The Optional Practical Training program is a cheap foreign-labor program for big companies and universities. But it's…

The Optional Practical Training program is a cheap foreign-labor program for big companies and universities. But it's undermining young Americans. It’s time to overhaul or possibly end this terribly broken program all together. 🧵

OPT boxes young Americans out of the workforce, discriminates against American workers in favor of foreign labor, and suppresses wages and job opportunities for U.S. graduates. It distorts our higher education system, feeds “visa mill” fraud, and threatens our national security.

Under OPT, foreign nationals can work in the U.S. on student visas for up to 12 months after graduation, and up to three years for STEM fields. In practice, it’s become a shadow guest-worker program, with no caps, labor-market tests, or any meaningful limits or standards at all.

In this way, OPT essentially allows companies to bypass the (modest and insufficient) protections of visa programs like H-1B, and draw from a virtually unlimited pipeline of low-cost foreign labor. Employers face no obligation to recruit or even consider Americans first.

The entire system rigs the game against Americans. OPT workers are exempt from payroll taxes. That means that businesses are basically getting a tax break every time they hire a foreign worker over an American. One study found OPT now amounts to a "$4 billion tax exemption."

There's another incentive for employers, too: Foreign workers who want to stay here after their OPT ends need to be sponsored by a U.S. employer. As a result, they're often uniquely compliant and hesitant to complain about subpar wages or conditions. revealnews.org/article/job-br…

So of course, OPT participation has exploded. The program's numbers have more than doubled since 2007. Last year, they reached all-time highs. Today, by some estimates, the number of foreign students working in America via paid “training” programs is in excess of half a million.

Most foreign students who enroll in these programs pursue degrees in STEM fields, and are hired by employers in the tech and STEM industries. These employers argue this system is necessary to fill "worker shortages," claiming they simply can't find Americans to work these jobs.

The data tells a different story. American STEM and tech students have some of the highest post-grad unemployment rates of any major in the job market. In early 2025, physics majors had the second-highest unemployment rate of any discipline among recent U.S. college graduates.

In fact, physics majors had more than DOUBLE the unemployment rate for majors such as philosophy, art history, and "ethnic studies". Computer engineering had the third-highest unemployment rate, closely followed by computer science and “information systems” in the top 10.

These programs aren't just boxing young Americans out of our workforce. They're boxing them out of our universities too. There are now over 1.1 million foreign students in the U.S. system—an all-time record. At many top schools, foreigners now make up 20–30% of the student body.

Why? Money. Universities can often charge foreign students far higher tuition than American kids. So instead of serving our own citizens, our higher education system is effectively acting as a glorified labor broker, feeding foreign workers into U.S. jobs at Americans' expense.

There is no tenable reason that American students and graduates should be forced to compete against an uncapped flood of foreign labor in our own schools and businesses—except to pad the profit margins of companies and colleges that view our own young people as an inconvenience.

Americans never asked for—or even authorized—OPT. It was invented (then expanded) by unelected bureaucrats in D.C., without the input/approval of Congress If executive action created this system, it can reform or end it too. Full letter here: schmitt.senate.gov/media/press-re…