President Donald Trump attends the "Freedom Haulers" initiative announcement event at the White House in Washington on Thursday (local time). [AP]
President Donald Trump attends the "Freedom Haulers" initiative announcement event at the White House in Washington on Thursday (local time). [AP]

The Herald Business international desk delivers a daily briefing on Trump-related issues through its "1 Trump a Day" newsletter and series. Click "Original Article" below the headline and byline at the top of the article to read more.

02

2026-07-31 06:39:58

N

Y

The Trump administration is considering imposing a $100,000 fee on foreign students who graduate from US universities and seek employment in the United States, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday (local time).

According to the Journal, the fee would apply to the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program, which allows foreign nationals who have studied at US undergraduate or graduate institutions to work in the country on an F-1 student visa without obtaining a separate work visa. The program generally permits a one-year automatic stay extension, with students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields eligible for up to three additional years.

About 419,000 foreign nationals were working at US companies through OPT as of 2024. If the government collected $100,000 from each of them, it would generate $41.9 billion in revenue.

The measure fits into the Trump administration's broader second-term policy of restricting virtually every category of legal visa status available to foreign nationals in the United States.

The administration had previously planned to apply the fee to H-1B professional visas. Trump signed a proclamation last September calling for the H-1B visa fee to be raised to $100,000 — 100 times the current $1,000 rate.

A federal court in Massachusetts struck down that measure as unlawful in June, and the First US Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston blocked it again on Friday. The administration now appears to have pivoted to imposing the fee on the OPT program, which precedes the H-1B visa stage, as an alternative means of restricting visa access.

Leading technology and financial firms have typically preferred to hire talent from top US universities through OPT, then sponsor those employees for H-1B visas after a few years on the job. The Journal noted that a new fee on OPT "would therefore target these companies more directly."

US officials said the measure is still under discussion at the Department of Homeland Security and that it is unclear whether the White House will approve it. It also has not been decided whether the fee would be paid by the foreign students themselves or by the companies seeking to hire them.

The measure could affect not only international students but also US universities and businesses.

The Journal said that if implemented, the fee "would significantly reduce the appeal of studying in the United States for foreign nationals." It added that the measure would deal a blow to universities that rely on international students as a stable source of tuition revenue, as well as to major Silicon Valley and Wall Street firms that particularly depend on hiring foreign graduates to fill technical positions.


yckim6452@heraldcorp.com