As part of its ongoing bid to more tightly regulate international students, the Trump administration on Wednesday announced a proposed $70,000 fee for a popular work authorization program meant to give students professional experience.
The Department of Homeland Security said the fee would help combat alleged fraud and abuse in the work program, known as Optional Practical Training, which allows students to get hands-on work experience related to their field of study while still on a student visa. The department also said the restrictions would help U.S. citizens compete against international applicants in the job market.
“Optional Practical Training was never meant to be a back door into the American workforce, a subsidy for cheap labor, or a prize for those who game the system,” said a department spokesperson in a press release. “American workers should not have to compete against a program that has been turned into a pipeline for cheap foreign labor.”
An additional $30,000 fee would apply to students looking to participate in Optional Practical Training beyond one year; many science students remain in the program for three years. Academic institutions would be expected to pay the fee for each student they recommend for the work authorization program, and DHS estimates that it would collect $12.4 billion annually if the fees are finalized. The department plans to publish the proposed rule to the Federal Register on Thursday, though an unpublished version is already accessible, and DHS has said it will accept public comments through November 9.
Experts are already raising concerns that the proposal is yet another attempt by the Trump administration to close its doors to international students and scholars, who make up about a quarter of life science Ph.D. graduates and 60% of postdoctoral researchers. The nonprofit NAFSA: Association of International Educators, which is currently suing DHS over a separate attempt to place time limits on the kinds of visas used by postdocs and graduate students, warned that the new proposed fee was misguided.
“Imposing this new fee structure on Optional Practical Training is the latest in a series of developments that creates deep uncertainty for international students. OPT enables international students to gain the same hands-on experience as their domestic peers while filling labor shortages in high-demand STEM fields and generating jobs for U.S. workers on U.S. soil,” said Fanta Aw, NAFSA’s CEO, in a statement. “The research is clear: international students don’t take opportunities from Americans, they create them.”
To participate in Optional Practical Training, often known as OPT, international students need an administrator at their school to recommend them for the program before they apply for authorization from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a division of DHS. Students then have 90 days to find a job.
This program is often a bridge for students looking to work in the U.S. long term. OPT authorizations for STEM graduates have risen from nearly 27,500 in 2015 to more than 95,000 in 2024. But DHS argues that with these growing numbers have come increasing reports of students, employers, and school administrations “engaged in schemes to exploit the current OPT regulations for fraudulent purposes.”
In its unpublished version of the proposed rule, the department alleges that there has been “widespread” use of OPT as an unlimited employment benefit with little to no connection to a student’s area of study. DHS cited a 2020 incident in which federal agents arrested 15 foreign students charged with fraudulently using OPT to stay in the U.S. The department also cited a more recent investigation that it says identified more than 10,000 international students working for “highly suspect” employers, which in some cases included empty or non-existent worksites.
DHS estimates that the new policy could lead to $4 billion a year in opportunity costs due to students losing out on work experience, employers losing productivity if they’re unable to replace international workers, and academic institutions losing international student enrollment. But the agency also stated that the benefits of protecting U.S. workers and the integrity of the OPT program outweigh any potential costs.
The work authorization program, which was formally created in 1992, has been a major draw for foreign students. A NAFSA survey conducted last year found that 54% of current graduate students and postdocs would not have come to the U.S. if OPT did not exist, though the survey did not ask about the impact of program fees.
It’s not the first time the Trump administration has sought to use steep fees to cut off internationals from the U.S. workforce. Last year, Trump issued an executive order that would impose a $100,000 fee on H-1B visas, used by foreign workers in high-skill fields such as engineering and biotech. Federal courts have blocked the fee for now, though DHS has reintroduced it as a proposed rule.
The administration is also seeking to put four-year caps on how long students and postdocs can remain in the U.S., alleging that a longstanding policy allowing these scholars to stay in the U.S. for the length of their training has incentivized fraud. A federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction preventing the time limits from taking effect; the order notes that plaintiffs opposed to the policy are likely to ultimately succeed in an ongoing lawsuit.
Even though many of these new policies have yet to take effect, current students and immigration experts say the Trump administration’s efforts have created a climate of fear and uncertainty that will turn students away from the U.S. There’s some evidence that is already happening. A survey this summer by the Association of American Universities found that, while domestic student applications for U.S. Ph.D. programs went up by 3% this year, international applications dipped 21%.
STAT’s coverage of the federal government’s impact on the biomedical workforce is supported by a grant from the Dana Foundation and the Boston Foundation. Our financial supporters are not involved in any decisions about our journalism.