【黄金范文+加强版】花了一下午写的DHS新规反对评论，有需要的可以参考

【管理员插话：大家不要直接复制粘贴，所有重复评论只会被算成一条。省下时间，选取本文要点，深入挖掘。】



欢迎版主移到合适的板块，语法错什么的都是浮云～～～好久没写argument了，结构比较随意～～～以下正文

I strongly oppose the new proposal and recommend the DHS and related departments to revise the proposal based on the following reasons:

The main goal of the proposal is to alleviate the overstay issue, but the proposal does not provide any concrete data/analyses/statistics to prove that the new system can indeed help to reduce the overstay rate. Rather, the whole argument was based on speculations such as "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" [1] and isolated examples scattered through the text.

The department definitely has the right to “believe” something, but its rule-making needs to be backed by data rather than speculations, especially when making rule changes that would affect well-over a million people’s life [2] and cost more than 237 million dollars per year for the next ten years [3]. The cost will not only come from the non-immigrants’ pocket, but also will consume US tax-payer money that can be used to promote other more meaningful projects (e.g., gender/racial equality, education, homelessness) rather than wasted on government paperwork processing.

Moreover, on the contrary, the current D/S system is indeed helping to reduce the overstay rate of F/J students and scholars, and this is supported by official DHS analysis. Based on reports released by DHS from FY 2016-FY 2019 [4], the overstay rate of F/M/J students, under the current D/S system, decreased monotonically from 5.48% in FY 2016 to 3.09% in FY 2019, which translates to a 43.6% relative reduction.

The current system is working just fine at reducing the overstay rate significantly over the years (over 43.6% reduction from 2016-2019) and would not incur any extra cost (compared with the 237 million dollars annual cost of the new proposal), while the department does not have any concrete data to support that the proposed new system would perform better than the current one. Therefore, I would argue that we should not replace a system that’s proven to work for the past decades with a system that’s based on speculations and hypotheses.

There are also other negative impacts of the proposed new rules,

- Firstly, under the new rules, potentially 20% [2] of the F/J non-immigrants would need to file EOS, which is both costly and nerve-wracking, at a certain point during their stay in the US. The DHS is trying to downplay this population as “a significantly smaller percentage of students are engaged in programs which may last longer than 4 years, DHS considered that the proposed framework would accommodate many students, creating a less burdensome process.” I would like to point out that 20% of a population that’s counted in the millions is not a small number; a fun fact is that the country Barbados has a population of around 280k in 2018 [5], a population that’s comparable with the 20% of the F/J/I population we are discussing here. I believe any sensible lawmaker in the US would not propose a law/rule/regulation that would create a disadvantageous status for a certain minority group (e.g., African Americans, 13% of the population [6], Hispanic and Latino Americans, 18% of the population [7]) based solely on the fact that they are not the majority of the population

- Secondly, it is a waste of resources to ask F-1 Post-OPT applicants to file both an EOS and EAD application under the new rule. The EAD application is already making sure that the student is compliant with their status regulations and requirements, otherwise, 1) their DSO won’t recommend them for the OPT program, 2) their EAD won't be approved because the EAD application is carefully reviewed by USCIS officials, possibly the same group of officers that also review F-1 EOS applications. Asking a student to submit both an EOS and EAD is a waste of money, resources, time, paper, energy… for the student, DSO, universities, and USCIS officials. Moreover, there are some other points I would like to discuss regarding this particular new rule on F-1 Post-OPT and EOS,

  * The Post-OPT processing time is already very slow (90-120 days [8]), and the current EOS processing time is even slower (5-10 months based on official USCIS estimates [9], as of 09/27/20). The new rule will further slow down the processing time of USCIS on those applications. The result of this is that it is very likely for US employers to rescind their job offers to F1 Post-OPT applicants merely because USCIS may not be able to process both applications on time. Not many employers are willing to wait for five to 10 months until a recruit can start working. This could potentially lead to negative effects on the US economy and push top talents to other competing countries (e.g., Canada, Japan, EU countries)

  * The new rule does not address how having to apply for both the EOS and EAD would affect the current 90-day unemployment rule on Post-OPT participants. It is possible that a student who cannot start working for their employer after receiving their approved EAD merely because of a pending EOS, and once they reached 90-day of unemployment (again, it could take 10 months or more for USCIS to approve EOS), they have to abandon their job offer and leave the US. This not only harms the student, but also hurts the productivity and benefit of the US employer

  * The proposed document is potentially self-contradicting. In [10] 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.” Suggesting that an F-1 Post-OPT applicant needs to have both EOS and EAD approved to start working. On the other hand, in the proposed amendments to the current regulations section, the document 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.” [11] and “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.” [12]. Combining [11] and [12], especially since [11] clarifies the validity of authorized stay during pending EOS, they suggest that an F-1 who has timely filed EOS and Post-OPT and received their OPT EAD can engage in Post-OPT before the EOS is approved. The disagreement between [11], [12] combined and the statement in [10] is confusing

- Thirdly, setting discriminative regulations to people merely based on their country of birth or citizenship is against the core value of the US

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. A new blanket proposal like this both lacks consideration of the problem they have and probably won't solve the problem they claim to alleviate. The new proposal, in effect, can be compared with the following analogy.

"A patient walks into a dental clinic, ‘doctor, I have a sour tooth.’ The dentist says ‘let me look. I see, you have a cavity on one of your wisdom teeth. I will perform a minor procedure to randomly remove around 20% of your teeth, which is about seven teeth in total. No big deal, they only account for a significantly smaller percentage of your teeth. Hopefully, one of the teeth I remove is the one that has the cavity. By the way, this procedure only costs $237,000 and is not covered by your insurance and you have to do it every two or four years depending on which state you were born.’ The dentist chuckles." I hope this joke brings you a little laughter and sincerely hope that you could reconsider and improve this new proposal that could affect millions of lives.

[1] https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2020-20845/p-192
[2] https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2020-20845/p-223
[3] https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2020-20845/p-620
[4] https://www.dhs.gov/publication/entryexit-overstay-report
[5] http://datatopics.worldbank.org/world-development-indicators/
[6] https://www.minorityhealth.hhs.gov/omh/browse.aspx?lvl=3&lvlid=61
[7] https://www.minorityhealth.hhs.gov/omh/browse.aspx?lvl=3&lvlid=64
[8] https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2020-20845/p-354
[9] https://egov.uscis.gov/processing-times/
[10] https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2020-20845/p-615
[11] https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2020-20845/p-777
[12] https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2020-20845/p-810

【Update1】有些同学问有没有英文的文章，分享出去。这个英文回答就是了！我在联系这位同学要评论在federal register上的链接。会更新在这里。

【Update2】收到了楼主的回复 - 不用署名，楼主希望自己辛苦写的文字能帮助大家：

多谢站长置顶加分哈哈！comments还没有被post出来，应该是还在审核（我今天下午刚发出去的），等发出来了我会更新一下链接。欢迎多多分享能让更多人看到，署名就不用了哈哈，也算是抛砖引玉了吧，希望大家能团结起来抗争到底。

这个文章太赞了！满分100大米，我给166。好多个地方对细节处理的让我拍案叫绝！末尾牙医的例子简直绝了。。。去后台找出楼主账号，加了166大米。

文章直指要害 - DHS推行的这个新规并没有数据支持会有效，新规会带来各种损害，未必能达到目的，而且，现行D/S已经非常有效的减少了overstay，有数据和证据。为什么要推行新的来伤害国际学生？打击面再小，人数也比某些岛国人口多了。。。

文章多处引用数据，末尾的数据源，除了一个世界银行的，其他全是 .gov 美国政府自己的网站！显得非常严谨。

我觉得这种公示，就是DHS需要认真面对，也很难给出合理解释的那种。如果只是说国际学生给美国经济做贡献，那DHS还可以说我没有禁止留学生啊，我只是加强管理而已。但我看了这个评论以后，我都不知道该怎么替DHS回答。 。。

在这里建议大家也参考这位同学的回复。写评论时，如果只是发泄情绪，那意义不大；这种逻辑上直奔要害，并且加以数据支持的，更值得重视。

大家不要抄这些英文，因为重复内容的评论会被忽略。 但是，你可以在理解了意思之后，自己用英文重写全部 或者 其中的某些点。 我相信，选择其中某些角度，大家在自己做些research，肯定可以写的更加深入。

我搜索鼓掌图片，第一页找到的是金胖胖 和 马爸爸。放马爸爸给你鼓掌吧

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.

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.

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.  

(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.

千万不要照搬就好，别让这么牛的comments因为重复评论被牺牲掉了
管理员插话：
不会被牺牲掉。。。但是会被算成同一条。
别浪费时间copy & paste
参考本文，选择一个或者多个角度，自己写点不一样的。

妈耶 太牛逼了 等我有时间好好看看 楼主的reference 也用这些reference来写评论。
感觉这位楼主的方向是最正确的，大家都来学习，但请不要照搬。
DHS就怕被数据支撑的反驳。

赞一个!感谢您付出时间精力写comments！

大家关于这个话题的讨论，统一发在 “工作签证”版：https://www.1point3acres.com/bbs/forum-99-1.html
版里 有 OPT 这个类别

牛逼，给您顶上去！！！

火钳刘明zszszs

不知如何用词夸，只能一句“偶艹”表达敬佩

就是这样的评论让人能看到一丝希望，非常感谢

我的天太厉害了吧