by Ben Whedon
The Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday announced a proposal to charge $70,000 per student for the Optional Practical Training program, marking the latest effort by the Trump administration to crack down on foreign labor.
The plan would also require a $30,000 for extensions, Politico reported. OPT, like the H-1B visa, has become a focal point for criticism from immigration hawks over fraud concerns and allegations that businesses use it to undercut wages.
“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,” a DHS spokesperson said. “DHS is upskilling OPT to require foreign students to justify their worth to employers. American workers should not have to compete against a program that has been turned into a pipeline for cheap foreign labor.”
OPT currently costs only $500 per application. The Trump administration previously imposed a $100,000 fee on H-1B applications in a move that has prompted extended litigation.
In 2025, Arizona Republican Rep. Paul Gosar introduced a bill called the Fairness for High-Skilled Americans Act, which seeks to eliminate the OPT program.
“The OPT program completely undercuts American workers, particularly higher-skilled workers and recent college graduates, by giving employers a tax incentive to hire inexpensive, foreign labor under the guise of student training. Never authorized by Congress, OPT circumvents the H-1B visa cap set by Congress by allowing over 100,000 aliens admitted into our country on student visas to continue working in the United States for another three years after completing their academic studies,” Gosar said.
“OPT incentivizes greedy businesses to fire Americans and replace them with inexpensive foreign labor by avoiding having to pay FICA and Medicare payroll taxes and other employee benefits. The OPT program completely abandons young Americans who have spent years and tens of thousands of dollars pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics only to be pushed out of those fields by cheap foreigners.Our government should not be incentivizing foreign employees over Americans. This badly flawed government program should be eliminated,” he added.
Gosar’s bill proposal never made it to the House floor.
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Ben Whedon is a reporter for Just the News. Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of The Star News Network and contributed to this story.
