The U.S. government may be preparing to impose a steep $1,00,000 fee on visas that allow international students to work in the country after graduating from American universities, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.
The move under consideration targets Optional Practical Training (OPT) visas, an extension of the F-1 student visa that lets foreign graduates work in the U.S. for one to three years in fields related to their studies. The Department of Homeland Security is reportedly evaluating the fee as a new option, coming shortly after a U.S. court struck down a similar $1,00,000 fee proposal on H-1B visas.
The scale of who this could affect is significant. Roughly 4,19,000 foreign nationals were working under the OPT programme in 2024, the most recent year for which data is available. For many international students, OPT is one of the biggest reasons they choose to study in the U.S. in the first place, offering a direct pathway from classroom to workplace without needing to leave the country immediately after graduation.
Tech companies, which recruit heavily from university campuses, had already pushed back against the earlier H-1B fee proposal, and a similar fee on OPT visas could face comparable resistance given how central the programme is to hiring pipelines for graduate talent.
A DHS spokeswoman, responding to the report, was careful not to confirm anything as settled: "No policies should be considered final until formally announced. At DHS we are always having conversations about how to use all tools in our arsenal to protect the integrity of our legal immigration system."
The OPT fee isn't the only immigration-related cost under discussion. Officials at the State Department are reportedly also weighing a $1,00,000 bond requirement for green card applicants outside the U.S., a bond that would only be redeemable once the applicant moves to the U.S. and eventually becomes a citizen.
If implemented, a fee of this size on OPT visas could reshape decisions for thousands of international students each year, many of whom currently rely on the programme as their only route to gaining U.S. work experience straight out of university. Without it, most would have little choice but to leave the country immediately after graduation, taking the skills and training gained at American institutions elsewhere.