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Home – Border & Immigration News – MAGA Losing Patience With Visa Program That Incentivizes Hiring of Foreign Students

MAGA Losing Patience With Visa Program That Incentivizes Hiring of Foreign Students

Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell

Some Republicans and immigration hawks are demanding that the Trump administration finally end a visa program that incentivizes employers to hire foreign students.

The Optional Practical Training program, created in 1992, allows foreign students to remain in the United States to work for nearly four years after graduation. Employers receive a tax break for hiring foreign graduates under the program, which some say gives foreign nationals an advantage over U.S. citizens. 

“F” student visa holders, including OPT graduates, are considered nonresident aliens for their first five calendar years in America. For those years, their wages are exempt from Social Security and Medicare taxes—for both the employee and the employer.

While the Department of Homeland Security has the authority to end the program by issuing a new rule, President Donald Trump’s administration has not publicly begun the rulemaking process, leading some conservative members of Congress to propose their own bills to end the program. Immigration hawks have supported the administration’s tough border policies but believe the OPT program should be a major priority as well. 

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the conservative Center for Immigration Studies, thinks Trump has the philosophy of “legal good, illegal bad,” which conflicts with some Republicans who want to limit legal immigration. 

“He isn’t where the next generation of Republican policymakers are, like JD, like Sen. Schmitt, like Brandon Gill in the House, who are actual restrictionists, and acknowledge that numbers themselves are too high. It’s not just a problem of illegal immigration,” he........

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