For too long, Washington has allowed a massive, unauthorized foreign guest-worker pipeline to operate outside the law, undercut American students, and expose our nation to significant economic and national-security risks. It’s called Optional Practical Training (OPT), an Immigration and Customs Enforcement program created by bureaucratic fiat in 1992 and radically expanded by the Obama administration.
And Congress never authorized a word of it.
That is why it is time—past time—for Congress to pass my legislation, H.R. 2315, the Fairness for High-Skilled Americans Act, and finally shut this program down.
Optional Practical Training was designed to allow foreign students with F-1 visas to remain in the United States after completing their studies. But instead of a short transition period, the program has ballooned into a sprawling, de facto guest-worker system allowing foreign nationals—many of whom studied here for only a single year—to stay and work in STEM fields for up to three years. It now serves as a shadow substitute for the H-1B visa program, circumventing the very caps Congress put in place to protect American workers.
Advocates claim OPT fills workforce gaps. In reality, it helps create them. Employers are heavily incentivized to hire OPT workers because those workers are exempt from FICA and Medicare payroll taxes, generating a government-subsidized discount for Big Tech and Big Pharma.
According to independent analyses, this loophole costs the Social Security and Medicare trust funds roughly $4 billion every year. Meanwhile, American STEM graduates—who worked hard, paid taxes, and played by the rules—are pushed to the back of the hiring line.
The numbers tell the story. In 2024 alone, ICE authorized work permits for nearly 200,000 OPT participants, a 21% jump from the previous year, with tens of thousands more through the STEM extension.
The beneficiaries overwhelmingly come from countries like China and India—nations whose strategic interests do not always align with our own. And the federal government lacks even basic visibility into how many foreign graduates are actually working in sensitive American industries at any given moment. ICE itself has admitted its recordkeeping is inadequate.
This isn’t just an economic issue—it’s a national security one. A 2022 Government Accountability Office report warned that ICE has not evaluated OPT’s vulnerability to espionage or foreign interference. Yet the Department of Homeland Security continues expanding the list of OPT-eligible STEM fields to include artificial intelligence, telecommunications, semiconductor engineering, nuclear engineering, missile systems, reproductive biology, and critical infrastructure management—sectors our adversaries are actively targeting.
Why would we invite foreign students from strategic competitors to work inside America’s most sensitive research, technology, and defense sectors—often without meaningful oversight? Why would we maintain an unregulated guest-worker pipeline that Congress never approved? And why would we subsidize it with taxpayer dollars?
The answer is simple: We shouldn’t.
Small businesses in my great state of Arizona and all across the country—the backbone of the American economy—are the ones most harmed by this dysfunctional system. They cannot compete with multibillion-dollar corporations that reap tax advantages for hiring cheaper foreign labor.
Meanwhile, American graduates, especially in STEM fields, face an uphill battle securing good-paying jobs in industries their own tax dollars helped build.
The solution is equally simple: terminate OPT. Because the program was created unilaterally by the executive branch, it can be ended with the stroke of a pen. But to ensure it stays gone—and to prevent future administrations from resurrecting similar schemes—Congress must act.
The Fairness for High-Skilled Americans Act permanently ends the OPT program and prohibits any future administration from recreating it without explicit authorization from Congress. It restores congressional authority over immigration policy, protects American workers, strengthens national security, and closes a tax loophole that drains billions from Social Security and Medicare.
President Donald Trump is fighting to restore the America First priorities that put our families, students, and workers first. Congress must do the same. The American people have been clear: They want an immigration system that serves them—not Big Tech, not multinational corporations, and not foreign adversaries.
It is time to end the largest unregulated guest-worker program in the country. It is time to protect American students and safeguard our critical industries. And it is time to pass H.R. 2315.
America’s future—and the security of its workforce—depends on it.
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