Immigration Rules Change Means More Foreign Students Will Be Able to Stay After Graduation (Fox News Latino)

Immigration Rules Change Means More Foreign Students Will Be Able to Stay After Graduation
Published May 13, 2011 | Fox News Latino

Touting it as "an important step forward in the Obama administration's continued commitment to fixing our broken immigration system," U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced a change Thursday that will make it possible for more foreign students studying in the U.S. on visas to stay and get practical training in their career fields.

The Obama administration, it said in a statement, is expanding the list of science, technology, engineering and math degrees that allow foreign students who earn them to stay in the U.S. up to 17 months after graduating. Those months can be spent working. The time also could mean the student may not have to leave before getting an H-1B visa, a visa reserved for high-skilled workers that can last for up to six years.

What are those newly-added degree programs? There are about 50 of them out of an overall list of more than 300, and together they give a shadowy idea of the gaps in the American labor force.

There are, for example, the The-heartland-is-emptying degrees: Agricultural Animal Breeding, Horticultural Sciences, Poultry and Dairy Sciences.

Then there are the we're-falling-behind-in-math-and-science degrees: Neuroscience, Biopsychology, Psychopharmacology, "Systems Science and Theory" and such.

And then the puzzlers: Animation and Special Effects? Nutritional Sciences? Forensic Science, really, after the whole country has spent the last decade watching various iterations of "CSI"?

Apparently.

The administration announced the change late Thursday, just days after President Barack Obama gave a speech on immigration in El Paso, Texas.