Students who graduate with degrees in science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM) will now be allowed 29 months of Optional Practical Training (OPT), which allows them to work in the United States at any point during or immediately after their academic career, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced last Friday.
“This rule will enable businesses to attract and retain highly skilled foreign workers,” Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said in a statement.
This new limit represents a 17-month increase from the 12 months traditionally granted to students on F-1 visas. International alumni who use the entirety of their OPT and wish to continue working in the United States must apply to the H-1B visa program, which is currently oversubscribed, forcing students who do not receive a visa in time to leave the United States.
The new policy will give “certain students an opportunity to gain more practical work experience in the U.S. post-graduation,” Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Students Rachel Baldwin, who is the faculty adviser for international students, said in an e-mail.
Yigit Satilmaz ’08, an operations research and financial engineering (ORFE) concentrator from Turkey, has already been hired by JPMorgan for a post-graduation job. Until this extension was announced, however, he was anticipating having to leave the United States for several months after using all 12 months of his OPT before receiving an H-1B visa.
Without the extension, “I would have to be forced out of the United States after seven months,” he explained.
Satilmaz will now be able to remain in the country until he can apply for an H-1B visa next year. Though it is not certain that he will get one of the coveted visas, the new extension allows him to apply for the H-1B twice in a row if necessary without having to leave the country.
Restrictions on eligibility
To qualify for the extension, graduates must have both received a STEM degree and be working for a U.S company that is directly associated with one of these areas of study.
The decision is “an important step toward ensuring that American companies can continue to hire many of the world’s most talented students graduating from U.S. universities,” Jack Krumholtz, Microsoft’s managing director for federal government affairs, said in a statement.
The hiring company must also be a member of the E-Verify system, which allows the Department of Homeland Security to examine social security data for newly hired employees to ensure that they are legal immigrants. Recent statistics from the Department list 53,614 American companies as members of the system.
This criterion may be hard to satisfy, Baldwin noted. “Students must be employed by employers who are E-verified, which accounts for a very small population of U.S. employers,” she said.
Many current international students are upset with the academic restrictions.
“I don’t think it’s fair that not everyone is eligible for the extension, because we all face the same problems in obtaining work visas upon graduation,” Megan Chiao ’09, former president of the International Students Association, said in an e-mail. Chiao, an ORFE concentrator, is from Singapore.
The OPT extension can also impact whether foreign students decide to take summer internships.
“I had initially applied for OPT for the summer this year, but I then withdrew the application because this 3 months of OPT is more valuable to me after graduation if I decide to stay in the U.S.,” Chiao explained, adding that a 29-month OPT will mean that internationals would no longer have to give up summer internships for post-graduation prospects.
Major choices
Baldwin fears that the selectively granted extension — instituted because of the demand for foreign students in technical fields — will drive international students away from non-STEM majors because of the relative post-graduation disadvantage.
“Some international students may stray away from the Woodrow Wilson School, Romance Languages and other fields that do not qualify for the extension,” Baldwin explained.
“I think it will be frustrating for non-STEM majors, and it is unfair that the decision was not made to support all F-1 students, despite their chosen major,” Baldwin said.
Economics major Cee-Kay Ying ’08, who is from Australia, disagreed with the STEM requirement, noting that humanities concentrators are no less skilled than students in other majors.
“Some majors between engineering and humanities have lots of overlap, such as ORFE and Econ,” she said in an e-mail. ORFE but not economics concentrators qualify for extension.
“Depending on what track you take, you could pretty much have the same coursework [except for] the independent work,” Ying explained. “Does this mean ORFE [concentrators are] more qualified to work in the US than econ majors? This perhaps could be a deciding factor among internationals wanting to maximize their opportunities to work in the US after graduation.”
Still a numbers game
Though the extension will give international graduates more flexibility for their immediate post-graduation plans and will diminish the likelihood of a gap between OPT lapse and H-1B application, some international students may still have to leave the country after the extended OPT expires.
“This does not solve the major H-1B issue, since the number of visas issued will remain the same,” Baldwin said.
The extension may be more painful for students who still do not successfully receive an H1-B.
“Expanding OPT without expanding real Visa quotas will probably result in even more tears especially when international students have set up home in the US (after being here for about 6 years), and then being forced to exit the country,” Ying explained.
Though Satilmaz said he would ultimately like to see a reformed H-1B system, this will help solve his immediate concerns.
“I think it’s a good call,” he said. “It seems that increasing the H-1B quota is a time-consuming, slow [policy] process.”
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