Dem Majority Must Push Trump to Halt Proposed OPT Fee of up to $100K per Student

Further plummeting of international student enrollment will adversely impact the higher education of Americans too.

The Trump administration’s proposal would mandate schools to pay a $70,000 fee for each student they recommend for a one-year OPT, and an additional $30,000 for any subsequent OPT such as the two-year STEM extension.

(Photo: Meghnad Bose/The Quint)

The blue wave in the US midterm elections have been a historic drubbing for President Donald Trump and his politics.

Now, the incoming Democratic majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate will have a lot on their plate — conducting congressional investigations into Trump’s dealings, holding immigration enforcement agencies accountable, doubling down on the Epstein probe, considering potential impeachments, and so much more.

Having lost the Republican majorities in Congress, Trump will also no longer be able to push his legislative agenda through. However, he can stifle legislation passed by the Democrats by exercising the presidential veto power, a fact he has often reminded people of since the results on Tuesday.

This will cause an invariable back-and-forth between the Democrats and Trump, and there will likely be intense negotiations and exchanges. What do Democrats give Trump in return for laws they really want to see enacted receiving presidential assent? For instance, even though it may sound completely cynical, could the Democrats hold off on probing, say, Don Jr. in exchange for Trump significantly reducing the scale of his immigration enforcement operations, especially when it comes to ICE street arrests, apprehensions in communities and workplaces largely of people with no criminal record whatsoever?

Trump has already indicated in interviews since his election rout that he will be willing to work with the Democrats on their priority areas — what is implied is that it will be in exchange for his own conditions being met. 

The Democrats, therefore, will have their chances to pressure Trump on a variety of issues. One of them must be the Trump administration’s continued targeting of international students, which is proving disastrous to universities across the United States, and hurting the country in a variety of ways both in the short term and the long run.

A Disastrous Proposal

Trump’s latest and arguably most dangerous move targeting international students centers around the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program. The program was formalized in 1992 under the George HW Bush administration, and has been around for more than three decades. A new Trump administration proposal could land it an effective death blow.

In October, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security proposed new fees for the OPT program, which allows international students the opportunity to work in the United States after they graduate, while remaining on their student visa, for a period of one to three years.

The regular OPT period is one year, but students completing academic programs that are focused on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) get a two-year OPT extension, making their OPT last for a total of three years.

The Trump administration’s proposal would mandate schools to pay a $70,000 fee for each student they recommend for a one-year OPT, and an additional $30,000 for any subsequent OPT such as the two-year STEM extension.

Colleges and universities will naturally not be in a position to pay up to $100,000 for their students, and even if they find a way to pass on the cost to the students, the additional amount will render the process incredibly and prohibitively expensive, and will vastly limit the number of applicants to universities across the United States since post-graduation employment would become so drastically out of reach.

This would lead to a cataclysmic reduction in international student enrollment at American universities, a far sharper fall than even what has been witnessed in the past couple of years with Trump’s changes to the visa process, and fewer visa appointments and more visa denials.

The economic impact this would have on universities is difficult to understate. Many universities charge higher tuition rates from international students, and the money generated from them makes up a large portion of their operating revenues.

An analysis by NAFSA: Association of International Educators, estimates that in the 2026-27 academic year, as many as 111,000 fewer international students at U.S. colleges and universities will result in up to $3.4 billion in lost revenue and nearly 40,000 fewer jobs. That is the projected impact of a 10% reduction in international student enrolment largely due to Trump’s previous visa changes. The stifling and near-death of the OPT program could result in a far stronger plummeting of enrolment numbers, and consequently, far bigger losses in revenue across the country.

When universities face such sharp losses in revenue, their functioning will be deeply impacted, and will likely result in mass layoffs, and drastic reduction in funding and support for various university programs. The fallout will not be felt by international students alone. The grievous harm that will be caused on numerous institutions of higher education will worsen the state of higher education in the US as a whole, impacting American students everywhere.

The proposed OPT fee, which the Trump administration says is designed to combat fraud and abuse within the program and is meant to supposedly protect American workers, will end up hurting American interests — by financially damaging US universities, stifling one of the biggest sources of attracting global talent, and worsening the state of higher education in the country.

It is a lose-lose approach whose costs will be too high for the country to bear, all for the sake of Trump’s short-sighted, potential political benefit of showing his constituents that he cares for American workers, while actually hurting the economy and thereby their interests.

The move will also hurt Indian students currently in the United States. India is not only the country that sends the highest number of international students to the US, but also, from 2020-2024, was the top country of origin for OPT participants, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service.

A Way Out

To avoid the trainwreck and downstream damages that the implementation of the Trump administration’s OPT fee proposal would cause, the new Democratic majorities in Congress must place the safeguarding of international students and thereby the protecting of American universities high up on their priority list for negotiations with Trump.

The period of the DHS seeking public comments on their proposal ends on November 9. Trump could go ahead with the proposed OPT fee at any time of his choosing. The Democrats must view this as an urgent action item, and bargain with the president if need be to reject this dangerous and disastrous proposal.

In an interview on CBS News following the midterm results, Trump surprised interviewer Ross Douthat by saying that one thing he would like to work on with the Democratic majority was immigration, and that his deportation policy had been “too tough”.

It’s time for the Democrats to get him to walk the talk on it, and to remember to place policies and proposals impacting international students on their agenda while they do so.

They would be protecting not just the futures of international students, but also that of higher education in the United States.