Okla-homey
7/6/2007, 08:04 AM
Those bastages may be smart, but if you're paying for a college education for yourself or your kid, you have a right to expect to be able to understand the prof.:mad:
Nothing more frustrating than listening to a chemistry lecture from Asst. Professor Jugdish:"....blah, blah....valence bond...blah, blah...positeeve...blah, blah,...very important...blah, blah...etc."
H1-B visas, "Best and brightest minds": OSU a haven for highly skilled foreign faculty
By LEIGH BELL World Staff Writer
7/6/2007
About 10 percent of Oklahoma State's 2,100 faculty members are in the United States from other countries on H-1B visas.
Oklahoma State University is one of the top employers for foreigners who use visas to work and live in the United States.
OSU is in the middle of a top-200 list by the financial publication BusinessWeek that ranks employers across the country by their number of employees with H-1B visas. The H-1B is a temporary work visa for highly skilled professionals.
About 10 percent of OSU's 2,100 faculty members have H-1B visas.
The school is the only entity listed that is clearly Oklahoma-based. It joins about 20 other schools, including Yale, Columbia and Harvard universities, near the top 100.
OSU is No. 103, with 223 faculty and staff members who have H-1B visas, the data show.
The University of Oklahoma has roughly 125 faculty and staff members with the visas, according to the school's Human Resources Department.
Employers file an H-1B visa petition to the federal government on behalf of a potential employee from another country. The visa, which is good for six years, is available for specialty jobs and those requiring a university degree or the equivalent.
Research: More than 200 of the 223 visas at OSU are for faculty members who conduct "cutting-edge research," said Tim Huff, the manager of OSU's International Students and Scholars Office.
"If we are going to do the best research and development, we need to have the best and brightest minds," Huff said.
"About 95 percent of the world's population comes outside of the United States, which means the majority of the best minds are outside of the United States, just by sheer numbers."
Bin Liang started working four years ago as an assistant professor in the OSU-Tulsa Sociology Department after earning doctoral and law degrees from Arizona State University. He has an H-1B visa.
Liang, 35, left Beijing about a dozen years ago on a student visa for the United States, where he says the graduate schools are unrivaled.
Now Liang thinks he'll stay. He applied for permanent resident status in 2004.
"This is my home," said Liang, who wore an OSU golf shirt in his campus office. "I'm not going anywhere. This is where I live. I have friends. I love the U.S."
Congressional debate: Arguments over H-1B visas added fury to the contentious immigration-reform proposal in the Senate.
Companies that depend on the technical skills of foreign professionals complain that the government's cap of 65,000 H-1B visas per year isn't enough to meet their needs.
Exempt from that cap is employment at universities or affiliated nonprofit entities, as well as nonprofit or governmental research organizations.
Also exempt are the first 20,000 petitions filed for H-1B visas on behalf of foreigners who earned a master's degree or higher graduate degree in the United States.
These choice groups bypass the annual rush for the H-1Bs that culminated last April with roughly 133,000 petitions filed in just two days.
The Senate proposal would have increased the H-1B limit from 65,000 to about 115,000.
Leaders from high-tech companies such as Microsoft and Google -- respectively No. 3 and No. 53 on BusinessWeek's list -- have asked that lawmakers loosen the cap even more.
The rules: Although H-1B visas don't allow a foreigner to stay in this country more than six years, they remain a punch in the fight over immigration.
Critics say the H-1B process fills and outsources American jobs.
"We are not able to find Americans to do the research," said Regina Henry, the coordinator of immigration in OSU's Office of International Students and Scholars. "We open the application process appropriately, but we find those that apply are foreign nationals.
"We need researchers, and we get them wherever we can find them, basically."
The U.S. government approved 267,131 petitions for H-1B visas in 2005, according to the most recent data available from Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Nearly 117,000 of those petitions were new, and the rest were for foreigners who were already in the United States. But the government doesn't know how many people with H-1Bs remain in the country.
Some leave the country before a visa expires.
Many, such as Liang, apply for permanent resident status.
The wait for permanent residency can take a decade, and applicants typically can stay in the country even when their H-1Bs expire, said Chris Bentley, a spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Kaan Kalkan, a native of Turkey, joined Oklahoma State University last August as an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering.
Kalkan, 38,.followed his wife to OSU several years after he received a doctorate at Pennsylvania State University.
The H-1B recipient said scientific research brought him to the United States.
"In a way, the U.S. is a heaven for scientists," Kalkan said. He just began the application process for a green card -- or permanent residency.
"I wasn't actually planning to stay here, but things change," he said. "After 15 years, it becomes like an addiction. You get used to the life here."
Nothing more frustrating than listening to a chemistry lecture from Asst. Professor Jugdish:"....blah, blah....valence bond...blah, blah...positeeve...blah, blah,...very important...blah, blah...etc."
H1-B visas, "Best and brightest minds": OSU a haven for highly skilled foreign faculty
By LEIGH BELL World Staff Writer
7/6/2007
About 10 percent of Oklahoma State's 2,100 faculty members are in the United States from other countries on H-1B visas.
Oklahoma State University is one of the top employers for foreigners who use visas to work and live in the United States.
OSU is in the middle of a top-200 list by the financial publication BusinessWeek that ranks employers across the country by their number of employees with H-1B visas. The H-1B is a temporary work visa for highly skilled professionals.
About 10 percent of OSU's 2,100 faculty members have H-1B visas.
The school is the only entity listed that is clearly Oklahoma-based. It joins about 20 other schools, including Yale, Columbia and Harvard universities, near the top 100.
OSU is No. 103, with 223 faculty and staff members who have H-1B visas, the data show.
The University of Oklahoma has roughly 125 faculty and staff members with the visas, according to the school's Human Resources Department.
Employers file an H-1B visa petition to the federal government on behalf of a potential employee from another country. The visa, which is good for six years, is available for specialty jobs and those requiring a university degree or the equivalent.
Research: More than 200 of the 223 visas at OSU are for faculty members who conduct "cutting-edge research," said Tim Huff, the manager of OSU's International Students and Scholars Office.
"If we are going to do the best research and development, we need to have the best and brightest minds," Huff said.
"About 95 percent of the world's population comes outside of the United States, which means the majority of the best minds are outside of the United States, just by sheer numbers."
Bin Liang started working four years ago as an assistant professor in the OSU-Tulsa Sociology Department after earning doctoral and law degrees from Arizona State University. He has an H-1B visa.
Liang, 35, left Beijing about a dozen years ago on a student visa for the United States, where he says the graduate schools are unrivaled.
Now Liang thinks he'll stay. He applied for permanent resident status in 2004.
"This is my home," said Liang, who wore an OSU golf shirt in his campus office. "I'm not going anywhere. This is where I live. I have friends. I love the U.S."
Congressional debate: Arguments over H-1B visas added fury to the contentious immigration-reform proposal in the Senate.
Companies that depend on the technical skills of foreign professionals complain that the government's cap of 65,000 H-1B visas per year isn't enough to meet their needs.
Exempt from that cap is employment at universities or affiliated nonprofit entities, as well as nonprofit or governmental research organizations.
Also exempt are the first 20,000 petitions filed for H-1B visas on behalf of foreigners who earned a master's degree or higher graduate degree in the United States.
These choice groups bypass the annual rush for the H-1Bs that culminated last April with roughly 133,000 petitions filed in just two days.
The Senate proposal would have increased the H-1B limit from 65,000 to about 115,000.
Leaders from high-tech companies such as Microsoft and Google -- respectively No. 3 and No. 53 on BusinessWeek's list -- have asked that lawmakers loosen the cap even more.
The rules: Although H-1B visas don't allow a foreigner to stay in this country more than six years, they remain a punch in the fight over immigration.
Critics say the H-1B process fills and outsources American jobs.
"We are not able to find Americans to do the research," said Regina Henry, the coordinator of immigration in OSU's Office of International Students and Scholars. "We open the application process appropriately, but we find those that apply are foreign nationals.
"We need researchers, and we get them wherever we can find them, basically."
The U.S. government approved 267,131 petitions for H-1B visas in 2005, according to the most recent data available from Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Nearly 117,000 of those petitions were new, and the rest were for foreigners who were already in the United States. But the government doesn't know how many people with H-1Bs remain in the country.
Some leave the country before a visa expires.
Many, such as Liang, apply for permanent resident status.
The wait for permanent residency can take a decade, and applicants typically can stay in the country even when their H-1Bs expire, said Chris Bentley, a spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Kaan Kalkan, a native of Turkey, joined Oklahoma State University last August as an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering.
Kalkan, 38,.followed his wife to OSU several years after he received a doctorate at Pennsylvania State University.
The H-1B recipient said scientific research brought him to the United States.
"In a way, the U.S. is a heaven for scientists," Kalkan said. He just began the application process for a green card -- or permanent residency.
"I wasn't actually planning to stay here, but things change," he said. "After 15 years, it becomes like an addiction. You get used to the life here."