The Optional Practical Training (OPT) program encourages U.S. companies to hire foreign students who graduate from U.S. colleges, by giving them work permits which extend for as long as three years. Companies don’t have to interview Americans before hiring OPT applicants, and they receive a tax break for participating in the program. Its use has significantly increased in recent years. Last year it had 329,158 foreign job seekers participating, up from 91,140 in 2016.
Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, expressed strong criticism of OPT, saying that “The government is enticing employers to hire foreigners instead of Americans . . . it is ridiculous. Even the middle-class Americans who have downplayed the impact of cheap-labor immigration on blue-collar Americans should be alarmed by the government’s discrimination against their own college-graduate children.”
Read more at breitbart.com.