Trump Administration Weighs $100,000 Fee on Student Work Visas
The Trump administration may charge international students a $100,000 fee to work in the US after graduation, shaking up universities and employers alike.
AC Team
Picture this: you spend years studying in the US, rack up a mountain of student debt, and finally land a job offer. Then someone hands you a bill for $100,000 just to start working. That is the scenario many international graduates could soon face if a new proposal from the Trump administration goes through.
What is actually being proposed
The Department of Homeland Security is looking at charging a $100,000 fee for the Optional Practical Training programme, known as OPT. This programme lets foreign students work in the US for up to three years after finishing their degree, depending on their field of study. In 2024, around 419,000 graduates used this route to gain work experience.
Right now, officials have not decided who would actually pay this fee. It could fall on the students themselves, or on the universities and companies that hire them. Nothing is final yet, and a DHS spokesperson made it clear that no policy counts until it is officially announced.
Why this matters beyond the price tag
OPT has been one of the biggest reasons students choose to study in America over other countries. It gives them a chance to work, build experience, and sometimes move on to longer-term visas like the H-1B. Take that away, or make it painfully expensive, and the whole calculation changes for a student deciding between a US university and one in Canada, the UK, or Australia.
Universities have a stake in this too. International students often pay full tuition, which means they are a major source of revenue for many schools. If fewer students apply because the work path afterward looks too costly, universities could feel the pinch in their budgets.
Tech and finance companies are watching closely as well. Many of them hire OPT graduates straight out of college, train them, and later sponsor their H-1B visas. A fee this size would hit their hiring plans directly, since it is not just about visa costs anymore, it is about whether hiring international talent makes financial sense at all.
This fits a bigger pattern
This is not the first time the number $100,000 has shown up in Trump's immigration plans. Last year, the administration tried to apply the same fee to H-1B visas. That attempt got blocked by a federal appeals court in Boston just last week. The fee was later narrowed down after pushback from major tech companies.
Officials are also considering a $100,000 refundable bond for green card applicants outside the US, which would only be returned once they become citizens. So this new OPT proposal is part of a wider pattern rather than a one-off idea.
The visa extension twist
There is another change already in motion that connects to this fee. Earlier this month, the administration announced that international students will now need to apply for a visa extension just to access OPT. Before this, a student visa stayed valid for the full length of the academic programme plus the work authorisation period. Now, that extension process becomes another checkpoint, and this fee could be tied to it.
Old debates resurface
None of this is new territory. During Trump's first term, advisor Stephen Miller pushed to scrap the STEM OPT programme entirely, which gives science and tech graduates up to three extra years of work authorisation. That plan got shelved after pushback from advisors like Jared Kushner, who leaned more business-friendly. It looks like similar tensions are playing out again, just with a bigger number attached this time.
Supporters of OPT say it gives students a fair shot at real-world experience before they head home or settle into longer careers. Critics argue it lets companies hire foreign graduates without doing enough to protect wages for American workers. Where you stand on this probably depends on which side of that debate you already lean toward.
For now, students planning to study in the US, or companies planning to hire OPT graduates, are left waiting to see if this fee becomes real. Given how the H-1B fee attempt played out, this one is likely headed for its own round of pushback and legal challenges before anything gets locked in.
