President Trump’s Department of Homeland Security just put a staggering price on one of Washington’s favorite back doors for cheap foreign labor.
Under a proposed rule released Wednesday, colleges would have to pay $70,000 before placing an international student into the Optional Practical Training program, better known as OPT. Each later authorization, including a STEM extension, would cost another $30,000.
This is far more than a routine paperwork increase. It is a direct challenge to a system that has allowed universities and major employers to turn a student visa into a pipeline for workers who can remain in the United States for years after graduation.
And it lands at a moment when the Trump administration is putting American graduates back at the center of immigration policy.
The Department of Homeland Security’s proposed rule says the initial $70,000 payment would be made by the school before it recommends an F-1 student for OPT. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services could not approve the work authorization until the fee was paid.
That detail matters. The fee is not aimed at classroom study, and it is not charged to every foreign student who comes here for an education.
It targets the moment when the student-visa system becomes a labor program.
OPT generally allows an F-1 student to work for up to 12 months in a job related to his or her degree. Graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics can seek an additional 24-month STEM extension, creating up to three years of work authorization before an employer even moves the worker into the H-1B system.
DHS’s Study in the States program explains that the STEM extension requires an employer training plan and E-Verify participation. Yet the program still gives companies a vast pool of foreign graduates who are already inside the country and available to work without first winning an H-1B visa.
That is why the administration’s description of OPT as a “pipeline for cheap foreign labor” has struck such a nerve.
Universities have every incentive to recruit overseas students who often pay full tuition. Employers have every incentive to hire from a labor pool that can be cheaper, more dependent on continued immigration status and easier to move into another temporary-visa category later.
The people left holding the bag are American graduates who were told that a degree in technology, engineering or another high-demand field would open the door to a career.
The new proposal also exposes how misleading the “student” label can become in this debate.
A person may arrive legally to earn a degree. But once that degree is finished and the person enters the labor market, the central policy question changes: should American immigration rules make it easier for that worker to compete with an American citizen for the same entry-level job?
For decades, Washington’s answer was essentially yes—and American workers were expected to absorb the consequences without complaint.
The Trump administration is now forcing schools and employers to prove that these placements are valuable enough to justify a serious cost. If a university truly believes a particular OPT placement is essential, it can stand behind that judgment financially.
If the arrangement only works when the foreign-labor pipeline is nearly free, that tells the country something important too.
The proposal will face fierce opposition from higher-education groups, immigration lawyers and technology companies. They will argue that the fee could discourage talented graduates from remaining in the United States and make American colleges less attractive overseas.
Those interests are entitled to make their case during the rulemaking process. They are not entitled to pretend that American workers have no stake in the outcome.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon has already warned that some companies use foreign-worker programs, including OPT, while bypassing ordinary recruiting channels and sidelining qualified Americans.
That is the larger battle here.
The same administration that imposed a six-figure charge on certain new H-1B petitions is now moving upstream, toward the campus-to-corporate pipeline that often feeds those petitions in the first place.
President Trump’s position is not that America should reject every talented person born somewhere else. It is that immigration policy exists to serve the United States—not universities collecting tuition, not outsourcing firms protecting margins and not corporations looking for the most compliant labor force they can find.
A $70,000 price tag will draw a fierce fight. After years of Americans being told to compete quietly against a government-subsidized global labor pool, the administration is finally asking the right question.
Who is this system supposed to work for?
This is a Guest Post from our friends over at 100 Percent Fed Up. View the original article here.
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[ H/T WLT Report ]
