Students urge Trump to maintain training options for international graduates

Graduate students from Carnegie Mellon University, University of Pittsburgh, Penn State and more than five dozen other top universities say efforts to eliminate a training program for international graduate students could have an unintended impact on the U.S. economy.

The program, known as the Optional Practical Training program, permits international graduates to remain in the United States for anywhere from one year of on-the-job training and up to three years if they are graduates of STEM programs. Students said the program benefits them, boosts innovation and contributes to the U.S. economy.

Eliminating the program, they argued, would be eliminating a pool of highly trained workers who fill critical needs in the U.S. workforce.

But some fear they could be taking jobs from U.S. citizens rather than filling gaps in the workforce.

Citing high unemployment numbers, Republican U.S. Sens. Tom Cotton (Ark.), Ted Cruz (Texas), Chuck Grassley (Iowa) and Josh Hawley (Mo.) recently asked the Trump administration to suspend the OPT program and several other guest worker visa programs.

The administration could rule on the request as early as this week.

International students, technology firms and the American Council on Education all say eliminating the program would discourage international enrollment at U.S. schools and penalize companies that are able to tap a stream of talent coming out of some of the nation’s top universities.

Divyansh Kaushik, a Carnegie Mellon computer science doctoral student, said the opportunity to work here after graduation is a draw for highly talented students and a plus for U.S. businesses.

Kaushik and Benjamin Lane, a doctoral student at MIT’s Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, signed off on a letter from the graduate student associations at Carnegie Mellon and MIT, urging President Trump to maintain the program.

They said the nearly 270,000 international students who opted to study here contributed an estimated $45 billion to the U.S. economy in 2018-19. Those who go on to participate in the OPT program contribute critical skills that fill gaps to the U.S. workforce, the students said.

“We strongly urge you to maintain the OPT program and the STEM OPT extension in their entirety, as suspending or limiting them would hurt the U.S. economy, American workers and the American innovation,” the students wrote.

They cited a Business Roundtable report that concluded OPT allowed businesses to fill critical skill gaps and create more jobs. The report warned that eliminating the program could result in the loss of 443,000 U.S. jobs over the next decade as graduate students opt to study elsewhere.

Kaushik, who came here from India, said he’s not sure he will take advantage of OPT for additional job training once he completes his doctoral work.

“But I would love to have that option,” he said. He said OPT allows the United States to take advantage of talent that would otherwise flow back to the students’ home land. Without it, he said, U.S. universities are simply training students to work for other countries.