The Trump administration is considering imposing a six-figure fee on international graduates seeking work authorization in the United States \u2014 a move that Penn experts say could price out recent graduates and erode a pipeline American universities and employers have long relied on.<\/p>\n
The plan<\/a> would attach a $100,000 charge to Optional Practical Training, which currently allows international students to remain and work in the country for one to three years post-graduation, according to the Wall Street Journal. The proposal has not yet been formally introduced, and key details remain unclear, including who would bear the cost: the students, their universities, or their prospective employers.<\/p>\n For many international students, OPT is the bridge between earning a degree and building a career in the U.S. Management professor Britta Glennon, whose research focuses on immigration and the economy, described it as the crucial link in a multi-step pipeline. Students usually enter the country on an F-1 visa, then rely on OPT for temporary work authorization after graduation, with the eventual goal of securing employer sponsorship for an H\u20111B visa.<\/p>\n With H-1B visas capped at 85,000 annually and allocated by lottery, the OPT window \u2014\u00a0one year for non-STEM graduates and three years for STEM graduates \u2014 gives students \u201cextra time to win the lottery.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the typical path for skilled immigrants in the U.S.,\u201d Glennon explained.<\/p>\n Get the DP delivered straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n Sign Up<\/a><\/p>\n A fee of this size would function as a deterrent, Glennon said, because it is \u201ccertainly more than most startups can afford\u201d and enough to give established companies pause. She added that the policy could immediately affect students who have already secured job offers, where an employer facing the new cost might rethink \u201cwhether they actually want to pay $100,000 for that individual.\u201d<\/p>\n Penn Carey Law professor Fernando Chang-Muy similarly warned that the fee \u201cwould price out nearly every recent international graduate, effectively ending OPT for all but the wealthiest students.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The possibility that employers might pull back from hiring recent international graduates is a concern Penn itself has raised. International Student and Scholar Services Director Rudie Altamirano wrote in a statement that \u201ceven proposed changes can generate significant uncertainty about career planning, employment timing, financial obligations, and whether employers will remain willing to hire international graduates.\u201d<\/p>\n Glennon said that the long-term risk of implementing the proposal is that talented students stop choosing the U.S. as a permanent home.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you don\u2019t think that pipeline is going to work, and there aren\u2019t any other really feasible ways to do it, then you may not bother with coming at all \u2014\u00a0instead, go somewhere else where you think your chances are better at being able to transition from school into the economy with a job,\u201d Glennon said.<\/p>\n Chang-Muy added that if the proposal became formalized, it \u201cwould gut the return on investment that draws international students to U.S. universities in the first place.\u201d He wrote that those students would be lost to other countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom, or Australia.<\/p>\n Chang-Muy \u2014 who characterized the fee as \u201cabsurd\u201d \u2014 additionally acknowledged the stakes for employers, noting that companies use OPT as \u201ca critical recruiting pipeline for skilled graduates trained in American systems and processes.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAre there enough U.S. citizens to work in IT and software development? In healthcare, are there enough U.S. citizen nurses, therapists, and specialized surgeons?\u201d he wrote. \u201cIf not international students can help to fill in needed HR gaps.\u201d<\/p>\n Another Carey Law professor, Nicole Simon, wrote that the proposal was \u201cyet another attack on students, a group the administration has mercilessly targeted.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n She questioned whether the fee could survive a legal challenge, pointing to the Trump administration\u2019s attempt to impose a $100,000 fee on H-1B visas, which courts have blocked<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Chang-Muy echoed a similar sentiment \u2014 adding that federal district and appeals courts have already ruled the executive branch overstepped its authority \u2014 and predicted that the proposal \u201cmay also be found unlawful.\u201d<\/p>\n Beneath the specific proposal, Glennon said, lies a longstanding blind spot regarding how the U.S. treats the relationship between higher education and immigration. The last significant overhaul of the system took place in 1990, when the H-1B visa was established. According to Glennon, lawmakers at the time did not foresee that its main application would become recruiting graduates from U.S. universities.<\/p>\n \u201cUniversities find talent around the world, and then firms recruit from universities, but that wasn\u2019t built into any of the immigration policy,\u201d she said. The result, she added, is that \u201cthere hasn\u2019t been enough recognition of how intertwined they are.\u201d<\/p>\n Altamirano wrote that there has not been a broader OPT rule published for public review, but that \u201cthe cumulative effect of changing requirements can create uncertainty\u201d even \u201cbefore a rule takes effect.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Staff reporter Riana Mahtani covers national politics and can be reached at mahtani@thedp.com<\/a>. At Penn, she studies political science. Follow her on X @Riana_Mahtani<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Trump administration is considering imposing a six-figure fee on international graduates seeking work authorization in the United…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276249,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70],"class_list":["post-276248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}