President Donald Trump listens as Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf speaks during a coronavirus task force briefing at the White House, Friday, March 20, 2020, in Washington. Wolf has recently expressed concern about the Optional Practical Training program, which allows skilled immigrants to study and work in the US. | Associated Press
In the coming days, I could be forced to leave America.
Last month, in an attempt to protect American jobs amid skyrocketing unemployment, President Donald Trump signed an executive order asking the Department of Homeland Security for recommendations on further prioritizing U.S. citizens for available jobs. And amid calls by a few U.S. senators and other groups, the department is considering suggesting the suspension of the Optional Practical Training program and other work visas. Wednesday, nine Republican senators, including Indiana’s Todd Young and South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, wrote a letter to Trump urging him not to restrict legal work-based immigration. They’re right — it would be a terrible mistake.
Suspending or ending the Optional Practical Training program wouldn’t just hurt immigrants, it would also cost American jobs and make it much harder for low-income Americans to go to college. Doing so, too, would go against everything conservatives believe about immigration.
As it stands, the program allows international students on F-1 visas to stay in America for one additional year after graduating from college to work. If we graduate in a STEM field, we get three. It’s the kind of program that supports precisely the immigration conservatives should support — legal immigration that’s helpful to Americans. Last year, the president himself lamented the idea of losing international students through bad policy. “They get educated at our finest schools, and then we don’t allow them, through a various set of circumstances, to have any guarantees of staying,” he said. “So we lose out on great minds. We can’t do that.”
Well, it seems DHS Secretary Chad Wolf thinks differently.
Today, thanks to the program, more than 200,000 of those great minds who get educated at America’s finest schools live and work in America. When we graduate, we have to contribute to the American economy — we can’t be unemployed for more than 90 days or else we must return home.
Optional Practical Training workers aren’t competing for low-wage, blue-collar jobs. Most of the time, we don’t compete at all. We generally hold high-paying jobs that wouldn’t even exist if we weren’t living in America, since over 70% of us hold a master’s or doctoral degree, compared to only 13% of Americans. We also lead in innovation, patent creation and entrepreneurship. In fact, about one-in-four of America’s billion-dollar start-ups were founded by former international students. Even Dr. George Borjas, one of America’s leading experts on immigration and detractor of open borders, admits that “High-skill immigration is the best policy if the United States wishes to maximize the economic well-being of the native population.”
Why, then, would America shut out hundreds of thousands of highly educated, productive and entrepreneurial legal immigrants?
It certainly can’t be to benefit Americans. Rather than protect jobs, ending OPT would destroy them. One study using the University of Maryland’s dynamic macroeconomic model showed that, if the Optional Practical Training program is reduced by 60%, native-born Americans would lose approximately 255,000 net jobs over the next decade and receive lower wages. Imagine if OPT were eliminated altogether — and it might be.
American college students would also suffer tremendously. International students are charged out-of-state tuition in public universities and aren’t eligible for federal subsidies. As a result, we pay two to three times more in tuition than Americans. One study published in the Journal of Public Economics found that for every 10 additional international students a college enrolls, they were able to enroll eight additional Americans. Without OPT, then, hundreds of thousands of international students will stop attending American colleges, and thousands of low-income Americans will lose scholarships. Instead, many of us will be forced to seek opportunities in countries like Canada and Australia, both of which allow high-skilled immigrants to stay more easily.
Ultimately, ending Optional Practical Training conflicts with the values of the Republican Party I know and support.
Over the past four years, I’ve had the opportunity to meet with thousands of American conservatives as I traveled across the United States speaking at events about how socialism destroyed my country, interning for my Republican senator and campaigning for Republican candidates.
They aren’t racists or xenophobes, as labeled by the radical left. They’re men and women who want the best for their families and love their country. They reject unlawful immigration, but they also cheer on hardworking newcomers as we reach for the American dream. In fact, nearly 8 in 10 Americans in the latest Pew Research Survey on the matter support encouraging more high-skilled immigration into the United States. And even two-thirds of those who want less total immigration favor having more high-skilled immigration.
In his last speech as president, Ronald Reagan noted that “Other countries may seek to compete with us; but in one vital area, as a beacon of freedom and opportunity that draws the people of the world, no country on Earth comes close.” I pray that those who will decide the fate of the OPT program will come to understand this — for both the sake of deserving immigrants, and for America.
Daniel Di Martino (@DanielDiMartino) is a Venezuelan freedom activist and economist, a research associate at the Institute for the Study of Free Enterprise at the University of Kentucky and a Young Voices contributor.
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