OPT students work in restaurants and janitorial services companies, said Missouri State Senator Eric Schmidt.
Senator Eric Schmidt, who spoke out against the optional practical training program that foreign students get at the end of the course, revealed just some startling facts from his home state of Missouri where he once again called for an end to the practice because it harms American students.
This optional practical training has for ages served a legal path from college to cabins and students on an F1 visa can easily change their status to H-1B once they are on the right track. Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt said ICE provided him with a figure that indicated there were 4,430 OPT visas in Missouri alone, many of whom were working in jobs they shouldn’t be. A local Ethiopian restaurant applied for a STEM OPT employee, and another OPT employee works for a janitorial services company, the senator said. “OPT jobs *must* be directly related to the student’s major field of study. And if you are a STEM major, you will receive a 3-year work permit.* Not only that, OPT holders are exempt from FICA taxes – a 15%+ tax subsidy for employers. Given this, and given that foreigners who use OPT may be in dire need of work, it should come as no surprise that OPT is being abused Often times I have found cases of foreign students working in restaurants, bars and shopping malls, “cleaning services that probably have no connection to the student’s area of study,” Schmidt said.
“The highly skilled employers relevant to the degree are clearly: A local Ethiopian restaurant, which applied for a STEM OPT last year (for a three-year term). It’s a highly reviewed restaurant but why does it need a recent STEM OPT major? And why wouldn’t it hire an American?”“Another OPT employee works at a small janitorial services company. This doesn’t seem like a natural fit. OPT often undermines white collar work, but it also undermines blue collar workers by flooding the market with new graduates looking for any form of work.”“Not only that, but a cadre of shady consultants and woke NGOs are taking advantage of the occupied Palestinian territory, teaching foreign students how to game the system. Some of them are even using foreign student labor within the country to train them to import more foreign students and workers,” the senator said, citing the example of Vitendo4Africa, which provides classes on green card applications. “The bottom line: OPT is not a student training program. It is a backdoor jobs program for foreign nationals at the expense of Missouri families and American graduates who are still struggling to find work. USCIS, it’s time to shut this down. Missourians first. Americans first,” the senator wrote.