute to the United States. Reversely, an unfriendly, selfish and arrogant policy will push the elites to other countries and nonimmigrants already staying in U.S. may stop loving and leave this country, which is not acceptable because in 21th century, loss of outstanding people means loss in everything.

Summary
In summary, I strongly disagree the proposed EOS and want to keep the current D/S system. EOS is unfriendly, expensive, unrealistic and inefficient. It cannot work well for decreasing nonimmigrant unlawful presence. Moreover, it will lead to profound but bad results. On the contrary, the D/S is friendly, cheap and efficient. It can help and it is helping to the decrease of nonimmigrant unlawful presence and attract the outstanding people all over the world.

Reference:
[1] https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2020-20845/p-354
[2] https://www.migrationpolicy.org/ ... rtment%20issued%209,percent%20increase%20from%20FY%202017.
[3] https://www.dhs.gov/publication/entryexit-overstay-report

对着200多页的法案刨了半天，终于找到了DHS对于EOS申请太慢的解释：

大意是认为把申请OPT和EOS的时间改为项目结束前的120天到项目结束后的30天能平滑申请数量，提高效率。
！但是基本都是DHS自己的believe，包括使用了may这样不确定的语气，大概我们能按时处理完，大概能避免申请者因为EOS导致无法按时入职。这一点大家可以好好反驳！OPT/stem OPT是我们的重要权利，如此含糊其辞的解释不能满足我们，显然会伤害无数无辜国际学生的利益，激烈反对！

While USCIS anticipates timely processing these cases, there would be an increase in volume of EOS applications following the effective date of the final rule as those nonimmigrants who are required to file EOS begin to do so, and the Department believes that allowing applicants more time to file an EOS application would stagger the applications, helping to maintain a consistent volume. This, in turn, could enable USCIS to more efficiently manage this OPT-related workload, so the agency may be better equipped to adjudicate these requests in a timely manner and diminish the likelihood of gaps in employment.

Post-completion OPT. For post-completion OPT, not including a 24-month OPT extension under paragraph (f)(10)(ii)(C)(2) of this section, the alien in F-1 status must file his or
her extension of stay and employment authorization application with USCIS up to 120 days prior to his or her program end date and no later than 30 days after his or her program end date.

根据地里的内容做了PPT 大家有需要可以去拿去给学校讲
https://drive.google.com/file/d/ ... hh/view?usp=sharing

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。

@qingtian01279  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.
.1point3acres
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.



https://www.1point3acres.com/bbs ... ;page=7#pid13513690

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. https://www.nafsa.org/sites/defa ... a-losing-talent.pdf
2. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/rac ... icator_red.asp#info
3. https://www.uscis.gov/sites/defa ... ctical_Training.pdf
4. https://egov.uscis.gov/processing-times/
5. https://www.uscis.gov/sites/defa ... -H-1B-Petitions.pdf
6. https://www.cato.org/blog/facts-about-l-1-visa-program
7. https://www.fragomen.com/insight ... and-denials-fy-2019
8. https://www.forbes.com/sites/stu ... erica/#71c03b824d4b
9. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/30/ ... -of-immigrants.html
10. https://www.svcip.com/files/SVCIP_2017.pdf#page=4
11. https://www.dhs.gov/publication/entryexit-overstay-report

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：https://www.nafsa.org/sites/defa ... ument/isev-2019.pdf


[2] 国际生给美国的经济贡献2：https://www.nafsa.org/sites/defa ... econ_value_2018.pdf


[3] 澳大利亚、加拿大和中国在抢国际生：https://www.nafsa.org/sites/defa ... _contribution_2.pdf


[4] Trump上台后国际生数量变化：https://nfap.com/wp-content/uplo ... ief.June-2020-3.pdf


[5] 各种USCIS申请的processing time: https://egov.uscis.gov/processing-times/


[6] 【重要】DS Rule comment和talking points：https://www.nafsa.org/sites/defa ... tTemplateDSRule.pdf


[7] 2019 Overstay report: https://www.dhs.gov/sites/defaul ... overstay-report.pdf


[8] Overstay report的问题：https://nfap.com/wp-content/uplo ... eptember-2020-1.pdf
. ----

[9] 移民（曾是留学生）在COVID-19期间的重要性：https://nfap.com/wp-content/uplo ... Brief.July-2020.pdf

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] https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2020-20845/p-479
[2] https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2020-20845/p-638
[3] https://www.uscis.gov/news/news- ... rly-70-of-workforce
[4]: https://www.cgsnet.org/ckfinder/ ... Sources_2010_03.pdf        
[5]: https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2020-20845/p-172
[6]: https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2020-20845/p-637
[7]: https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2020-20845/p-620
[8]: https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2020-20845/p-230
[9]: https://www.gao.gov/htext/d04771t.html

After reviewing the proposed rule, I do not agree with the following sections.
1. The duration of stay for 2 or 4 years based on nationality. This could lead to a system-wide discrimination to the student from certain countries. For higher education, the college may not accept the international students from certain "2 year F1" country to certain program due to the student may not be able to finish the program before the status expire or EOS renewal approval. A discrimination may occur in this situation.
2. The current D/S stamp worked for years and promoted the US economics by foreign talents in university researches. International scholars stayed in the school for years working on the cutting age technology without need to worry about the legal status issue. This allow the international scholars to focus more on academics instead of government paperwork filing.
3. The further restricted rule would lead to international students and scholars choose other countries for academic study, such as Canada, Australia, Japan, or EU countries, instead of the United States. Students would fear of not be able to finish the education due to the duration of status issue. Reduced number of international student will create financial difficulties to the university, college, city and municipals due to reduced number of people who spend money in the 4 or more years of academic life.
DHS please review and revise the proposed rule. I suggest to further utilize the current SEVP and SEVIS system to ensure international student not overstay in the US.

管理员插话：
给这位已经行动起来的同学加分！

DHS proposes to generally allow all F and J nonimmigrants present in the United States on [the Final Rule’s effective date], who are validly maintaining that status and who were admitted for D/S, to remain in the United States in F or J status, without filing an EOS request, up to the program end date reflected on their Form I-20 or DS-2019 that is valid on the Final Rule’s effective date, not to exceed 4 years from the effective date of the Final Rule, plus an additional 60 days for F nonimmigrants and 30 days for J nonimmigrants. An alien who departs the United States and seeks admission after the Final Rule’s effective date becomes subject to the fixed date framework imposed by this rule. See proposed 8 CFR 214.1(m)(1).

F and J nonimmigrants who depart the United States after the rule’s effective date and before the end date reflected on their Form I-20 or DS-2019 would be readmitted with a new fixed admission period, like any other newly admitted F or J nonimmigrant, as provided for in proposed 8 CFR 214.1(a)(4). Aliens whose admission period is converted from D/S to a fixed period who would like to seek additional time to complete their studies, including those requesting post-completion OPT or STEM OPT extensions or starting a new course of study or exchange visitor program, would need to file an EOS application with USCIS for an admission period up to the new program end date listed on the Form I-20 or DS-2019, or successor form, reflecting such an extension or transfer, up to a maximum of 4-years, or 2 years, as appropriate. See proposed 8 CFR 214.1(m)(1) and 8 CFR 214.2(f)(20).


https://s3.amazonaws.com/public- ... .gov/2020-20845.pdf

关于申请extension of stay
Like all other aliens who file a Form I-539, F-1 applicants would be required to submit
biometrics and may be required to appear for an interview pursuant to 8 CFR 103.2(b)(9).
In addition, applicants would need to demonstrate that they are eligible for the nonimmigrant
classification sought. Accordingly, applicants must submit evidence of sufficient funds to cover
. Χexpenses. A failure to provide such evidence would render the applicant ineligible for the
extension of stay. See proposed 8 CFR 214.2(f)(7)(iv).
合法停留时间可能小于2年
DHS proposes a maximum admission period of up to 2 years for certain students.
其中一个类别是: U.S. national interest. Other factors that would be incorporated into a FRN would be
a limitation of a student’s period of stay to a maximum of a 2-year period based on
factors determined to be in the U.S. national interest, which may include but not be
limited to circumstances where they may be national security concerns or risks of
fraud and abuse.

呼吁@Warald @admin 关注一下，引起大家重视，在public comment环节多多参与反对，这项新规则一旦通过，对留学生尤其是中国留学生的影响还是很大的，感谢！

这个真的应该反对 影响很大 尤其理工科OPT

抗印英雄 发表于 2020-09-24 12:54:29
第五年的stem opt不就GG了。

对....2年研究生+3年opt.... 其中第5年你要提出申请延期..

现在其实已经很明显了，川普政府这些年做的事情：先是找H4的麻烦，然后是绿卡新的公共负担表格，接下来是 全网课走人 和 visa revoke, 前几天的H1B 标准提高，到现在的 F 身份限制..... 感觉是千方百计的轰人.....

opt的the end date到底是啥时候？