ET
Posted by: Sexy In Sari July 30, 2026
Login in to Rate this Post:
0 
? 
?
DHS is also preparing broader changes to the OPT program, possibly as early as fall 2026.
The U.S. government is reportedly considering a $100,000 fee for international students who want to work through OPT after graduation.
U.S. Weighs $100,000 Fee for Foreign Students Wanting to Work After Graduation
Proposed policy would particularly affect Silicon Valley, Wall Street and universities
ET
WASHINGTON—The Trump administration is considering attaching a $100,000 price tag on international students’ ability to work in the U.S. after they graduate from an American university, according to people familiar with the matter, a move that would make it much less attractive for foreigners to study in the U.S.
If enacted, the fee would significantly advance President Trump’s efforts to restrict nearly all forms of legal immigration. It would particularly harm universities, which rely on recruiting international students as a reliable source of revenue, as well as top Silicon Valley and Wall Street firms, which disproportionately hire international college graduates to fill technical roles.
The fee would be attached to a program called optional practical training, or OPT, which allows international university graduates to work for one to three years on their student visas. There were roughly 419,000 foreigners working on OPT in 2024, the latest year that data are available.
The move, in essence, accomplishes the goal originally set out by the administration’s $100,000 levy on H-1B visas for foreign professionals, which caused a panic in Silicon Valley last year. The government was blocked from collecting the H-1B fee by an appeals court in Boston last week.
Though officials originally intended that fee to apply to all H-1B visas, widespread opposition from tech giants led the administration to narrow it to foreign recruits seeking to come to America. Broadly speaking, foreigners moving to the U.S. directly on H-1B visas tend to be recruited by IT and accounting firms, while the top companies in tech and finance generally prefer to recruit from top American universities and convert their employees from student visas to H-1Bs several years into employing them. In that way, the new fee on OPT would more directly target these firms.
A DHS spokeswoman said in a statement: “No policies should be considered final until formally announced. At DHS we are always having conversations about how to use all tools in our arsenal to protect the integrity of our legal immigration system.”
The $100,000 fee is becoming a frequent tool used by Trump immigration officials, who have developed several policy proposals to block foreigners of limited financial means from coming to the U.S. In addition to the H-1B and student visas, officials at the State Department are also weighing attaching a $100,000 bond on applicants for green cards outside the U.S., redeemable only after they move to the U.S. and become citizens.
The latest fee is still under discussion at the Department of Homeland Security, the people said, and it wasn’t clear whether the White House would sign off on it. It also wasn’t clear who would be on the hook to pay the fee: international students themselves or their prospective employers.
It likely would be attached to a new requirement the Trump administration announced earlier this month that requires international students to apply for an extension on their visas to use their OPT. Until now, student visas automatically remained valid for the duration of a student’s educational program, plus up to three additional years of work authorization.
DHS is also working on a broader regulation to rewrite the rules of OPT. It is expected to be released as soon as this fall.
The OPT program is one of the primary attractions for international students choosing to study in the U.S. Advocates contend that, without OPT, most international students would be forced to leave the country immediately after graduation, pushing them to take the skills they gained at American universities to foreign markets.
Immigration restrictionists have long wanted to target the OPT program. They argue it allows companies to hire foreign students directly after graduation without any regulations to ensure they aren’t being paid less than American-born graduates.
Under the first Trump administration, top immigration officials including Stephen Miller argued for abolishing a program known as STEM OPT, which grants three years of work authorization to graduates with math or science degrees. They were overruled by more business-minded members of the administration, including Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.