The Department of Homeland Security wants to charge $70,000 the first time an international student is recommended for work authorization in the United States, and $30,000 for every work period after that. The proposed rule, posted Wednesday and published in the Federal Register today, targets Optional Practical Training, the program that lets F-1 students work in their field for one year after their degree, or three years for science and engineering graduates. The current cost of an OPT application is $520.
The fee would be paid by the university, not the student, and would have to be paid before the school could even recommend the student for work authorization. USCIS would be barred from approving an OPT application until the money cleared. DHS estimates the fees would bring in $8.4 billion to $16.5 billion a year and says that without them it may shut the program down entirely. Public comments are open for 30 days. If finalized, the fee would take effect 60 days later.
What OPT Is and What Would Change
OPT has existed in some form since 1947. The school’s international office recommends the student in the SEVIS tracking system, the student files Form I-765 with USCIS, and the resulting work permit is tied to the field of study; the STEM extension covers roughly 500 listed majors. About 194,000 people were on standard OPT and 95,000 on the STEM extension in 2024, with India and China supplying most of them. For employers, OPT is the standard try-out period before sponsoring an H-1B, and for students it is the main reason a U.S. degree is worth paying for.
Under the proposal:
- The first OPT recommendation of any kind, pre-completion or post-completion, costs the school $70,000.
- Every later recommendation, including the STEM extension, costs $30,000. A STEM graduate who uses both periods costs the school $100,000.
- Schools can seek a refund if the student’s application is denied.
The arithmetic is what makes the rule work as a deterrent. A university with 100 graduates going on OPT in a year would owe $7 million before any of them started work, and $10.5 million if half took the STEM extension. The fee is more than a year of out-of-state tuition at most public universities. DHS’s own text says the fee would push schools to recommend only the most promising students.
Why Now, and Why It Will Be Sued
DHS frames the fee as a response to fraud. The rule cites fraud and abuse identified by ICE’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program and describes OPT as a pipeline for cheap foreign labor. The department says the fee would pay for the vetting it needs to run OPT at all.
The timing points elsewhere. The administration imposed a $100,000 fee on new H-1B petitions by proclamation in September 2025; two federal judges have blocked it, most recently on September 30, for skipping the rulemaking process. DHS responded with a $103,265 H-1B fee proposed through formal rulemaking in August. The OPT rule was sent to the White House for review on August 20, one day after the H-1B rule cleared the same review, and the Wall Street Journal had reported in July that the administration was weighing a $100,000 OPT charge. OPT is the pipeline that feeds H-1B; raising the price of both closes the route from a U.S. degree to a U.S. job at each end.
The legal attack is likely to follow the H-1B template, with one difference. The H-1B fee was struck for bypassing notice and comment; this rule goes through it. The challenge would instead be that the fee has no connection to the cost of running the program, that the regulatory analysis is pretextual and that DHS has no statutory authority to charge schools for a benefit the student receives. OPT itself was upheld against a challenge in 2022 by the D.C. Circuit, which found it within DHS’s authority; the question now is whether a fee of this size survives review. Doug Rand, a former senior USCIS official who now runs the Talent Mobility Fund, predicted the rule would fare no better in court than the H-1B fee. Universities, which would carry the bill, are the most likely plaintiffs.
What This Means for Students and Graduates
Nothing is in effect. DHS must review the comments before finalizing, lawsuits would likely delay the rule further, and the earliest realistic effective date is 2027. Current OPT holders keep working, and applications filed now are decided under the $520 fee.
The risk is the recommendation date. The fee attaches to any OPT recommendation entered on or after the effective date, not to the application or the degree. Students graduating in December 2026 or May 2027 who wait to apply could cross that line. Students already on OPT whose STEM extension would be recommended after the effective date would cost their school $30,000. Anyone eligible to apply for OPT or a STEM extension in the next several months should apply as early as the rules allow: up to 90 days before the program end date for post-completion OPT, and up to 90 days before the current OPT expires for the STEM extension.
Ask your school what it will do. The rule gives universities three options: absorb the fee, pass it to students or pass it to employers. Most cannot absorb $7 million a year. Some will add it to international tuition; some will tell employers to pay; some will stop recommending OPT except for students with a confirmed job at a company willing to cover it. Students choosing between U.S. and foreign programs for fall 2027 should get the answer in writing before they enroll.
For people already on H-1B or waiting on green cards, the rule changes nothing directly. For people in the pipeline behind them, it changes everything: a $70,000 OPT fee followed by a $103,265 H-1B fee means the cost of hiring a foreign graduate from a U.S. university would exceed $170,000 before salary. Employers will respond by hiring fewer of them.
Comments can be filed on regulations.gov once the docket opens today and will be part of the record in any lawsuit. The last time DHS changed OPT through rulemaking, in 2016, it received more than 50,000 comments.