President Donald Trump’s deputies are revamping rules for F-1 student visas, amid much evidence that many migrants use the loose rules to take jobs, commit crimes, and engage in political campaigns.
The F-1 student visas have no expiration date, allowing many migrants — especially Indians — to legally enter the United States as students, even when they intend to work for many years.
Many claim to be studying while they are actually working for Indian-run software sweatshops, franchise stores, gas stations, restaurants, trucking firms, hotels, political campaigns, or India-based scammers.
“We have to get back to the language of the immigration statutes, and that is if you’re here to study, you’re here to study,” said Kevin Lynn, founder of USTechWorkers, who opposes the legalized inflow of visa workers. “It is a well-known back door … it is simply illegal, but it’s allowed to happen,” he added.
The draft fix was approved on June 16 by the Office of Management and Budget, which oversees regulatory updates, and will become operational soon.
The lack of an expiration date allows migrants to spend many years in the United States by enrolling in successive education courses that provide work permits or time to conduct political campaigns.
Multiple pro-migration groups have been trying to stop the change, partly because it threatens the revenue of the U.S. colleges that sell legal cover for the economic migration.
The colleges act as paid gatekeepers to the government’s two main work permit programs for roughly 400,000 foreign student-migrants — the Curricular Practical Training and the Optional Practical Training (OPT) programs.
The two work permit programs are a primary on-ramp to the huge H-1B program, which annually provides work permits and a path to citizenship to 110,000 additional mixed-skill college-graduate migrants. The three programs also provide a major avenue for foreign-born managers to hire their own ethnic peers — often with salary kickbacks — instead of hiring qualified American professionals.
The reform also applies to the much-abused J-1 visitor program, which is heavily used by the hotel sector.
“The DHS proposal renewed an effort from the first Trump administration that was opposed by medical organizations and college groups, who said it would disrupt students’ completion of degrees with unnecessary administrative hurdles,” according to the pro-migration reporter at BloombergLaw.com.
“This is the most consequential change to student visas in three decades, and most international students do not yet realize what is coming,” said a May post from a law firm that serves Indian migrants. The post added:
For more than 30 years, F-1 and J-1 students have been admitted for Duration of Status, meaning they could remain in the United States as long as they maintained enrollment and made academic progress. Their Form I-94 carried no fixed end-date. Designated School Officials at universities had authority to extend their stay, approve school transfers, and update SEVIS records when students moved from a bachelor’s program into a master’s or doctoral program. Under the proposed rule, that authority would shift entirely to USCIS. Students whose programs run longer than four years would have to file Form I-539, submit biometrics, pay a filing fee, and prove continued eligibility under tight discretionary standards.
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Under the proposed rule, that flexibility disappears. Undergraduate students would be barred from changing schools or programs during their first academic year. Graduate students would be prohibited from changing programs at all once enrolled. A student who completes a bachelor’s degree and wants to begin a master’s program would still need a new I-20, but the four-year admission clock from the initial entry would not reset automatically. If the combined bachelor’s and master’s timeline exceeds four years, the student must file Form I-539 with USCIS and wait for approval, with no guarantee. School transfers in the first year would be effectively blocked unless SEVP grants an exception.
The post-completion grace period [to get a job] would shrink from 60 days to 30 days, with unlawful presence beginning the day after a [visa] denial.
“The whole thing’s being gained,” said Lynn. “You can expect that the universities will fight it tooth and nail, because they like this large cohort of foreign students coming in and paying full freight … [to get] work permits.”
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