Trump Administration Proposes $70,000 Fee for Initial OPT Recommendations

The Department of Homeland Security proposed charging institutions $70,000 for each initial Optional Practical Training recommendation and $30,000 for later recommendations, widening the Trump administration’s scrutiny of foreign-worker and international-student programs.

The proposal, scheduled for publication Oct. 8, would apply to institutions certified under the Student and Exchange Visitor Program. It covers eligible F-1 students seeking temporary work related to their fields of study, including later recommendations such as extensions. The fees are proposed and are not yet in effect.

The proposed charges are intended to combat fraud, strengthen the immigration system and protect U.S. workers. The proposal does not establish whether institutions could pass the costs to students or employers.

The administration also intensified scrutiny of H-1B employers. A Sept. 18 executive order directs the State, Labor and Homeland Security departments to coordinate enforcement and consider whether sponsoring employers have laid off similarly situated U.S. workers.

The order estimates that technology-sector employers collectively requested hundreds of thousands of H-1B visas while laying off between 800,000 and 1.3 million American workers from 2022 through 2026. It does not provide a company-by-company methodology for those figures.

Vice President JD Vance claimed Microsoft laid off 6,000 American workers, obtained 6,300 H-1B visas and received almost 3,000 green cards during the period he referenced.

The suspension involving Microsoft concerns the Permanent Labor Certification process used in employment-based green-card sponsorship, rather than a ban from the H-1B program.

Investigators issued dozens of subpoenas and executed search warrants in foreign-labor-fraud investigations. Visa applications from Cognizant and Cloudera were suspended pending a criminal investigation.

“The subpoenas are real. The search warrants are real. The investigations are real. President Trump’s action makes clear this fight is only intensifying,” Labor Department Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito said.

Vance also identified Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Brown, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of California, Davis, Caltech, Arizona State and MIT for further investigation over J-1 visa use.

The Labor Department has also suspended Microsoft, Adobe and other companies from the green-card labor program. TokenPost previously covered the U.S. suspension of Microsoft and Adobe from the green-card labor program.