FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Sen. Rick Scott is urging the White House to end the Optional Practical Training work permit program, which incentivizes employers to give jobs to foreign students.
“The OPT program should not exist; it is a purely regulatory creation with no statutory basis,” the Florida Republican wrote in a letter obtained by The Daily Signal.
The Optional Practical Training (OTP) program, created in 1992, allows foreign students to remain in the United States to work for nearly four years after graduation. Scott says this takes jobs away from U.S.-born college graduates.
Employers receive a tax break for hiring foreign graduates under the program, giving foreigners an advantage over U.S. citizens, Scott argues.
“The jobless rate for recent graduates with computer engineering degrees is nearly double the general unemployment rate,” the letter says, “and the unemployment rate for recent computer science graduates is over 50% higher than the general jobless rate.”
More than half a million student visa holders currently have OPT work permits, the letter says.
Scott argues this creates a national security risk by bolstering China.
“Many OPT recipients from Communist China have jobs in universities and Big Tech firms, giving them access to sensitive technological information and intellectual property,” Scott wrote. “We cannot continue opening the door to an enemy nation that will happily use our own research against us.”
The Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman warned in a 2020 report that the OPT and STEM OPT programs “have remained a source of concern in recent years due to their vulnerability to fraud and indicators that they are being leveraged by foreign governments as a means of conducting espionage or illicit technology transfer in the STEM areas.”
More than 33,000 Chinese nationals hold special STEM work permits under the program that allow them to stay in the U.S.
Scott cited reports that the Trump administration planned to end the program.
The Department of Homeland Security has said it “will amend existing regulations to address fraud and national security concerns, [and] protect U.S. workers from being displaced by foreign nationals.“
Before President Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2025, Forbes reported that the “upcoming Trump administration rule is expected to end or restrict Optional Practical Training.”
