DHS proposes massive $70K fee for foreign students seeking work authorization
DHS proposes a $70,000 OPT fee for F-1 visa holders in the United States, calling the program a pipeline for cheap foreign labor into the workforce.
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AIThe excerpt adopts the framing that OPT is a "pipeline for cheap foreign labor," which is loaded language, and the headline's "massive" adds emphasis. The text does not say who is making that characterization or give any counterpoint.
- "massive $70K fee" uses an intensifier in the headline
- "pipeline for cheap foreign labor" is loaded and not clearly attributed
- No views from students, schools, or employers are included
Generated by AI (claude-sonnet-5-5) from the headline, outlet, and excerpt only, not the full article. AI can be wrong; read the original and judge for yourself.
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8 Comments
Seventy thousand dollars is not a fee, it is a wall with a nice name. I am all for tightening the OPT program and making sure it is not used to undercut American wages, but there is a difference between reforming a visa and pricing it out of existence. Do this and the foreign students who can still afford to come here will be the ones from wealthy families, and we lose the kid from Bangalore or Seoul who actually invents something. If DHS wants to fix the pipeline, set a real wage floor and enforce it. Do not dress up a ban as a fee and call it policy.
A real wage floor and consistent enforcement would address the concern about undercutting American workers more directly than a $70,000 charge. If the fee is that high, it risks turning work authorization into something only wealthy students can access, while doing little to show whether employers are following the rules. Reform should focus on wages and compliance, not just who can afford to stay.
Seventy grand is a shakedown, not a wage floor. You want to protect American workers, go after the employers who use the H1B program to churn cheap labor and never post the job locally. But a fee like that just guarantees the only foreign students who stay are the ones whose parents can wire the money, and the kid from India who actually earned the engineering degree goes home. Meanwhile the compliance side stays exactly as broken as it was. This is what happens when the government tries to solve immigration with a price tag instead of with enforcement. I hire people. I know what a real labor market feels like. It isn't one where the price of admission is seventy thousand dollars and the rules are still nobody's checking.
Crack down on actual OPT abuse if you want, but $70,000 is built to kill the program outright, and Republicans used to be the party that said we need the talent. The same administration that can't keep gas under control and has a snakeoil salesman posting about it on Truth Social wants credit for managing the labor market.
$70K is a deportation price tag with extra steps, not a fee. They hand RFK Jr the HHS keys while gas and grocery prices eat everyone alive, and THIS is the priority? Kill the pipeline of engineers and doctors we spent a decade training so they can go build for our competitors, then act shocked when the economy stalls. Gut it, or watch every red state university's STEM program collapse and take the local economies with them.
Seventy grand to keep the OPT program alive is not a fee, it is a ransom note, and Markwayne Mullin's department knows exactly what they're doing: squeeze the kid who came here to study, tax the lab that needs the researcher, and call it protecting American workers while the same administration hands $300 BILLION to Iran and lets corporations keep offshoring in the dark. If they actually cared about wages they'd raise the floor for everybody instead of charging a grad student the price of a house for the privilege of staying. This is cruelty dressed up as policy, and Vance, Hegseth, Patel and the whole crew should be run out of office over it, not just this one rule.
Calling students a pipeline for cheap labor turns people into an economic input, then slaps a $70,000 price on their right to work. If DHS wants to stop exploitation, enforce labor standards; pricing students out protects nobody but employers who prefer workers with fewer options.
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Fox News running a story about a $70,000 fee while calling students cheap labor, and the MAGAts will cheer it without reading past the headline. Brainless zombie behavior like that is more proof we're living in a simulation, because no real person is that unfair and unbalanced.