U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle invalidated USCIS’s 2008 17-month Optional Practical Training (OPT) extension rule. DHS argued that it had good cause to publish the regulation in 2008 as an emergency rule because thousands of highly skilled individuals educated at U.S. colleges and universities would otherwise have been forced to leave the U.S. Judge Huvelle held that DHS failed to show it faced an emergency situation in 2008 that exempted it from carrying out the notice and comment requirement, thus making DHS’ rule invalid.
*Judge Huvelle stayed her decision until February 12, 2016 *
"F-1 STEM work authorizations will stop being valid on February 12, 2016. This will affect both F-1 students who currently hold STEM OPT as well as individuals who would be eligible for STEM OPT as of February 12, 2016.
H-1B/F-1 cap gap will no longer be automatic.
DHS will have to formally announce that the H-1B cap is met and then publish a notice in the federal register. This will result in uncertainty for both employers and F-1 students, as “cap Gap” protections will no longer be automatic but will instead depend on affirmative action by DHS.
F-1 students will only be permitted to apply for work authorization while still in school; post- graduation applications will be no longer available."
This is really awful. :s It means all these students we trained will go work for our competitors…
Right now there’s already a protection in place (ie., that the job can’t be done by an American applicant with the right qualifications). Honestly I don’t think the H1B cap should be maintained, but rather that H1Bs should be reserved for students who got degrees in the US, because so many H1Bs are hogged by offshore companies…
I sympathize with the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers’ argument that the OPT extension rule was introduced specifically to circumvent the H-1B cap, which is a law that was passed by congress. Should it be in DHS’s purview to ignore a mandate by elected representatives?
This restriction only applies to employment-based green card petitions.
The intention of the H-1B program may be the opposite: not to retain recent college graduates for entry-level positions, but rather to “import” highly skilled experienced workers.
