Business lobbies in Washington are alarmed because President Donald Trump’s deputies are narrowing the huge pipeline of migrant workers who arrive via student visas and U.S. colleges.
“This is going to be devastating for retaining top STEM talent in critical fields,” advocate Sam Peak claimed on August 21 as he tried to defend President George W. Bush’s “Optional Practical Training” (OPT) program for foreign graduates. “Eliminating OPT means getting rid of a critical bridge that helps the U.S. retain top global talent,” he said.
“The Trump admin is considering a $100k fee … which would essentially end the program,” claimed Jeremy Neufeld, the director of Immigration Policy at the Institute for Progress.
The OPT program was created by President George W. Bush’s deputies and has been ignored by Congress since then. During that time, the program has put millions of foreign graduates from U.S. colleges — mostly Indians — into career-starting U.S. jobs needed by U.S. graduates. The huge inflow also helps foreign managers at U.S. companies create ethnic hiring networks that exclude Americans, regardless of anti-discrimination laws.
Almost 500,000 Americans earned bachelor’s degrees in science, computers, technology, engineering, or math in 2024.
But in 2024, 640,000 foreign graduates held work permits via the OPT program — and the similar Curricular Practical Training (CPT) program — after they paid tuition fees to U.S. colleges and universities.
The work permits provide up to five years of work time to foreign graduates through a wide variety of college courses.
One result of that huge inflow — alongside other visa programs — is that roughly 20 percent of U.S. STEM jobs are now held by migrants — and two-thirds of U.S. STEM graduates work in non-STEM jobs.
This legalized inflow has cut salaries and deeply damaged professionalism and innovation in the U.S. tech sectors.
The decades-long inflow has also put many Chinese and Indian managers into crucial jobs — just as Congress grapples with the onrush of Artificial Intelligence, hacker threats, and privacy concerns.
Many of Trump’s deputies and allies recognize the problems.
In May 2025, Joe Edlow, who was nominated by President Donald Trump to run the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency (USCIS), told his Senate hearing:
I think the way in which OPT has been handled over the past four years … have been a real problem in terms of misapplication of the law … What I want to see would be essentially a regulatory and sub-regulatory program that would allow us to remove the ability for employment authorizations for F-1 [foreign] students beyond the time that they are in school.
Trump’s officials are drafting changes to the programs.
On July 30, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump’s deputies were considering charging a $100,000 fee for foreign graduates seeking to use the OPT program as a pathway to citizenship.
On August 24, the Department of Homeland Security posted an Edlow guidance document directing university officials to deny CPT work permits to foreign graduates seeking jobs outside their college course, so excluding basic jobs such as retail, hotel cleaning, or food delivery.
“CPT students should have access to practical training managed by an employer who has entered into a cooperative agreement with a school where it is agreed the employer will sponsor the school’s students for specific training,” the guidance said, adding: “Failure to comply with [DHS] regulations may result in an institution losing certification to enroll foreign students.”
Some U.S. colleges are already backing away from the CPT program.
Officials also seem to have tightened enforcement of requests for OPT work permits.
Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the Justice Department’s civil rights division, is also investigating discrimination against Americans in the sector. “We’re working together with EEOC and the Department of Labor to put a stop to this discrimination and make sure there’s a level playing field for the American worker,” she told streamer Sara Gonzales on September 2.
“We have absolutely ramped this up big time, and it’s our main focus,” Dhillon said.
The Labor Pipeline
The CPT curbs come amid widespread reports that Indian employers exploit the CPT and OPT work permits to legally fill lower-tier jobs in the United States, such as retail clerks, delivery drivers, and hotel staff.
For example, an Indian-run company, Guru Education, recruits Indian migrants for hotel jobs with offers to help “obtain useful work experience in the US” via the CPT and the OPT work-permit programs.
Guru’s website claims to offer “paid internships” and free accommodation. It claims to work with several universities that offer CPT work permits on the first day of enrollment, and with franchise hotels operating under several brands, such as Marriott International, Oyo Hotels, Hilton, Red Roof, and Choice Hotels.
“Our established ties with top universities and trusted hotels/motels ensure matched opportunities and support,” the site says. “We offer free accommodation and meals through our exclusive work-study partnerships with hotels and motels in the USA.”
The group also claims to work with computer tech companies and healthcare companies. The Guru Healthcare site declares: “On-Demand Outsourcing BPO [Business Process Outsourcing] Services for Healthcare Providers With 24/7 Coverage! Save up to 80% on staffing costs!”
The Guru company does not appear in the DHS list of top 200 CPT employers. Guru’s staff is mostly Indian.
Guru’s founder is Indian immigrant Dev Karlekar. He says he is also chairman of the “hospitality education and professional development committee” at the Indian-dominated Asian American Hotel Owners Association. “AAHOA Members own 60% of all hotels in the United States,” the association’s site claims. Karlekar is also a partner with a small woman-owned company that imports H-1B workers.
Karlekar did not respond to messages from Breitbart News.
The Guru business seems to comply with federal regulations, but may be forced to reorganize because of the new curbs on the CPT program.
The AAHOA denied any impropriety:
The claims circulating online that Indian American hotel owners are engaged in illegal labor practices are false, inflammatory, and misaligned with the facts. Our members operate within the law and comply with federal hiring regulations.
AAHOA advocates for legal workforce solutions that support the industry, and we do not comment on speculation or narratives designed to target business owners based on ethnicity. We have nothing further at this time.
In addition, many OPT and CPT workers work alongside the hundreds of thousands of Indian migrants who entered the United States with legal B1/B2 tourist and business-visitor visas during Joe Biden’s presidency, trafficking expert Jay Palmer told Breitbart News.
“Indian bosses have developed a modern form of peonage that strips away human dignity,” he said as he provided Breitbart News with a draft legal allegation of peonage by several named Indian migrants who used B1/B-2 visas to smuggle themselves through the airports before illegally taking jobs.
The documents said:
7. Plaintiffs entering on B-1/B-2 visas were provided with invitation or “welcome” letters and instructed to present themselves as visitors during visa interviews.
8. Families of these individuals were paid fees of approximately $10,000 in India in exchange for securing entry into the United States.
9. Upon arrival, Plaintiffs were required to work in [businesses] owned or controlled by Defendants, despite the fact that B-1/B-2 visas do not authorize employment.
10. Plaintiffs were informed that they must work to repay the recruitment fees, placing them in conditions of debt bondage.
11. Plaintiffs worked long hours, were paid at or below minimum wage, and were subjected to threats, intimidation, and harassment.
12. Housing was overcrowded and, in some cases, consisted of hotel rooms or portable structures located behind convenience stores. Some of these structures lacked bathroom facilities.
13. In at least two instances, Plaintiffs’ passports were confiscated when they attempted to leave or resist the working conditions
The Indian plaintiffs “were required to work in the Defendants’ business to repay loans to their parents (in India), F1 [visa] fees, apply for fraudulent aid and student loans, and cover other debts,” Palmer said, adding:
Plaintiffs were threatened, had passports confiscated, and faced threats of deportation and other heinous actions. Furthermore, their families in India were physically threatened if they did not honor their peonage debt.
Peonage is an old term for debt bondage, and was common in the post-slavery southern states until the Supreme Court intervened in 1942. “It smelled of slavery,” the New York Times reported in 1942, adding, “The court’s decision should help strike down not only this form of peonage but other forms wherever found.”
“A debt in India became forced labor in America,” Palmer told Breitbart News.
White Collar Jobs
Many CPT and OPT recipients are hired for entry-level, career-starting white-collar jobs at major tech firms and banks, including Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Goldman Sachs.
Most remain stuck in subcontracting firms, where many are treated badly because they are desperate to avoid being sent home.
But many mixed-skill migrants also get hired into the Fortune 500 jobs sought by American graduates. For example, Indian national Madhur Mehta graduated from Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology Allahabad before graduating from the University of Texas at Dallas in 2023. He used an OPT work permit and recruiters to win approval for a job at Amazon in 2025 amid intense competition from American applicants.
Amazon’s managers then quickly sponsored him — plus 4,643 others — for an H-1B visa, opening up the pathway for him to a green card and permanent residence. “After five years in the US, I’ve achieved a lot, including landing a program manager role at Amazon,” he told Business Insider in August.
Mehta also offers free advice to job seekers.
“If you know someone at Amazon, consider reaching out for a referral,” Mehta wrote on his page. “Look for people working in the team or org and build genuine connections.”
“referred candidates are 15x more likely to be hired than applicants from job boards,” Mehta wrote in an article about job-seeking.
Indian migrants are willing to pay for job referrals and visa-related documents.
“That is the [foreign worker] pipeline in tech,” responded Nick Plumb, a former senior manager at Amazon. He told Breitbart News:
University recruiters early on connect with folks in OPT, get them in the door, leading to [job] placements. The referral network is a real thing. [In a prior job] on my team of five people, I had two guys that grew up together in India that were hired together. That doesn’t happen without referrals. Like it’s statistically impossible … that’s nepotism.
The ethnic hiring by Indian managers is intended to maximize their social clout, dubbed “Izzat” in India’s Hindi language, said Plumb. “The more of an empire you can build, the more opportunity you can create for the [Indian] diaspora … the more important and powerful you are,” he told Breitbart News, adding, “Maybe there’s money [involved], but I hadn’t seen anything in my time.”
Non-merit factors determine many job offers, Plumb said:
[Mehta is] at the very bottom of his org chart [in a] non-technical job. Anybody with a 115 IQ could do this job; any college grad with a liberal arts degree could do this job.
…
The way you get this job is you get noticed by a recruiter whether through referral or by happenstance, and if you’re referred, you’re generally being referred to a friendly hiring team, right? A hiring team that you may know, a hiring team that may be the person that referred you.
The skewed job market ensures that many skilled Americans are sidelined into lower-wage and lower-status jobs. For example, one American job seeker – Jedediah Seaman — added a post to Mehta’s LinkedIn page where Mehta advises job seekers to find a personal connection at hiring companies.
Almost all [job] postings I’ve applied to haven’t had any kind of contact [listed], and most of them were through the company website. They are all managed through 3rd-party software, so even confirmation emails for submissions are a “do not reply” email. I’ve even gotten rejection emails that are lineked to the software and not a person, so I couldn’t even get feedback. I have even gone in-person to companies to request a contact; most didn’t know how I could contact HR or Recruiting, and even the ones that did provide a HR or recruiting have never responded to me. Even contacting someone seems to be a hurdle within itself.
Meanwhile, Indian OPT and CPTs are flowing into many more jobs, such as healthcare and teaching, as AI threatens to sharply reduce job opportunities for young Americans.
Lobbyists
The OPT and CPT programs are strongly backed by major investors, many of whom have a direct phone line to President Donald Trump’s ear.
That backing is spilling into the open: “The $100,000 OPT fee is a bad idea,” said Adam Ozimek, another pro-migration economist who works for pro-migration investors at the pro-migration Economic Innovation Group. “It will make our high-skilled immigration system worse, not better.”
“We’re messing with the engine that makes our country run,” pro-migration author Noah Smith claimed in May. Foreign students ‘are crucial for American innovation and technological strength.”
“419,000 people currently work on OPT,” said the United Hindu Council, based in Fremont, California. “This fee would effectively end the program overnight,” the August 22 post said.
Lobbyists for the OPT program describe it as a way for CEO to hire the best and brightest from around the world, and a way to expand the economy. They are also quick to show any companies that succeed on Wall Street where one of the founders was an OPT graduate, and to claim the program creates jobs for Americans.
But they do not show the flip side of success — the myriad skilled Americans who are pushed to the side before they can build the experience and connections to launch the next big company. Nor can they show that the imported H-1Bs are more productive than the sidelined Americans.
Under pressure from Trump’s deputies, program supporters are suddenly admitting problems they ignored as millions of Americans lost jobs and careers.
“OPT has legitimate problems, and reform is needed,” said an August 24 article at the investor-backed City Journal:
First, many OPT participants are exempt from Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) taxes, relieving both them and their employers from Social Security and Medicare contributions. To the extent employers can’t pass the employer-side FICA contribution onto workers in the form of lower salaries, the FICA exemption creates an incentive to hire foreign workers over Americans.
Second, OPT gives schools bad incentives because it empowers them to grant work authorization. “Visa mills” offer low-quality programs and enroll students who really want access to the labor market rather than educational opportunities, charging them a pretty penny in the process.
Most concerning are so-called Day 1 CPT programs that offer students work authorization immediately on enrollment, often without strong attendance policies and offering largely online coursework.
“Outright fraud in the program needs to be addressed,” the article admitted.
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