No, OPT Isn’t a Guest Worker Program

In a confirmation hearing held earlier this year, U.S. Senator Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah, called the Optional Practical Training program, which allows international students on F-1 visas to temporarily stay in the U.S. to work after graduation, “the single largest guest-worker program.”

It was not a superlative. According to Lee, OPT “bypass[es] the traditional limitations, the traditional rules, that would otherwise apply by operation of law on other visas like H-1B in the United States.”

Lee’s interlocutor, the now-confirmed director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Joseph Edlow, agreed that postcompletion OPT has been a problem and suggested he would want to end it: “What I want to see would be essentially a regulatory and subregulatory program that would allow us to remove the ability for employment authorizations for F-1 students beyond the time that they are in school.”

Edlow and Lee are not alone in their criticism of OPT. Unlike H-1B visas, which have a statutory cap on the number available each year, F-1 student visas, and thus OPT participation, have no such limit.

Consequently, critics argue, OPT, which allows students to work for up to one year after graduating—and to extend their work authorization period for an additional two years if they studied a STEM subject—represents an increasingly exploitable back door to the U.S. labor market that is contrary to its original intent.

Legally speaking, OPT is not a guest-worker program; it is a benefit of F-1 student status. The State Department lists 11 visa categories for temporary employment. The H-1B visa is one of them; the F-1 student visa is not.

For OPT’s critics, the “guest worker” label is a pejorative. But even though F-1 status is not a temporary employment visa and OPT is not a guest-worker program, they do contain elements that arguably make them exemplary of what a model temporary employment program could aspire to be.

Consider the following.

Vetting

International students are among the most vetted groups of entrants to the United States. They must undergo multiple layers of academic, financial and personal scrutiny before they are even issued an F-1 visa.

In order to be accepted by a U.S. college, students need to show proof of ability and achievement by submitting academic transcripts from their home institutions. Because different countries have different educational systems, colleges use credential evaluators—whether in-house or through a third-party service—who perform the due diligence to ensure comparative curricular legitimacy.

Students must be proficient in English. Colleges set a minimum qualifying score from an established language-testing service. And when students arrive on campus, they often have to take an additional English exam for good measure. For students who don’t score high enough, colleges can offer remedial language classes to help strengthen communication skills.

Students must also have proper and sufficient finances. After they are accepted into their academic programs, students must show proof of funding to cover one full year of academic study (including tuition, fees and costs of living for themselves and any family dependents) in order to be issued a Form I-20. It is largely the purview of the university’s international advisers to review and authenticate students’ financial documents before the visa interview. Bank account statements, affidavits of support, assistantship letters, scholarship awards, currency conversions—advisers must scrutinize it all before they can create a student’s I-20. And that’s before consular officers review it all again during the visa interview.

User Fees

International students also pay fees. Lots of fees. Many Americans might be surprised to learn that the government agencies tasked with administering international student processes (i.e., the Student and Exchange Visitor Program and the USCIS) are funded largely through user fees, not by taxpayers.

Every student who studies in the United States is first entered into the Student Exchange and Visitor Information System. SEVIS is essentially an online database of students’ biographical, academic and employment information. It is the system from which a student’s primary immigration document, the Form I-20, is created. After a student is issued their initial I-20, they must pay the government a $350 I-901 SEVIS fee. The student will then use their new I-20 to apply for their F-1 student visa, for which there is a $185 application fee.

With the recent passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, students now have an additional $250 visa integrity fee and a $24 Form I-94 fee.

Upon graduation, students who wish to apply for OPT and then later the OPT STEM extension must pay a $470 fee to USCIS for each application. USCIS has begun offering premium processing for OPT applications to expedite the adjudication process—for an additional $1,685.

Because colleges’ international offices can continue to advise students and maintain their SEVIS records up to three years after they’ve graduated, more and more colleges are also adding their own administrative fees, upward of $350, for students participating in postcompletion OPT and the OPT STEM extension.

These fees are the responsibility of the student, unlike, say, the H-1B application, the fees for which are shouldered by the sponsoring employer. Nor are these fees reimbursed or refunded in the event of denial by USCIS or cancellation by the student.

Investment

Let’s not forget that international students still must pay for their education. And they are frequently charged the full tuition sticker price. What other guest-worker program involves the participants paying tens of thousands—hundreds of thousands—of dollars of their own money into the local economy for one, two, three, four, five years before they are even eligible to apply for work authorization?

International students studying in the United States in 2023–24 contributed $43.8 billion to the U.S. economy and supported 378,175 jobs, according to the most recent report by NAFSA: Association of International Educators. But it’s not just their money; students also invest significant time in their communities. They eat, shop and worship locally, establishing meaningful connections to place.

Students live where they study for years, and often work locally, too. Though there are some exemptions during the first years of study, international students are still subject to federal, state and municipal income taxes, along with state and local sales taxes. The jobs performed by STEM students on OPT can be higher-earning positions that in turn contribute higher taxes.

Oversight

Perhaps most compelling is the level of institutional and administrative oversight F-1 students receive compared to those on other visa statuses. Key to this are Designated School Officials (DSOs) who are charged with monitoring students’ F-1 status and advising and generally supporting these students from the day they are admitted to long after they graduate.

Any college that hosts an F-1 international student must have a DSO on staff; larger institutions have more. Usually they are the advisers in the college’s international office. DSOs update and maintain students’ SEVIS records, uphold the integrity of the system and comply with federal regulations, especially those governing on- and off-campus and pre- and postgraduate employment authorization.

DSOs are a unique component of the U.S. visa system. No other visa status incorporates what is essentially a long-term case manager tasked with providing professional and personalized regulatory guidance to ensure the visa holder maintains proper legal status while studying and working.

Is OPT a guest-worker program? Certainly not. But it could very well be a missed opportunity. Instead of threatening to end the program, policymakers from either side would do well to learn from it.