The result is that employers are now reluctant to hire foreign students. Why recruit and train new hires when there is less than a 50 percent chance that they will be able to stay?

These students are getting increasingly frustrated and applying for jobs back home or in other countries. So we have set the stage for hundreds of thousands of highly educated and skilled workers to become our competitors. The Indian and Chinese industry benefited in a big way from the trickle of returnees over the last few years. Now we're looking at a flood.

STATE if you agree or disagree and why with these answers given?

a) Why are some of the non-U.S. citizens who study in America not being allowed to stay in the United States upon graduating from American universities?

Simply put, there are not enough visas available for them to stay legally. Compounding matters, the already limited numbers of available visas are also restricted by country, such that potential immigrants from countries with smaller or less skilled immigrant pools -- Iceland and Poland are mentioned in the article -- have the same amount of visas available as those countries with more significant numbers of more highly skilled immigrants. This restricts the flow of highly qualified immigrants from countries such as India and China.

From a policy perspective, how might this system be changed?

b) This is a hot-button issue in our country today. Even though the policy is a federal one, states and municipalities are certainly stakeholders in the process. If this visa system is to be expanded, it seems change will have to come from the federal level. Sometimes enough pressure can be put on elected officials on the local level to make it a national issue. However, state and local stakeholders have different stakes in the game -- in my opinion, for example, California would probably benefit more from highly skilled workers in the tech field (Silicon Valley) than Maine or Louisiana, so it would likely be a higher priority issue for them.