Navigating the maze of US immigration policy changes can be daunting, especially for international students who are crucial to the vibrancy of American business schools. In a thought-provoking episode of the Poets & Quants “Business Casual” podcast, hosts Pola Lem, Maria Wich-Vila, and Caroline Diarte Edwards delve into the complexities of recent visa changes with guest Samir Khedekar, founder and managing attorney at Vanguard Visa Law. These changes include stricter visa rules and a potential $100,000 fee for working in the US post-graduation, raising significant concern among international students and educators alike.
Pola sets the stage by highlighting the recent shift from the “duration of status” model, which allowed students to remain in the US until they completed their degrees. Now, students face a bureaucratic labyrinth with fixed term limits and additional paperwork, increasing their administrative burden and potential for error. Samir emphasizes that while the time students can remain hasn’t technically changed, the path to staying has become fraught with more hurdles, implying higher costs and greater stress.
Maria, Caroline, and Samir further explore the implications of these policies on international recruitment. While Homeland Security presents these rules as solutions to minor issues like students overstaying visas by hopping between programs, Samir suggests that these changes might be more performative than practical. The conversation underscores the critical role international students play in US education, their contribution to innovation, and the financial sustenance they provide to institutions. This evolving landscape is sure to impact MBA hopefuls worldwide, urging them to stay informed and proactive in navigating these challenges.
Episode Transcript
Note: This transcript was generated by AI and may contain minor inaccuracies.
[00:00:03] – Pola
What a summer storm it’s been for foreign students. So new rules on how long they can stay in the US, limiting that quite severely. And now we’re hearing a $100,000 price tag just to work in the US after graduation. So apparently the latter is what the Trump administration is considering for international students. That’s a big number. And if this happens, it could really upend international recruitment for US universities and the companies that depend on global talent. I’m Pola Lem. With us today are my co-hosts, Maria Wich-Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards. And I’m very excited to introduce our guest today. That’s Samir Khedekar, founder and managing attorney at Vanguard Visa Law. So we’ve started to talk about this already. A quick recap. So in mid-July, the Trump administration said it would implement stricter rules on foreign students, including preventing them from staying in the U.S. for more than 4 years unless they get permission from the federal government. And before now, foreign students on F-1 visas and J-1 visas were admitted to the US under something called duration of status, which meant they could remain in the country for as long as it took to finish their degrees.
[00:01:30] – Pola
The new rules though would put a time limit on that stay. So Samir, how long do students have to leave after graduation and how is that different from before?
[00:01:45] – Samir
I think what’s important to remember, first of all, thank you so much for having me on. It’s a pleasure to be here and it’s great to be with you all. What’s important to understand is the amount of time a student gets to be here hasn’t changed, but the amount of work they have to do, the paperwork they have to submit, all the steps they got to take to stay for the same amount of time changes. They got to do more work. So there’s more room for mistakes, more room for bureaucratic hiccups and things like that. Whereas before, With this duration of status process, it was just open-ended. They got to stay here until the school said they’re done, right? It was easier. Now a student after 4 years needs to not only get the permission from the school to stay here or get OPT or whatever it is, but they also have to apply to the immigration service for the extension of their permission to be here and wait for that paperwork to come in and take all those steps. So. The amount of time they have to be here hasn’t changed, or they get to be here hasn’t changed.
[00:02:48] – Samir
It’s kind of what goes into it that’s really changed.
[00:02:52] – Pola
More paperwork and presumably more money that they’re having to pay to do all this paperwork, right?
[00:02:58] – Samir
That’s correct.
[00:02:59] – Maria
Yeah.
[00:02:59] – Caroline
Yeah.
[00:03:01] – Maria
Yeah.
[00:03:01] – Pola
So seemingly the aim of the policy is to restrict the number of foreign students and ultimately, I guess, immigrants to the US. But have students been a significant portion of immigration to the U.S. in recent years?
[00:03:17] – Samir
Yeah, I would say, uh, you know, the, well, the stated policy, uh, from Homeland Security, uh, as they are, wants to do kind of across the board, they magnify a small problem as the main problem. And then here are all these rules that we have created. almost performatively to cure that problem. So it’s almost, it’s a lot of show basically is what it is. The small problem that exists is you do have some students who come to the US and then just hop from school to school, from program to program with the hope of staying here and making a life for themselves, right? Who, you know, may or may not have many other options to be here. There are risks for overstaying and That’s not necessarily a problem in and of itself. I mean, I think the schools happily admit them. The schools make money off of them. Some of them turn into productive workers in the US, but it’s a small population of a fairly large student, you know, immigrant, uh, foreign national student population. Yet it’s the mayhem that, that’s like the reason why they reconstructed all these rules. Do you understand it?
[00:04:25] – Samir
So, um, that’s pretty much what’s happening. And I, I do believe, I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but there are a significant amount. student visa holders in the US. And, you know, and we know that a lot of our top schools rely heavily, you know, on their presence, their tuition, their innovation, you know, all sorts of different things.
[00:04:47] – Pola
Sure. And obviously we’ve been talking about this duration of status change. And there’s also that separate bit of legislation that’s been proposed with the $100,000 price tag for students to continue working in the US? And how likely do you put that change?
[00:05:11] – Samir
Well, to be clear, the duration of status rule is effective, right? As of September 15th, right? It’s happening. And we can kind of get more into what that means, how that affects people. The second half of what you’re asking, the $100,000 fee on OPT, which is a 1-year work permit that follows graduation. That’s a proposal. That’s not a rule. That’s going to have to go through a process, we think, unless it’s instituted by executive order, like the H-1B $100,000 fee, in which case maybe not. We’ll see what happens. But it’s not a rule. It’s not effective. And I think they’re testing the waters to see what the reaction is going to be. hope is that they hear enough from the business community that it’s a total disaster, right? I think a lot of companies rely heavily on OPT workers because they just legitimately, and a lot of our clients legitimately cannot find US workers to do the job at the level that these individuals are doing. So they’re not as the press, as some of the press kind of likes to, the press likes to latch on to the government talking points, which is immigrants are lower pay labor.
[00:06:24] – Samir
And that’s not true. from our perspective, they’re getting paid just as much, if not more. Plus, plus the companies have to pay all the legal fees and government filing fees on top of that. Like, why would they do that unless they actually couldn’t find anybody to do the work?
[00:06:38] – Pola
Hmm. Maybe we could turn to Caroline and Maria. So, so Caroline, could you tell us why this, this change already in place, that the new rules on duration of status are significant, um, and, and how how they look relative to those previous moves that the Trump administration has made in this area. So basically, how bad is it?
[00:07:04] – Maria
Well, I think it’s worse for undergraduates and PhD students potentially than MBA students. So 4 years gives you plenty of time to complete an MBA program. Hopefully you could complete it within 2 years. My question for Sameer relates to OPT. So typically MBA students coming from outside the US can stay on OPT for 1 year when they graduate. And many MBA programs have got STEM designation, which means that they can stay for up to 3 years and work in the US. And then during that time, they can apply for an H-1B visa. And so that is a very important route into the US job market for many international students. So the key reason for international students to come to the US, because many of them are coming from markets where Their earning potential is not the same as if they’re able to stay in the US. And so the return on investment calculation really depends on them being able to secure a job here when they graduate. So could you tell us a bit about that OPT question and how that 4-year limitation potentially impacts that?
[00:08:14] – Samir
Yeah, no, that’s a great question. So the typical MBA program is 2 years. Right. Um, and so the OPT, uh, for, for the most part is a 1-year work permit. So the 2 plus 1, um, the 3 years falls within that 4-year limit. So it generally, at least for the first year of OPT, as you mentioned, shouldn’t be an issue, um, when it comes to the 4-year, uh, kind of limitation on initial stay, initial status. Um, the STEM OPT, so that, that’s a, um, for those that don’t know, That’s a, like a 2-year additional work permit that some get after that first year. And it’s limited, limited to those in STEM majors and MBA. I’ve seen a lot of this in MBA kind of quantitative, um, majors, right? And these are designated at ICE. Uh, the government provides a list of the majors and MBA programs that qualify, uh, for STEM OPT. Uh, and then they have to go work for a company that is E-Verified, which is the government’s online kind of employment verification system. So the government has to, the company has to be enrolled in that system. If those 2 criteria are met, for the most part, there’s other criteria, but those are the 2 main ones.
[00:09:23] – Samir
Then the student can work for 2 more years after the first year. So that’s 3 years, like you mentioned, which would then take plus the 2 years of MBA is 5 years. So then we have 1 year, that’s 1 year more than the 4-year limitation. So towards the end of that 4th year, We have to see kind of exactly when, maybe 6 months before, but, you know, definitely they should, you know, students should talk to somebody, maybe a lawyer to help them kind of understand what timelines look like. They should plan on, they have to file an extension. So not only are they applying for the OPT, before all they would do is apply for the OPT and they’re good, right? Now they have to also, in addition to the OPT and STEM OPT, they have to apply for an extension of status to USCIS on a different form, paying a different fee. with different processing times that ostensibly the case application needs to be approved before the expiration date, right? These applications can take several months. If they want to expedite, they have to pay another kind of premium processing, we call it a bribe to USCIS of like $3,000 just to expedite the application.
[00:10:32] – Samir
So there’s a lot of these additional complications that just kind of add up. that make it a little bit harder. It’s possible. It’s definitely possible to get that extension, but it’s, you know, it’s harder.
[00:10:44] – Maria
I was just curious, Savi, if you can give us any sense for how likely someone is to get that extra year. Would you say that it’s, they’ve got 50/50 chance or is it a 90% chance or any estimation of how likely they are to get that third year of OPT?
[00:11:03] – Samir
In theory, it shouldn’t be an issue. So the thing with student visa holders is that kind of baked into the rules for them is this requirement that they ultimately have the intent. This is like a decades-old rule that’s really outdated, and that’s a whole separate issue about how outdated everything is in immigration, right? But there’s this rule that’s baked in, like they have to have the intent to return to their home country once they complete their academic, their education and their training, right? Now, it doesn’t mean they’re not allowed to go and get an H-1B and get a job, but every time they submit an application or make an entry, they may be required to show that, right? So if they’re applying for an extension of status, they’ll have to probably show in that extension filing, like they do now. I mean, that’s what they have to do now if they’re extending their status or changing their status to another status is that they have ties to their home country and that they have legitimate enough evidence to show the government they’re going to go back home. And so that’s, everybody is in a different situation.
[00:12:10] – Samir
So that’s another kind of thing they have to show that could be hard, for some impossible. And we don’t know to what extent is the government really, they have a lot of discretion with that, right? Are they really going to use that as an excuse to deny extensions. Like that would be like legitimately mean, right? Um, but we can’t put it above this current administration. On the other hand, uh, the standard of practice for USCIS, and you have a lot of officers that have been there for years and years and years have just done things a certain way, is to generally approve these with a minimal show, with like a, you know, reasonable showing that you have ties to your home country. So, um, It’s not like there’s going to be wholesale denials in my opinion. I think the problem is, is like, it’s possible to like, you know, make little mistakes on these applications and like, uh, they’re not the easiest applications for laypeople. Right. And then if you make a little mistake, a harmless mistake, that can result in a denial. And then, and what if you’re denied, then it’s like you run out of time.
[00:13:10] – Samir
You only get one chance after waiting 7 months for the application to be approved. So my worry is in little mistakes made by applicants. Or even mistakes made by the government. That happens too. And when these little things happen, these bureaucratic kind of hiccups happen, the harm is much greater, right, than the actual hiccup that occurs. So that’s what we worry about the most. And I think the administration knows this, like that’s why they’re doing this, right? It just, they understand like these little requirements makes things incrementally harder and scarier for I just have one very quick question.
[00:13:47] – Pola
I want to bring in Maria here to see which questions you have for Samir, but my question on that is whether you’ve got any gauge, Samir, on how many of these students are getting a lawyer to help them. And you’ve kind of alluded to it already, but, you know, if you’re just a layperson, a student, are you able to go it alone on one of these applications realistically?
[00:14:10] – Samir
Well, it’s hard to say because right now students don’t have to apply for extensions. So the only time they apply for anything generally is through the OPT process. But their schools have such straightforward instructions and that once again, the application process is pretty straightforward. They almost always just go at it on their own with good results, right? So it’s hard to say, you know, to what extent are they going to need lawyers? I hope not because I mean, Let’s face it, lawyers are not the cheapest in the world and these are students, right? So once again, I think another kind of side effect that I believe the government is aware of in terms of the discouraging factor, right? So I would hope that, well, what I foresee is that there are lots of great organizations and companies actually that help students. that come up with technology that could close the gap between having a lawyer and not having one, right? We see this technology across the board doing taxes. We see that in starting companies. Like, there’s, if it’s a fairly straightforward application, which the extension of status should be, but maybe not straightforward enough for the layperson, but very straightforward for like, let’s say a lawyer, right?
[00:15:29] – Samir
That’s a good opportunity for technology to close the gap. And so that’s what, um, I would foresee happening is that there may be some products out there that could be cheaper than lawyers, um, that could really help people, help students.
[00:15:42] – Pola
Maria, did you have any questions for Samir on this?
[00:15:46] – Caroline
I, I do. Not about these newer, uh, things that are being announced, but in terms of, I don’t know if you’ve seen, uh, that those ties to homeland as being an initial question, even for getting that first student visa to come over. Have you seen more rejections in the past year or two, people who in the past would’ve gotten that student visa approved, but who now seem to be getting rejected. You know, one of the reasons that happened about a year ago was they were looking at people’s social media profiles to see if they had ever posted anything that the government found unsavory. But I’ve heard kind of completely unscientifically through the grapevine that the student visas are getting, maybe getting more rejected. There may be more scrutiny being given to those ties to the homeland, be they either they financial or otherwise? And I’m just wondering what you’ve, if you by any chance have seen or heard anything about this.
[00:16:40] – Samir
Yeah. Well, it’s important to remember, but there’s 2 different things happening here, right? Even before this new rule, it’s always been the case, and this brings up the question of travel, which is now that we should talk about that, right? Because status in the US is one thing, ability to enter the US is another. The visa stamp and the passport, we use visa to describe both. You know, colloquially, but really, um, technically the visa is a stamp in the passport that allows one to enter the U.S., right? Uh, and the status is what allows them to stay in the U.S. Okay. So we have been talking this whole time about status, literally, which the duration of status that they just, that is to be here until school’s over right now. They have to extend their status here in the U.S., which they haven’t had to do before. Right. But the visa requirement has always been there. And the visas are obtained at the US consulates, embassy consulates abroad, right? In the applicant’s home country. And that’s where a lot of the denials have been happening for the most part. And that’s where these like ties to your homeland, that’s where it most often comes up.
[00:17:47] – Samir
And that’s going to continue. And I always say, yes, that’s going to be a problem. It’s also going to be a problem is one’s ability to travel back home. Because maybe visas are going to be like, right now, many applicants get visas that are valid for several years, right? And now with the kind of a limitation on status here in the US, they might only issue visas for shorter duration, which means they’re going to have to go back and get them extended abroad, right? So, and then they may be discouraged from traveling because it’s, first of all, scary to do that. Really scary to do that for everybody who’s including workers, H-1B workers, the risk of denial is legitimately high, right? And then they may not be able to return. So once again, talk about discouraging factors, especially for young students. I can’t believe they’re doing this to students, number one. I picture myself at this age. I’m like, I would’ve been cooked. I would not have been able to, I was just too immature. I mean, at that age, I’m not saying these students are, usually much more mature than I ever was at that age, but they’re still kids.
[00:18:55] – Samir
Yeah, like they are. And I just kind of shudder at having them to— having had to deal with all this stuff, not being able to travel back home and see your family because you’re scared your visa might be approved, right? That’s like a real thing that’s happening now for both students and workers alike.
[00:19:14] – Pola
Yeah. And I’m Glad we’re really actually touching on the human toll that this takes on people. And I know, Samir, you wrote a LinkedIn post about the fact that this is happening and as the partner of a foreign national who’s on an MBA in the US. So—
[00:19:35] – Samir
To be clear, she’s not a foreign national. She’s a US citizen.
[00:19:38] – Pola
She’s a US citizen.
[00:19:39] – Samir
But the idea was, Yeah, so I’m sorry to cut you off, but the post was about her. So she’s doing an executive MBA after having gone to law school, right? The law school was, you know, a few years ago, several years ago. But the idea was what this rule prohibits, and she’s a US citizen born in the US, but she’s the archetype, right? It’s like if you’re somebody, a foreign national who received Uh, let’s say an advanced degree, uh, in the U.S., let’s say your master’s, right? Master’s of software engineering or whatever it was, computer science, in the U.S. on a student visa after September 15th. Okay. You cannot then go get an MBA on a student visa. You can’t do it because you can’t go from math. That’s the other part of this rule. You can’t go from one program to another in the same degree classification, a degree level. And that was the point of my post. So she, if she were a foreign national, she would not have been able to do what she’s doing right now. And the point I was trying to make is, these are the people that we want to be able to do things right now.
[00:20:49] – Samir
It’s like, we want these incredible engineers who have savvy business skills and interests to go get an MBA and start companies and create jobs. Like this rule would keep them from doing that. Because this rule is trying to keep people, to my earlier point of just staying in the US and going from program to program, the perception is there’s a lot of them and it’s a big problem. When the reality is there’s only a few of them. The bigger population are those that actually are going to start companies who are going to really do things in our, in our country. And now we’re keeping them from being able to do so. And it makes no sense.
[00:21:25] – Pola
Definitely. I mean, we talk a lot. about the whole career pivot and the use of an MBA on this podcast. So I guess, Caroline, we’ve already been talking about what the US risks losing, but, you know, going beyond tuition dollars, what does this mean for business schools? Can you give us an idea of— How this change and the proposed $100,000 fee, how that might reshape business education?
[00:22:04] – Maria
Yeah, it’s having a really negative impact. I mean, we see it in conversations with candidates who had been thinking about coming to the US, outstanding candidates from around the world who were looking to go to HBS or Stanford GSB, be who are just not applying now because there’s too much uncertainty in the process, and it’s a huge loss for the US. I know that, for example, at Stanford, they’re expecting fewer Mexican students in the fall intake. My husband is a Mexican citizen who did his MBA at Stanford and was on campus recently, and there were talking about the drop in Mexican applications. And so that’s just one example, right? So if a school like Stanford is seeing a drop, you can imagine how that is playing out across all of the business schools. And Stanford, of course, is in a very enviable position in having a very deep applicant pool and still probably reasonably diverse applicant pool, so they can put together a fantastic classroom of students. But when you reach down further into perhaps the top 20 to 30 schools who wouldn’t necessarily have the same bench of applicants to choose from, they’re going to be very negatively impacted in the diversity of students and probably will see not only a reduction in the representation of international students on campus, but I think we’re going to see some drops in the classroom sizes, in the size of the cohort that the schools are going to be admitting this fall.
[00:23:50] – Maria
So yeah, it’s going to have a very bad impact on— and that impacts not just the, of course, the international students themselves and then the schools in the tuition revenue. It also, of course, impacts the domestic students who learn so much from their international classmates. Just the MBA experience is so much about that peer-to-peer learning and that facilitated discussion. And if you don’t have as much exposure to people who’ve worked in very different cultural environments, very different backgrounds, organizations, very different perspectives, then it just dilutes the experience a bit for everybody. So, I think it is a tremendous loss on many fronts. And I think what we’ve seen in the past is also that, I mean, I was looking, for example, at Canada and they had sought to reduce the number of international students coming into the country. And I think that they were looking at targeting like a 30% reduction or they had a specific target for the percentage that they wanted to reduce it by. And then they completely overshot that, right? So that dropped much more than that. because people were deterred from applying in the first place. And even programs that were exempt from those caps saw a big reduction in international applications, right?
[00:25:18] – Maria
Whereas in reality, those students could have gone to the— could have applied and may well have got in, and their chance of getting a visa were not actually diminished, but just the negative PR around those changes has such a big impact. deterrent effect. So it’s very sad that the US continues in this direction, even though it’s quite clear that it does have a negative impact. And I think perhaps things will change, right? Maybe as we’ve said, the $100,000 fee may never go through, or it may get implemented and then it’ll be struck out, right? So, Actually, the reality may not be as bad as we fear it could be. But the problem is that students have been used to the immigration situation being a constant and not a variable, right? The rules didn’t change very much for many years. And so, it was assumed that if you get into a top US MBA program, then you’re going to get a student visa and then you can stay for a year afterwards. And if you go to a STEM-certified program, you can stay for an extra 2 years. And it was a very clear structure that was constant over time.
[00:26:42] – Maria
And as soon as you start playing with that and threatening it, then that it’s not, you lose that reliability and then that brings risk into the equation. And when you’re investing so much, right, we’re talking about $200,000, $250,000, $50,000 to go to a top US MBA program, that’s an awful lot to spend if you think that there is a risk that you might not be able to stay in the country when you graduate. So yeah, it’s very sad all round for the students themselves, for the other students who won’t have those international classmates, for the schools that are going to lose tuition revenue. And then as Sami has said, you know, the the loss of that tremendous international talent who will go and enrich the economies of the UK or France or Singapore or India or somewhere else instead.
[00:27:39] – Caroline
Well said.
[00:27:40] – Pola
I think you’ve been the voice of higher education and reason here in saying these things. We are coming up to time, but Maria, was there anything you wanted to add or any other questions you had for Samir before we go?
[00:28:00] – Caroline
No, I guess I think we’re all just sort of hoping, you know, the Wall Street Journal article said that Jared Kushner somehow helped sway the H-1B decision from, you know, last year. And so I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Jared Kushner, please help us because This is disastrous, not just for, you know, most top MBA programs have between, say, 35 to 45% of their students are international. So it’s not only devastating from a short-term tuition dollar perspective, but as we’ve all mentioned, you know, these students who come in and they stay, I mean, we really up until now have been attracting the world’s best and brightest, and those best and brightest have been staying here and starting companies that have really changed the world. I mean, Elon Musk being one of the ones that immediately comes to mind. So it’s just, it’s just all, it’s just so shocking to me that, that we’re in this position and hopefully, so hopefully cooler heads will prevail.
[00:29:00] – Pola
Sameer, any final words for us before we close? Any maybe tips for applicants as they’re thinking about these changes or proposed changes and how they should approach all of this?
[00:29:15] – Samir
Yeah, I’d encourage, you know, all students to understand the rules inside and out. There’ll be plenty of materials, plenty of resources out there. Your schools will help. The schools are great at putting out, you know, how-tos and guides. Look out for companies and organizations that will put information out to support the students. be very diligent, cross your T’s, dot all your I’s. The smallest mistake can be catastrophic. So just make sure that you are double-checking everything and just pay particular attention to your rules and your obligations. But I do want to say the rules and kind of what we’ve seen over the past couple years in immigration, they don’t reflect what a distinct majority of our country Feels like. I think polls are pretty clear that a good 65 to 70% of our nation is heavily in favor of talent immigration. And so what we’re seeing here are the views of a minority. And I strongly believe that like these kinds of things, they don’t last forever. It’s just a period of time with storm that we have to weather. I believe we’ll weather it and we’ll come out stronger for it.
[00:30:29] – Pola
Oof, a positive note to which I’ll add the reputational damage has been done, to Caroline’s point.
[00:30:38] – Maria
That’s true.
[00:30:38] – Pola
But on that note, thank you so much, Samir, for joining us, and to my co-hosts Caroline and Maria. Thank you everyone for listening, and we will be back again next week with a fresh edition of Business Casual for you. If you like the podcast, please check us out on our website or on any number of streaming platforms, uh, where we are. Thank you so much.
