The Department of Homeland Security has proposed charging schools $70,000 each time an international student first receives Optional Practical Training, and $30,000 for every later OPT period, including the 24-month STEM extension. The rule, scheduled for formal publication in the Federal Register on Thursday, Oct. 8, would be the steepest financial barrier ever placed on the main pathway foreign graduates use to work in the United States, and it puts colleges, not students, on the hook for the bill.
That last detail is what sets this proposal apart from the long line of immigration fees before it. For more than three decades, OPT has been something a student applied for and a school signed off on. Under the new plan, the signature itself carries the cost. A designated school official could not enter an OPT recommendation in SEVIS, the federal database that tracks F-1 students, until the institution has paid. No recommendation means no work permit application. In practice, the international student office becomes the point where the program can be shut off.
Why this matters now
The timing matters as much as the number. OPT has quietly become one of the largest temporary work channels in the country. DHS’s own figures show 194,554 F-1 students in pre- or post-completion OPT in 2024, plus 165,524 on the STEM extension. Taken together, that is roughly 360,000 people, more than four times the 85,000 new H-1B visas available under the annual cap (65,000 regular slots plus 20,000 reserved for U.S. master’s graduates). The Institute of International Education’s Open Doors report counted about 243,000 OPT participants in the 2023-24 academic year, a record and a jump of more than 20 percent from the year before, out of roughly 1.13 million international students overall.
Those numbers explain both sides of the argument. Supporters see a pipeline that keeps American-trained engineers, data scientists and researchers working here instead of for competitors abroad. Skeptics see a work program that has grown larger than the visa category Congress actually designed for skilled foreign workers, with almost no cap and no prevailing-wage rules.
The proposal also comes as the administration is fighting on several related fronts. A federal judge in California vacated the $100,000 H-1B fee policies on Sept. 30, as Immigration Analytics reported. DHS is separately appealing an order blocking its rule to replace “duration of status” with fixed admission periods for F-1 and J-1 students, which we covered last week. Read together, these moves amount to a coordinated effort to tighten every stage of the student-to-worker path: how long students may stay, how they move into work, and how they move from OPT into H-1B status.
How the fee would work
The structure is simple, and the arithmetic adds up quickly:
- First OPT authorization of any type (pre-completion, post-completion or otherwise): $70,000, paid by the school.
- Any later OPT period, including the STEM extension: $30,000, also paid by the school.
- Timing: Payment comes before the school official can enter the recommendation in SEVIS.
- Where the money goes: The Treasury’s general fund as miscellaneous receipts. ICE’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program would not keep it.
- Refunds: Available only if the student never receives an employment authorization document.
- Effective date: The fees would apply only to recommendations dated on or after the final rule takes effect, 60 days after the final rule is published.
Take a midsize university that recommends 500 graduates for post-completion OPT in a year. It would owe $35 million before any of them could file. If half of those students later qualified for the STEM extension, the school would owe another $7.5 million. Very few institutions outside the wealthiest research universities could absorb costs like that, and DHS acknowledges that 56 percent of SEVP-certified schools are small entities. The proposal does not exempt them.
What DHS is trying to accomplish
The agency is unusually direct about its motives. The proposal describes OPT as having become an informal, open-ended employment benefit that is often only loosely tied to what students studied. It says the program has let students sidestep the H-1B cap and its fees, and it points to more than 10,000 students linked to what it calls highly suspect employers, including shell companies and worksites that do not appear to exist. DHS goes further and warns that without new fees it may be unable to run OPT in line with its anti-fraud priorities and could end the program altogether.
That warning should be read carefully. OPT exists only in regulation, not in statute, so DHS can in principle propose rescinding it through the same notice-and-comment process now underway. Raising that possibility in the preamble frames the fee as a middle option rather than the most aggressive one available.
Restrictionist groups such as the Center for Immigration Studies have long argued that OPT works as a guest worker program presented as education, and much of the rule’s reasoning follows that critique. University leaders and many employers see it very differently. NAFSA chief executive Fanta Aw warned that pushing international students away would damage American innovation, according to the Associated Press. NAFSA has previously estimated that international students contribute more than $40 billion a year to the U.S. economy, a figure that relies heavily on enrollment that OPT eligibility helps attract.
Who actually pays
DHS concedes the central point: schools may pass the cost to F-1 students, to all students, or to employers. Each choice has its own consequences, and each will likely be tested in comments.
Charging F-1 students directly would put OPT beyond the reach of nearly everyone except the very wealthy. A $70,000 charge is more than a full year of out-of-state tuition at most public universities. For a student earning a one-year master’s degree, it could nearly double the cost of the credential.
Spreading the cost across all students would mean domestic families helping to pay for foreign graduates’ work authorization, a result that is likely to draw objections from across the political spectrum, from people who object to subsidizing foreign workers and from people who object to higher tuition.
Shifting the cost to employers would make hiring an OPT graduate more expensive than sponsoring many H-1B petitions under the regular fee schedule. That may well be the intended effect, since it would remove much of the cost advantage DHS says encourages employers to use OPT instead of the H-1B system. It would also put university career offices in the uncomfortable position of collecting fees from employers.
There is a fourth outcome the rule doesn’t name: schools that simply stop recommending OPT, or limit it to a handful of programs. For smaller colleges that recruit internationally by promising post-graduation work experience, that could change the economics of enrollment altogether.
The legal fight ahead
OPT’s legality has been challenged before. In Washington Alliance of Technology Workers v. DHS, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld the program in 2022, and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case in 2023. The new rule relies heavily on that decision, which suggests DHS is presenting the fee as regulation of a program the courts have accepted, not as an attack on the program’s existence.
The weaker point is likely the fee itself. DHS relies on its general authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act to set conditions for nonimmigrant admission, not on the user-fee statutes that usually allow agencies to recover the cost of providing a service. A $70,000 charge with no stated connection to processing costs, paid into the general Treasury, invites a familiar argument: that the agency is imposing a tax, which only Congress can do. Challengers will cite the recent H-1B fee ruling, but the comparison only goes so far. That fee came through presidential proclamation, while this one is going through formal rulemaking, which gives DHS a more defensible record. Courts may also ask whether the fee is a reasonable response to the fraud evidence DHS cites or a disproportionate one, the kind of question the Administrative Procedure Act requires an agency to answer with evidence.
Universities will not need to look far for a reason to sue. Because the rule makes schools the payers, they would be directly regulated parties, which makes standing much easier to establish. They have also moved quickly before. In July 2020, Harvard and MIT sued over ICE guidance barring international students in fully online programs from remaining in the country, and the government withdrew the policy within days.
What to watch
Several issues remain unresolved and are likely to be argued in comments:
- Refund gaps. A refund is available only if no work permit was issued. The proposal does not address a student who receives the card and then loses the job offer, or one whose employer withdraws before the start date.
- Curricular Practical Training. CPT is not covered, but DHS says fraud has historically been common in that program and that it will be monitoring it. Schools that rely heavily on CPT, especially those with “day-one CPT” models, should read that as a warning.
- The comment period. The rule sets 30 days for comments on its substance and 60 days for its paperwork provisions. Some early press accounts reported a single 60-day window. Comments on docket ICEB-2026-0100 on the rule itself would close in early November.
Questions readers may have
Does the $70,000 OPT fee apply now?
No. This is a proposed rule. It would take effect only after DHS reviews comments, publishes a final rule, and a 60-day waiting period passes. Courts could block it before or after that point.
Who pays the OPT fee, the student or the school?
Under the proposal, the school pays DHS. However, the rule explicitly allows schools to pass the cost on to international students, to all students, or to employers, so students could end up bearing it indirectly.
Does the fee apply to the STEM OPT extension?
Yes. Any OPT period after the first, including the 24-month STEM extension, would cost $30,000.
Is this the same as the $100,000 H-1B fee?
No. It is a separate charge on a separate program, created through a different legal process. A federal court vacated the H-1B fee policies on Sept. 30, 2026, but that decision does not directly control this rule.
Is CPT affected?
Not under this proposal, though DHS has said it will be watching CPT closely.
What should students graduating in spring 2027 do?
The trigger is the date of the school’s OPT recommendation, not the date of graduation. Post-completion OPT applications can generally be filed up to 90 days before a program ends, so students should talk to their designated school official early about timing. Students already on post-completion OPT who expect to need a STEM extension should follow the final rule closely, because a recommendation dated after the effective date would be subject to the $30,000 fee.
Can the public comment?
Yes. Anyone can submit comments on Regulations.gov under docket ICEB-2026-0100. DHS is legally required to consider and respond to significant comments before finalizing the rule.
The bottom line
For students, the immediate message is that nothing has changed yet, but timing may matter a great deal in 2027. For employers that depend on OPT and STEM OPT hires, it makes sense to start planning for the possibility that schools will ask them to share the cost. Universities face the hardest decisions first: working out which cost-sharing option they could accept, and deciding whether to comment on their own or through associations before the deadline.
The broader question is one Congress has avoided for years. OPT grew into one of the country’s largest skilled-worker channels without lawmakers ever voting to create it. DHS is now proposing to sharply limit it through a fee, in the same way the program was built through regulation. Whatever happens with this rule in court, the underlying debate over how many foreign graduates the United States should keep, and on what terms, is unlikely to be settled until Congress addresses it.
Sources: DHS proposed rule, “Optional Practical Training Fees,” Federal Register document 2026-20660 (public inspection copy); Federal Register public inspection listing; Associated Press; Center for Immigration Studies; Institute of International Education, Open Doors 2024.
This article is for general information and is not legal advice. The situation is changing quickly, so please consult an immigration attorney about your specific case.
About the Author
Discover more from Immigration Analytics
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
