Trump Once Promised International Students Green Cards. Now The Government Might Charge Them $100,000 To Work.

The White House is officially reviewing a proposal from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to impose a $100,000 fee on international students who want to work in the U.S. after graduating from American universities, government records show.

News of the initial proposal first broke late last month. Its progression to regulatory review, after the DHS formally submitted to the White House on Thursday, is a signal it is closer to succeeding.

The fee would be attached to the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program, which currently allows international students to work in the U.S. on student visas for up to three years after graduation. It is a major source of talent, especially for employers who are hiring for jobs in advanced STEM fields.

President Donald Trump campaigned heavily on combatting illegal immigration. But the new proposed rule is a stark departure from another one of his positions at the time. “What I want to do and what I will do is you graduate from a college, I think you should get automatically as part of your diploma a green card to be able to stay in this country,” he said in 2024 on an episode of the All-In podcast. “And that includes junior colleges too, anybody graduates from a college. You go there for two years or four years.”

A $100,000 levy, meanwhile, would cripple students’ ability to stay.

That Trump would take the opposite stance on the campaign trail makes sense. “When more international students work in the U.S. post-graduation, they don’t merely fill job vacancies—they generate more economic opportunity for Americans by helping local firms grow,” write Sam Peak and Jiaxin He of the Economic Innovation Group. “In 2016, when DHS extended OPT for STEM graduates by seven months, entrepreneurship and employment opportunities quickly increased in the localities most exposed to the program.” They also note that “the international students who stay command unusually high salaries among U.S. STEM degree holders,” rebutting the common narrative that employers want to exploit them for subpar wages.

The H-1B visa program, which allows employers to hire foreign workers with specialized skills, has also drawn the Trump administration’s ire, in what has been a broader strategy to tamp down on legal migration generally. The government last September announced it would attach a $100,000 fee to those applications as well; a federal judge subsequently said that was an unconstitutional tax. The legal battle is ongoing.

In attempting to institute that fee, the Trump administration said it wanted to address “systematic abuse of the program.” The new proposed $100,000 fee for OPT could, ironically, exacerbate potential abuse in the H-1B program when you consider how the two interact.

International students are often able to make use of the H-1B program after gaining skills working in highly specialized fields. Without OPT, “international students lose the opportunity to truly showcase their value in the labor market, making employers less likely to incur the thousands of dollars in administrative and legal fees to sponsor them for the H-1B,” note Peak and He. “Limiting the opportunity for recent graduates to test the labor market and enter the lottery will leave a vacuum in the H-1B program that would ultimately be filled by the infamous IT outsourcing firms.”

Also relevant is that H-1B visa recipients are selected via lottery, which an individual can enter once a year, up to three times. In-demand international students thus have better chances of succeeding if they are able to maintain employment in the U.S. during those three years. If the Trump administration’s goal is to improve the H-1B, this would not seem to be the way to do that.

The data are instructive on how this would work practically. Researchers found that a one-third decline in U.S-trained foreign STEM workers would shrink gross domestic product, such that it would be equivalent to losing the entire economy of South Carolina, Utah, or Wisconsin. Is that “America First”?