By NANCY VORIS
Indiana Correspondent

WASHINGTON, D.C. — It is an unwelcome gift for ag school graduates job-hunting this summer: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has announced seniors in these fields who are citizens or permanent residents will now be on an uneven playing field when they seek jobs after graduation.
Their prospective employers will receive a 7.65 percent bonus if they hire foreign seniors in these fields, rather than American ones, according to the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C.

This seeming bias against citizen and legal resident workers results from a twist in the tax and immigration laws. It could save an employer – assuming 29 months of employment at $50,000 a year – as much as $9,244.
DHS’ Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) oversees the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program, which allows foreign students who graduate from U.S. colleges and universities to remain in the United States and receive training through work experience for up to 12 months. The program was already in place for students in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).
It was announced May 12 that the list was extended to agricultural sciences, including animal breeding, health and nutrition; dairy science; livestock management; poultry science; food science; food technology and processing; plant sciences; agronomy and crop science; horticulture; agricultural and horticultural plant breeding; plant protection and integrated pest management; range science and management; soil science and agronomy; soil chemistry and physics; and soil microbiology.

Students who graduate with one of the newly-expanded STEM degrees can remain for an additional 17 months on an OPT STEM extension. Employers can get the bonus if they hire recent foreign graduates in any of the nearly 300 occupations on the list.

The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) claims ICE has expanded a loophole in the foreign student program which will allow these students to spend the additional time in the U.S. working for “big business, big medicine and big universities.” They remain on the F-1 student visas they had in college and can work in jobs for which neither they nor their employer will have to pay their share of FICA and Medicare taxes for the additional 17 months.

The employers will save 7.65 percent when they hire foreign students instead of U.S. workers. The employer is faced with paying 100 percent of salaries and fringe benefits if it hires a U.S. worker, or paying 92.35 percent of those costs by hiring a foreign worker, and may choose the latter if both candidates have comparable credentials.

“We have no objection to a job competition on a level playing field between U.S. and foreign college grads,” explained CIS Executive Director Mark Krikorian, “but it is totally unfair for the government to give a substantial bonus – 7.65 percent for nearly 2.5 years – for employers to discriminate against citizen and permanent resident job applicants.”

The mechanism used by DHS to give this bonus to employers is a loophole of the immigration law by the department’s ICE bureau, whose activities are usually confined to arrests and investigations. ICE has the power, without consulting Congress, to grant exemptions from Social Security and Medicare taxes to foreign students here on F-1 visas.

“Meanwhile, as Congress debates reducing benefits to citizens, this employer bonus denies to the Social Security and Medicare trust funds more than $9,000 for each foreign worker hired,” Krikorian said.
He said the ICE press release on this matter – which did not mention the tax break for business – almost made that enforcement agency sound like a university. It is at www.ice.gov/news/releases/1105/110512washingtondc2.htm and headlined: “ICE announces expanded list of science, technology, engineering and math degree programs - Qualifies eligible graduates to extend their post-graduate training.”

“The OPT program has nothing to do with ‘post-graduate’ training and is strictly a jobs-for-aliens program with tax breaks for both the employers and the foreign workers,” Krikorian said.