Snubbing Trump, Immigration Nominee Will End Student Practical Training

Forbes

22-05-2025

Even though Donald Trump has said international students should receive green cards after graduating from U.S. universities, a nominee to head the nation's immigration service says he wants to stop foreign students from working after graduation. He would do this by ending Optional Practical Training. Economists, businesses and educators say that ending post-graduation OPT and STEM OPT would halt America's best programs for attracting and retaining international talent.
On May 21, 2025, during a confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Joseph Edlow, the Trump administration's nominee for director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, made statements certain to alarm universities, technology companies and international students.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) asked Edlow to describe changes he would make to Optional Practical Training if he were confirmed as USCIS director.
'I think the way in which OPT has been handled over the past four years, with the help of certain decisions coming out of the D.C. Circuit Court, have been a real problem in terms of misapplication of the law,' said Edlow. 'What I want to see would be essentially a regulatory and subregulatory program that would allow us to remove the ability for employment authorizations for F-1 students beyond the time that they are in school.' (Emphasis added. The exchange occurs at about 1 hr., 45 min.)
According to the Institute of International Education, in the 2023/24 academic year, 163,452 international students engaged in post-completion OPT and 79,330 were in STEM OPT, a total of 242,782. Limiting OPT or STEM OPT to only when students carry their full course load would cause these numbers to plummet and significantly reduce the number of international students who gain H-1B status, including by eliminating STEM OPT, which follows the completion of OPT.
Optional Practical Training allows international students to work for 12 months in their major course of study before or after completing their course requirements. STEM OPT allows students to gain practical experience through working an additional 24 months (beyond OPT) in a science, technology, engineering or math field.
Educators consider OPT and STEM OPT essential because practical training benefits students' education and encourages them to enroll in U.S. universities. The additional 24 months in STEM OPT also allows employers a much better opportunity to secure an H-1B petition for students. Business trade associations participated in the D.C. Circuit case on STEM OPT as intervenors due to their interests in the litigation's outcome, as did approximately 150 colleges, universities and related organizations.
'OPT enhances the educational experiences of international students while bolstering the workforce in communities across the United States, supporting employers, and contributing to our global competitiveness,' according to Miriam Feldblum, executive director of the Presidents' Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration. 'Any rollback of OPT will severely harm international students and our ability to attract talented students from around the world, our nation's global competitiveness, economic growth, national research capacity and future innovation.'
To curtail or end OPT and STEM OPT, the Trump administration would need to publish a new regulation, a process that can take several months or more than a year. 'The administration might get away with going directly to a final rule if they claim national security and forego notice and comment, but I think that would be met with legal challenges,' said Jonathan Grode of Green & Spiegel.
Subregulatory actions, which Edlow mentioned, could include policy memos, limiting resources or finding other ways to interfere with a student's ability to work on OPT or STEM OPT. 'Slowing down OPT applications could have a tremendous effect,' said immigration attorney Dan Berger. 'If initial OPT does not arrive in time, people will lose jobs or be hamstrung in their job searches after graduation.'
The Bush administration added STEM OPT in 2008, in part to give international students more chances at the H-1B lottery. That improved the likelihood they could remain in the United States. After legal challenges, in 2016, the Obama administration finalized a rule on STEM OPT.
On October 4, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit decided 2-1 in favor of the Department of Homeland Security, affirming a November 2020 order and a January 2021 opinion after a group, Washtech, challenged the executive branch's authority to allow international students to work on OPT and STEM OPT.
'As Congress itself has recognized, the Secretary's statutory authority to set the 'conditions' of nonimmigrants' [temporary visa holders] stay in the United States includes the power to authorize employment reasonably related to the nonimmigrant visa class,' according to the opinion. 'Authorizing foreign students to engage in limited periods of employment for practical training as their schools recommend according to the terms set out in the Rule is a valid exercise of that power.'
Attorneys note that even though the D.C. Circuit ruled that DHS has the authority to issue work authorization to graduates of U.S. universities, that does not necessarily mean there is a statutory mandate to do so.
Prohibiting students from working on OPT or STEM OPT after graduation would make retaining talent in the United States far more difficult. Even with OPT and STEM OPT, it is much easier in Canada and elsewhere to transition from international student to temporary work status and permanent residence than in the United States.
Madeline Zavodny, an economics professor at the University of North Florida, examined nearly a decade of data on Optional Practical Training and concluded, 'The results indicate that the OPT program does not reduce job opportunities for American workers in STEM fields.'
The National Foundation for American Policy study found, 'A larger number of foreign students approved for OPT, relative to the number of U.S. workers, is associated with a lower unemployment rate among those U.S. workers.' In addition, 'Analysis of the data shows unemployment rates are lower in areas with larger numbers of foreign students doing OPT as a share of workers in STEM occupations.'
'The clearest evidence is that foreign graduates of U.S. universities cause major increases in innovation,' according to research by George Mason University economics professor Michael Clemens. In an analysis for the Peterson Institute for International Economics, he cites studies showing that an increase in foreign graduates leads to more patents, more startups by U.S.-born founders and greater innovation in metropolitan areas.
Clemens points to a study by economists Nicholas Bloom, John Van Reenen, and Heidi Williams. 'Overall, most of the available evidence suggests that increasing the supply of human capital through expanded university programs and/or relaxed immigration rules is likely to be an effective innovation policy,' the economists concluded. 'Encouraging skilled immigration has big effects even in the short run.'
'Some fields of economic research are difficult to summarize,' writes Clemens. 'This one is not. Immigration policy that broadly seeks ways to entice foreign graduates of U.S. universities to remain in the United States, the overwhelming mass of evidence suggests, would serve the national interest. Terminating OPT would do the opposite.'
International students account for 71% of the full-time graduate students in computer and information sciences and 73% of the full-time graduate students in electrical and computer engineering at U.S. universities and are particularly important in artificial intelligence.
In contrast to Joseph Edlow's statements at his confirmation hearing, Donald Trump has said he thinks international students are so beneficial to America that they should be granted green cards after graduating. Trump laid out these views during a trip to Silicon Valley last year.
On June 19, 2024, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump taped a podcast interview with venture capitalists on All-In. 'What I want to do and what I will do is you graduate from a college, I think you should get automatically as part of your diploma a green card to be able to stay in this country,' said Trump. 'And that includes junior colleges too, anybody graduates from a college. You go there for two years or four years.' Trump promised to address the issue on 'day one.'
Trump's pledge on foreign college graduates came after podcast host Jason Calacanis asked Trump if he could pledge to 'give us more ability to import the best and brightest around the world to America.' Trump promised that he would. Trump made similar comments on August 18, 2015, when he tweeted, 'When foreigners attend our great colleges & want to stay in the U.S., they should not be thrown out of our country.'
U.S. companies and universities want to know whose views on international students will prevail in the Trump administration: Donald Trump or his nominee to head USCIS?