It’s taking up to five months for foreign college and university students to obtain “Optional Practical Training” work permits, leading to reported loss of internship opportunities.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration said this week that a “surge” in requests for the OPT — widely used as a pathway to the controversial H-1B visa — has created a backlog and delays to the standard 90-day processing time. Wait times are running from four weeks to five months, the agency said.
The OPT permit gives foreign students and recent graduates of U.S. schools up to three years to stay in the U.S. and work. As the administration of President Donald Trump cracks down on the H-1B over reported abuses, the OPT has come under fire from Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar, who plans to introduce a bill to kill the program.
Delayed OPT application processing is reportedly causing problems for students at a number of schools.
“Students have written petitions and panicked letters to leaders of some of the top universities in the country as their internship start dates have come and gone with no word from the federal government,” the New York Times reported.
“Recent graduates of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism are pushing back start dates for internships and relying on their parents for day-to-day expenses. Students at Princeton have had job offers rescinded, and have been forced to return home for the summer. At Dartmouth College, students reported losing money they spent for housing and flights to live and work in other states. At Yale, students scrambled to enroll in a newly created course that would allow the university to approve their summer employment.”
Processing delays have become an issue because students can only apply for OPT work authorization 90 days before a job is scheduled to start. “The backlog has made it nearly impossible for students who applied in February or March — the earliest they could do so — to begin summer jobs on time, if at all,” the Times reported June 16.
Princeton University president Christopher L. Eisgruber and nearly 30 other New Jersey college and university leaders earlier this month wrote to the state’s members of Congress last month, complaining that the OPT delays, visa delays and increased numbers of requests for evidence justifying H-1B visas were harming America’s economy.
“Over the past several years, we have observed a disturbing increase in the number – and length – of impediments put in the path of our international students, faculty, and staff,” the letter said. “Some of our schools have experienced decreases in foreign student enrollment and all of our schools have encountered an increasingly log-jammed immigration system that is impacting our ability to recruit, retain, and bring to our campuses foreign talent.
“As it becomes more difficult for foreign students and academics to study and work in the United States, many of them are turning to other options, weakening not just our individual institutions, but American higher education as a whole, and, by extension, our country’s global competitiveness.”
The letter cited studies saying visa processing times jumped 46 percent over the past two fiscal years, that new enrollments by foreign students at U.S. graduate schools had fallen for the second year in a row, and that enrollment of new international students in U.S. undergraduate programs had fallen 9 percent since the 2015-16 school year.
At Yale University, a student petition concerning the OPT delays led the school to announce it would launch a class in the fall that would allow the school to approve foreign students for U.S. work via the “Curricular Practical Training” program, which authorizes work through agreements between employers and schools, the Yale Daily News reported earlier this month. A Dartmouth petition asks the school to give foreign students access to the CPT program, according to The Dartmouth college newspaper.
A prominent critic of the OPT program, the Center for Immigration Studies, argues that the work permit provides an incentive to companies to hire foreign workers, because OPT holders are considered students for tax purposes, and employers get a tax break of about 8 percent by hiring people without the requirement to pay Social Security and Medicare contributions.
The center’s John Miano said complaints from schools connecting declining enrollment of foreign students to OPT delays points to gaming of the visa system. “If student visas were being used strictly for study, as the law requires, the processing of post-graduation work authorizations would have no effect on foreign student enrollment,” Miano said.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement noted in an emailed statement that the OPT and CPT programs are not interchangeable.
“While both training programs offer practical experience related to an international student’s program of study and must be related to a student’s major course of study, Curricular Practical Training must be an integral part of the student’s established curriculum and not just a single course. For example, a student studying education can use CPT to student-teach in the summer,” ICE said.
“Given the need for CPT to be integral to the curriculum, schools should be cautious when adding a course to enable participation in CPT instead of waiting for OPT approval. The course may not fulfill the requirements for CPT.”
Citizenship and Immigration said it had implemented a plan to address OPT processing delays and would return to standard processing times soon.
Furor over OPT delays comes as four foreign workers are suing the federal government, alleging it is intentionally delaying work permit applications from spouses of H-1B visa holders. The Department of Homeland Security has promised to end work authorization for the estimated 100,000 spouses of H-1B holders, but several times has delayed action. Those spouses, the vast majority of them Indian woman according to University of Tennessee researchers, hold the H-4 visa, which has allowed employment since 2015 for people whose H-1B spouses are on track for green cards.
The Trump administration, pledging to reform the H-1B, has heightened scrutiny of applications and dramatically increased visa denials. Silicon Valley technology companies rely heavily on the H-1B, pushing for an increase to the annual 85,000 cap on new visas. Critics point to reported abuses by outsourcing companies, and argue that those firms, and tech companies, use the visa to supplant Americans and drive down wages.
