A massive foreign student worker program is costing taxpayers billions while failing to protect U.S. workers. That is the conclusion of a new report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), which examines the Optional Practical Training Program (OPT), created in 1992 to give foreign students the opportunity to get training and work experience in the U.S.
Jon Feere, director of investigations for CIS, says the idea of the OPT program originally was to help foreign students get work authorization while they were still in school. But in the decades since, it has grown out of control as another source of cheap labor. "At some point, (the Department of Homeland Security) just decided to allow foreign students to obtain work authorization after they graduate," says Feere. "They originally said we think there will only be about 12-thousand foreign students who partake in this...well, there's now over 539-thousand foreign students working through some version of OPT."
At the center of OPT is a tax exemption for workers and employers. The foreign students in the program are exempt from social security taxes, and the employers are exempt from unemployment taxes. This creates an unfair playing field for American workers at a time when the number of foreign-born workers is already exploding. "There's a huge benefit to employers in hiring foreign students rather than U.S. citizens because they get those exemptions," says Feere.
Not only do those exemptions undercut American workers, they cost American taxpayers billions as our so-called entitlement programs careen toward insolvency. "Estimating each worker in the program makes $50,000 a year, it's about four-billion dollars every single year in lost revenues that would otherwise be going to Social Security and Medicare," Feere tells KTRH.