DHS Proposes a $70,000 Fee Before Any Student Can Start OPT. Schools Pay It, and Employers May End Up Covering It.

“DHS believes that absent these fees, it will not be able to operate OPT consistent with its focus on preventing fraud and protecting American workers and may shut down the program entirely” [1].

That sentence sits in the middle of a 35-page Department of Homeland Security proposal published this morning. The proposal itself sets a price: $70,000 per student before a college can recommend anyone for optional practical training, the work authorization that turns a lot of international graduates into first-year engineers [1]. If you hire new grads, this is a hiring-cost story, even though the bill goes to the school.

What DHS proposed

The notice of proposed rulemaking, FR Doc. 2026-20660, was signed by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and amends 8 CFR part 214 [1]. NAFSA, the international educators’ association, says the public inspection copy went up October 7 [3]. Comments are due November 9, 2026, under docket ICEB-2026-0100, with paperwork comments due December 7 [1]. OMB designated it economically significant [1].

The mechanics, from the proposed regulatory text [1]:

• $70,000, once. An SEVP-certified school pays it the first time a student is recommended for any type of OPT, pre-completion or post-completion.
• $30,000, every time after that. Any later recommendation for the same student costs $30,000. That covers the 24-month STEM extension.
• Pay first. The designated school official can’t enter the recommendation in SEVIS until the fee is paid, and USCIS may not grant the work permit if it wasn’t.
• Refunds are narrow. SEVP may refund a fee case by case only if the student never received the work permit tied to it. Its decision is final.

The fee isn’t tied to an employer, and switching jobs doesn’t trigger it [1]. The school’s recommendation does.

A final rule would take effect 60 days after publication, and the fee would apply to recommendations dated on or after that day [1]. Students already on approved OPT, or recommended before the effective date, wouldn’t be charged, but a later request filed after it would be [1]. The text doesn’t say which fee that is. The $30,000 rate is written for students whose school “paid the initial OPT fee of $70,000,” and DHS’s cost model assumes everyone in the first year pays $70,000, STEM extensions included [1]. For a student who started OPT before the rule and files for STEM in year one, that’s a $40,000 question. The money would go to the Treasury as a miscellaneous receipt, not to ICE [1].

Why DHS says it needs a fee

DHS gives three reasons: fraud, American workers and the H-1B cap.

On fraud, the notice cites an ICE video describing Homeland Security Investigations site visits that found residential addresses listed as worksites for hundreds of students, employer clusters with identical websites, and 10,000 “highly suspected employers” [1]. On scale, it says 194,554 students reported OPT employment in 2024, up from 160,627 in 2023, and that 165,524 students were on STEM OPT in 2024, nearly double the number of H-1B visas allowed each fiscal year under the 65,000 cap and the 20,000 advanced-degree allotment [1]. It also points to the payroll tax gap: many OPT workers and their employers don’t pay Social Security and Medicare taxes during a student’s first five calendar years, which DHS calls a possible incentive to hire them over U.S. workers [1].

DHS says it considered extending STEM OPT’s site visits and training plans to all OPT and rejected that as slow and resource-heavy; a fee “can be implemented quickly and uniformly” [1]. It also considered exempting small schools and declined, estimating that 56 percent of affected institutions are small entities [1].

The number itself comes from the H-1B side. DHS says it chose a fee “comparable to the fee for H-1B visas” so that OPT can’t be used to get around them [1]. That fee is the $100,000 payment set by the 2025 proclamation, which the President extended on September 18 through September 21, 2027 [2]. The new proclamation says the payment has been made for over 700 petitions [2]. Its text applies the restriction to H-1B workers entering the country and to decisions on petitions for workers “currently outside the United States” [2].

The case against it

NAFSA’s chief executive, Fanta Aw, said the fee “is the latest in a series of developments that creates deep uncertainty for international students,” and that “international students don’t take opportunities from Americans, they create them” [3]. NAFSA says it will organize detailed comments with its members [3].

The “series” includes the duration-of-status rule this column covered in July. NAFSA and its co-plaintiffs say a federal judge in Massachusetts blocked that rule nationwide on September 14 while their lawsuit continues [4]. DHS’s new notice still describes the rule as taking effect “once effective” and leaves its costs out of this analysis [1].

What it means if you hire new grads

This part is opinion.

Follow the money to your offer letter. DHS says outright that schools may pass the fee to “F-1 nonimmigrant students, all students, or employers” [1]. Some schools will pay. Others will ask the student, who will ask you. A startup that can’t put $70,000 behind a hire before day one loses that candidate to a company that can, and that cost doesn’t scale with headcount, which hits small teams hardest.

STEM and non-STEM grads split apart. DHS’s own low scenario assumes schools stop paying for students eligible for only 12 months of OPT, since $70,000 for one year compares badly to $100,000 for up to three [1]. DHS also notes about 56 percent of OPT participants got a STEM extension the following year [1]. If you hire design, product or business grads on OPT, that pipeline is the one DHS expects to shrink.

Internships get pricier than the job. Pre-completion OPT followed by post-completion OPT costs $100,000 instead of $70,000, and DHS expects schools to steer students away from pre-completion OPT [1]. If your summer program uses it, plan on CPT or domestic interns.

The estimate range is the honest part. DHS projects $8.4 billion to $16.5 billion a year in fees and says it “cannot confidently predict” how much participation falls [1]. A range that wide means DHS doesn’t know how many students will still get OPT. Neither does anyone filing a comment.

Watch the per-degree alternative. DHS floated charging the $70,000 again for each new degree level, so a bachelor’s then a master’s would cost twice, and asked specifically for comment [1].

What I’m watching

• November 9. The comment deadline [1]. Whether employer groups file, or only schools do, will show who expects to pay.
• The per-degree alternative. If a final rule adopts it, master’s hires get more expensive [1].
• The duration-of-status lawsuit. It is the other half of DHS’s OPT changes, and it is on hold for now [4].