Mark good morning. My name is mark krikorian, the executive director of the center for immigration studies, and we are doing this panel on the issue of the Foreign Student Program. The admission of foreign students and scholars is a federal Government Program like any other, farm subsidies or what have you, and it is almost exclusively discussed in positive terms, but in fact like any other Government Program, it has benefits but also costs. Pluses and minuses. The challenges that come from it, whether related to National Security or other issues, are never addressed. We want to have a panel that will try to introduce balance into this discussion of the Foreign Student Programs. Our first speaker is dan cadman, a center fellow, a veteran of ins and dhs, and he has a report on the table outside and also online on the National Security challenges that Foreign Student Program poses. Our second speaker is another fellow from the center, david north, who has been doing immigration policy longer than anyone else, since the johnson administration. I tease him and say that is Lyndon Johnson not andrew johnson, but it is a long time. He will be talking about one of the permutations in the Foreign Student Program called Optional Practical Training Program. Jessica vaughan our director of policy studies is going to be giving us numbers on the scope of this Government Program, the failures of it, specifically in the sense of the set over stays, people admitted on temporary visas but who never leave. Also give us all if he give us some policy recommendations. After that, we will take some q a if there are any questions. Lets start with dan. Dan thank you. The United States by virtue of its technological prowess, by virtue of its openness has been a beacon to people coming to study. And that brings with it a great deal of good for the United States. There is no doubt when people come to the u. S. And study here for a significant period of time, they get something to know about our society, our culture and hopefully that translates into a positive sense of the u. S. And its peoples. That bodes well particularly when those individuals go back to their own countries, and leaders and political influence makers. By the same token, because of the size of the nonimmigrant population in the United States at any one time, it poses unique questions and problems of control. Foreign students are nonimmigrants, temporary visitors, but unlike other temporary nonimmigrants who may be admitted for 90 days or six months, a point of fact, when a foreign student or Research Scholar is admitted to the United States, they are admitted for the duration of their status, which is to say for a period of years until their studies conclude, which might be at the undergraduate or at the graduate and postgraduate levels. What that translates to is that an individual may be here for anywhere from six to eight years, and be operating for u. S. Society, the most open of environments, which is to say institutions of higher learning. This can be a good thing, but the reality for Government Security officers is, it creates a sea in which fishes can swim. Although mao was speaking about guerillas among people, it is true in the scholar populations, by virtue of their size and diversity and openness of the campus environments act as a Perfect Place in which people who are engaged in espionage or people who are of malcontent can intent canent mal conceal themselves without any real serious possibility that they will be detected, at least not until the fullness of time. There are too many people for government officers and intelligence agents and counterintelligence agents and Law Enforcement to keep up with. That basically is the sum and substance of the problem. At least one dimension of the problem. The other dimension is that over the course of the past few decades, because of the cost of higher education, particularly for people paying at the highest levels, which International Students are, it becomes very lucrative for universities to fill their campuses with people whose governments are often paying the cost of their tuition and the cost of them living in the United States for that period of time. The consequence of that is it has the de facto effect of over the course of time squeezing nativeborn citizens out of a lot of positions, and this is particularly of concern where stem, science, technology, engineering and mathematics subjects are concerned, it is leading to an atrophying of u. S. Born graduates in those studies, and the consequence is for industry and government and the Defense Department, the energy department, there is a dearth of people they can bring on in a position to pass Government Security checks because those are not going to be available to foreigners. And this has caused a great deal of concern over the course of some number of years. Touching on the concerns about espionage, it is significant that every fbi director going back several decades when they speak about National Security concerns has addressed the unique problems they confront with the foreign student population, and that is because they acknowledge that functionally it is beyond their capacity to monitor and control the number of people who come into the United States to study every year. And by way of example, every year from 2013 to 2017 there were more than 2 million admissions per year of nonimmigrant students and exchange scholars. It is important for me to point out that an admission is not the same as a human being because obviously a human being could leave temporarily, say on vacation or to go visit family, and then come back. Even if you were to assume each individual departed and came back at least once, that still means at any point in time a population of foreign students and scholars in the United States exceeding one million, and that is on the low side. It is without doubt a problem for u. S. Security and counterintelligence officers to keep track, and it is not just the number, but the diversity of the places that these individuals come from because surprisingly many of them come from places that are either actively hostile to the United States, or are in fierce global competition with the United States for predominance, whether that is militarily or in trade or technology. By way of example, the International Institute for education says during the 20172018 academic year, there were 363,341 Chinese Students enrolled, and that is just students, not the exchange scholars. And that probably did not include vocational students who may be attending things like pilot school or maritime schools of various kinds. There were almost 13,000 iranian students here, 7. 5 thousand pakistani students, 5. 5 thousand russian students, 44,000 plus Saudi Arabian students, more than 10,000 turkish students, 726 syrian students. Those are just touching the surface. In addition, you have students from afghanistan, from cuba, from north korea, and an interesting thing when you look at the department of Homeland Security statistical yearbook, when you look for the numbers, some are categorized as d, and when you look at d, that means data is held to limit disclosure. Why would the department of Homeland Security exhibit an interest in withholding information about north koreans studying in the United States . I find that curious to the extreme and disturbing. You have more than 18,000 venezuelan students here, and probably a good number of those are post maduro regime. A good number will also be advocates of the maduro regime. One constant about governments that are particularly authoritarian or focused on what they want is that they find in their own interests to seed the foreign student population with people who are sympathetic with their aims. A good example, not the only example is china because china is very focused on where it wants to go, what it wants to achieve, where it wants to be with its global dominance. And for the chinese government, espionage is, you might say, a family affair. Everything is geared toward accruing technological advantage, and if that means they can shortcircuit the time and money on research by stealing secrets, whether that is in the defense and military sector, or in the trade secret sector, they are going to do it. Not all of the people who come here by any means of course engage in espionage, but some do, and not all of them are government intelligence officers. Some of them are spies of opportunity. They are inculcated into the idea that it is patriotic for them if given the chance to take advantage of things that are open to them. And they are encouraged when the opportunity arises to fit themselves into niches where they will have the opportunity to see those secrets that they can pass back home. And if even only one in 10 or one in a hundred people are doing this, when you have hundreds of thousands of people studying, inevitably you will accrue very large benefits from that. And while i have talked about china, even more aggressive in that regard is iran, and iran would less likely be spies of opportunity. Iran is going to be salting its foreign student population after it has thoroughly vetted them to make sure their beliefs and interests coincide with that of the theocracy of the islamic republic. That is where i think the difficulty lies. It is compounded by the fact that in recent years in truth the department of Homeland Security and its predecessor, the immigration and Naturalization Service walked away from any meaningful enforcement and control of the student population, or of the University Systems that host these individuals. In theory, the federal government holds in its hand the ability to withhold or withdraw from an institution of learning the right to host foreign students. In practice that almost never happens, and david will speak to that very effectively. The point is unless and until something is done, this unfettered situation we find ourselves in will remain. That is untenable. Mark thank you. Now we will move to david north who will talk about a different aspect of it, the Optional Practical Training Program which is basically the nations largest Foreign Worker program. It pretends to be a student program. David. David welcome to the press club. I have a statement to make, a preliminary statement. I too was once a foreign student. I went to new zealand. I was a fulbright student in new zealand at the university in wilmington. I came there on a nine month visa and got an extension of two months and then came home. I am a model foreign student, not all of them do that. I also want to make a footnote to what dan said about north korea. D does not stand for david. It is part of an ancient back in your days of ins a practice of the government that there is one or two people in a grouping, it does not say one or two, it says d. There are not many folks from north korea here, and it is one in of these puzzling things you see, and if you look very carefully at department of Homeland Security documents. I want to talk about the economics of all of this. I want to talk about the Optional Practical Training Program, which is none of those things. It is a program, all right. I want to ask you a question. Suppose there was a federal Program Never authorized by congress as such that did the following. It took about 3 billion a year away from americas elderly end , gave that money to american corporations including such ultraprosperous ones such as amazon, which is new money, and j. P. Morgan, old money. That program, suppose there was a program that involved more than a third of the million workers. The program took money from the aging and the sick and given to u. S. Employers who had decided to hire a Foreign College graduate from an american university, rather than an american student. Suppose there was such a program. Wouldnt there be an outcry . There is a program and there is no outcry. One reason there is no outcry is because the press routinely talks about the opt program and never mentions the subsidy. The subsidy is the fact that neither the employer this is important nor the opt student is charged for the usual payroll taxes. Medicare, Medicare Trust fund. Even more so the Social Security trust fund, and the federal Unemployment Insurance trust fund. All of that adds up to 8. 25 of payroll. That is a subsidy, the employer gets the subsidy. The former student gets a subsidy. That is what this program is. It involves a third of a million people, everyone of whom is a college grad. Everyone who is taking a job not just out of the normal, but taking a subsidized job. I find that appalling, and it is a great big secret. As we will show you, a series of publications and scholarly organizations, and even an arm of the government itself does not talk about it. We saw recently long articles in the new york times, the wall street journal, the San Francisco chronicle, and also an organization, long studies, articles about the opt program and never mention the subsidy. I think that is a disgrace. I am here to say they should mention it, and we will. That is what we are talking about today. The employer is faced or can be in a hypothetical situation somebody from argentina and the United States. And they both have the same degree. And they are both available for 55,000 a year, whatever. And there is no difference. They are both bright and attractive folks. The argentinian comes at a discount, the argentinian comes at an 8. 5 discount. This is in stem. Something like 18,000 the employer gets if he hires the argentinian rather than the american. I think in many cases this is something the corporations are aware of. Most of them are aware of it and take advantage of it. It is not an even playing field. The american is saying, you have to pay me 100 . The argentinian or other alien is saying you have to pay me 92 . What do you suppose a rational employer does . In many cases, a third of a million cases, they hire the foreign grad. It is not a student, it is an alumnus now. The mechanism for this, and the program opt was created during the Bush Ii Administration and expanded by the obama administration, and preserved so far by the trump administration. But the mechanism is this. The bush people could not figure out how to make those alumni available to work in the United States as foreign alumni. They could not do that with alumni, so they cast a magic spell over this large population, and said, thou art still a student. And so during the first year all these grads have one year of subsidized appointment, and if you happen to be there are many foreign students have specialized in the stem field, you get three years. That is the opt program, and that is the problem with it. It takes billions of dollars away from the trust funds which are running down and need all the help they can get. And simultaneously they deny about a third of a million americans a job. Many of those third of a million scramble and find something else. My point is, you should not take money from american elderly and give it to fat cat corporations so they can discriminate against americans. I do not think that is a very good idea. That is all. Mark i was a foreign student in the soviet union for two years and decided not to stay. Jessica i was a foreign student too sponsored by the german government. Good morning and thanks for being here. We heard from dan about the National Security risks that are inherent in a very open program admitting foreign students in large numbers, and we heard from david about the pipeline of additional workers that is opened up by the existence of these foreign students together with the opt program. What i want to focus on this morning is the fact that the Student Visa Program has the highest rate of overstaying of other visa programs. Those who come here on student visas are more likely not to go home, or more likely to violate the terms of their visa and stay on illegally. This is considered into our illegal immigration problem. I will talk about how many, and why, and give you recommendations at the conclusion. When we talk about students and exchange overstays, this refers to people who come on an f visa, a basic student visa which can be for college or graduate school, but also can be for high school, any public elementary or secondary education. Any school. We also have what is known as the m visa, which is for vocational institutes, including things like flight schools but also beauty schools and acting schools and dog grooming schools and the like. And another program, or set of programs that many are not aware of which is the j visas for Exchange Visitors, most of whom are working in the country, some of whom are engaging in a