Proposed $70,000 OPT Fee for F-1 Students: What DHS Is Proposing

DHS has published a proposed rule that would introduce a new fee for F-1 students: $70,000 for the first period of OPT and $30,000 for each subsequent one, including the STEM OPT extension.

In short

• DHS is proposing a $70,000 fee for initial OPT and $30,000 for each extension — up to $130,000 total over the course of a student’s studies.
• The rule is still at the proposal stage (NPRM): at least several months must pass before it could possibly take effect.
• The university pays the fee but can pass it on to the student — through tuition or as a separate charge.
• Only OPT recommendations dated on or after the rule’s effective date would be subject to the fee.
• DHS estimates the fee would raise $8.4–16.4 billion, while a similarly sized $100,000 H-1B fee has already been ruled a tax and blocked in court.

What DHS is proposing: the amounts and how the fee would work

DHS is proposing to charge $70,000 for a student’s initial OPT and $30,000 for each subsequent extension — for example, moving to the STEM OPT extension. Right now students pay $470 to $520 for the same process, depending on whether they file on paper or online. Counting both stages — initial OPT and the extension — the total burden on a student could rise to $70,000–$130,000, depending on how many OPT recommendations they receive over the course of their studies.

Counting both stages — initial OPT and the extension — the total burden on a student could rise to $70,000–$130,000, depending on how many OPT recommendations they receive over the course of their studies.

The rule was published in the Federal Register the day after DHS’s official press release. That doesn’t mean it’s already in effect: the document is at the NPRM (Notice of Proposed Rulemaking) stage — a proposed rule that first goes through public comment and only then can take effect, either as written or in revised form.

How OPT and the STEM OPT extension work today

OPT — optional practical training — lets F-1 students work in their field of study in the United States. Before graduation, pre-completion OPT allows a student to work up to 20 hours a week. After graduation, post-completion OPT allows up to 12 months of work in the student’s field.

STEM graduates get an additional extension — the STEM OPT extension — adding 24 months on top of the base 12. That period was increased from a previous 17 months. All told, a STEM student can work on OPT for up to 36 months, while students in other fields are capped at 12 months.

OPT time is tied not to the person but to the degree level: each degree earns its own 12 months. A bachelor’s graduate gets 12 months, a master’s graduate gets another 12, and a doctoral graduate gets another 12 after that. There’s no cap on how many students can participate in the program.

A separate mechanism — cap gap — extends a student’s status on OPT while they wait to move to an H-1B work visa. H-1B status begins on a fiscal-year cycle, between October 1 and April 1, and cap gap bridges the period between the end of OPT and the start of H-1B so the student doesn’t lose legal status in between.

Why DHS wants the fee: fraud and getting around H-1B rules

DHS justifies the fee by pointing to 2020 fraud, when students were given fake employment letters. According to the agency, about 2,693 students had confirmed fraudulent employment records; on a broader count DHS cites more than 4,000 such cases, and the agency estimates that roughly 10,000 F-1 students worked on OPT for employers it considers highly suspicious.

DHS names specific companies as examples. Aztec Technologies and Integra were among the largest OPT employers in 2019 — Aztec issued around 2,000 job offers, and some of those arrangements were later found to be fraudulent and canceled. DHS separately cites a Chinese entrepreneur who owned Find Dream and Cinotech: over four years, about 660 F-1 students passed through these companies and, according to DHS, were given sham job letters to keep their status.

Beyond fighting fraud, DHS points to OPT being used as a workaround for H-1B: unlike H-1B, OPT has no annual cap, so employers hire through OPT the students who didn’t win the H-1B lottery. It’s also cheaper for employers — OPT workers are exempt from Social Security and Medicare taxes, making them less expensive than full-time H-1B employees. DHS says the $70,000 figure wasn’t picked at random: it was deliberately set close to the existing $100,000 supplemental fee that already applies to some H-1B petitions.

OPT workers are exempt from Social Security and Medicare taxes, making them less expensive than full-time H-1B employees

The growth in OPT enrollment: DHS’s numbers

The number of students on OPT grew from 203,000 in 2020 to 294,253 in 2024, according to figures DHS cites from the Open Doors report published by IIE. Of those 294,253, 187,749 are on regular OPT and 106,504 are on the STEM OPT extension. Year-over-year growth was 21%, and 22% the year before that.

About 57% of international students are enrolled in STEM fields. Over the same period, overall international student enrollment fell by roughly 7%, while the number of students specifically on OPT rose 22%: the program is growing even as overall enrollment shrinks.

One in four international students in the US is currently working on OPT. Students in the program are enrolled across 2,478 schools.

DHS links this growth to the H-1B lottery: students who don’t get picked in the lottery often stay on OPT and the STEM OPT extension to keep working legally in the country.

How much it would cost by scenario: non-STEM, STEM, pre-completion

Scenario	Steps	Total cost
Non-STEM, 12-month post-completion OPT only	one fee for a single OPT recommendation	$70,000
STEM: post-completion OPT + STEM OPT extension	$70,000 for the first recommendation + $30,000 for the extension	$100,000
Non-STEM: pre-completion OPT (part-time during studies) + post-completion OPT	$70,000 for pre-completion + $30,000 for post-completion	$100,000
STEM: pre-completion OPT + post-completion OPT + STEM extension	$70,000 for pre-completion + $30,000 for post-completion + $30,000 for the STEM extension	$130,000

The total depends on how many separate OPT recommendations a student receives during their studies — each new recommendation triggers a separate payment. If a non-STEM student sticks to a single 12-month OPT period after graduation, they pay $70,000 once. Moving to the STEM OPT extension adds another $30,000, bringing the total to $100,000.

The same logic applies to part-time pre-completion OPT during studies: it’s a separate recommendation that also costs $70,000, and the later post-completion OPT costs another $30,000. For a STEM student who uses all three stages — pre-completion, post-completion, and the STEM extension — the total reaches $130,000.

The fee can only be refunded in one case: if the work authorization was never issued. If the document was issued, the money isn’t refunded regardless of whether the student actually used the authorization.

Who has to pay, and who the rule applies to

The fee must be paid by the university, not the student — that’s DHS’s requirement: without payment, USCIS won’t approve the OPT. If the school doesn’t pay, the OPT recommendation has no effect. At the same time, the university is free to pass the cost on to the student: the fee isn’t tied to the employer, and nothing stops a school from folding it into tuition or charging it as a separate payment. Payment has to happen in advance, before the school recommends the student for OPT — that’s a direct requirement of the proposed rule.

The key date is when the school sends the OPT recommendation. That date determines whether a student falls under the new fee or not. The rule would apply to F-1 students whose OPT recommendation is dated on or after the day the rule takes effect — meaning primarily those currently studying in the US who haven’t yet received a recommendation, as well as all future bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral students, if the rule is adopted.

The fee wouldn’t apply to students already on OPT or whose recommendation was sent before the effective date — technically that includes anyone who gets a recommendation right now, while the final rule hasn’t been published yet. The rule also doesn’t touch H-1B holders, H-4 holders, green card holders, or students using CPT, including CPT for off-campus work — it applies only to OPT.

For now, the rule isn’t in effect: it’s at the proposal stage (NPRM), collecting public comments. The fee would only start applying once the final version of the rule is published and an effective date is officially announced — to OPT recommendations filed or issued after that date.

Consequences for universities, employers, and students

DHS itself expects the fee to be significant: by the agency’s own estimate, the new fee would generate between $8.4 billion and $16.4 billion, with a median estimate of around $12.4 billion. Universities are allowed to pass this cost on to students — the rule explicitly permits it. For non-STEM students, the total cost of one year of OPT work would be $70,000, and DHS considers this group the most vulnerable — likely to be pushed out of the program first. STEM students would pay more, around $100,000, but in exchange get three years of OPT work instead of one.

The fee also falls on the schools themselves: a university must pay upfront, before it can even recommend a student for OPT. By DHS’s estimate, 56% of the schools affected by the rule are small institutions. If the final version of the rule takes effect, schools are likely to become more selective — recommending OPT only for the most promising students or those willing to cover the fee themselves. For employers, this means fewer available graduates: many students who previously went through OPT simply won’t be on the job market. It’s possible some companies will be asked to cover the fee for future employees, but there’s no direct requirement for that yet.

To put the scale of the new cost in perspective, here’s a comparison of typical two-year master’s tuition against the total cost for a STEM graduate once the $70,000 and $30,000 fees are added:

University	Tuition (2 years)	Total with OPT fees	Increase over tuition
University of Wisconsin–Madison (public)	$52,000	$152,000	136%
UC Berkeley (public)	$80,000	$180,000	87%
Harvard (private)	not disclosed	+$100,000 on top of tuition	about 69% of base tuition
Stanford (private)	not disclosed	+$100,000 on top of tuition	about 50% of base tuition

For public universities, the OPT fee more than doubles the cost of tuition; for private schools with already high tuition, the percentage increase is smaller, but in absolute terms it’s the same — $100,000 for a STEM graduate.

The history of legal fights over OPT, and the odds of new lawsuits

Congress never created the OPT program — in 1924, it only established the F-1 student visa itself. Practical training was introduced by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) in 1947, for six months with the option to extend, and when immigration law was overhauled in the 1970s, that provision stayed in the regulations. OPT in its modern form was created later, in 1992, by the relevant agency. The STEM OPT extension came even later and changed twice: DHS introduced a 17-month extension in 2008, then expanded it to 24 months in 2016.

The question of whether an agency — rather than Congress — can run OPT at all has already been tested in court more than once. The tech workers’ union WashTech fought a nine-year legal battle against DHS: in 2014, it challenged the 2008 STEM extension on the grounds that the rule had been adopted without public comment. The court agreed, and DHS reissued the rule after going through the public comment process.

In 2020, WashTech filed a second lawsuit — this time against the entire OPT program, arguing that since Congress never created it, it couldn’t legally exist. The district court held that DHS does have the authority to create and regulate OPT, an appeals court upheld that ruling in 2022, and the Supreme Court declined to take up the case — ending the fight there.

The nine-year dispute settled what’s now off the table for challenge: DHS’s authority to establish the program itself, its duration, and its conditions. But a different question remains open — whether a specific fee counts as a service charge or is effectively a tax the agency has no power to impose. That’s exactly the argument that has already sunk a similarly sized $100,000 fee in court: one court ruled it was a tax and struck it down, and a second court upheld that ruling. A similar fate befell the four-year cap on student status — it’s also stuck in court under an injunction, and DHS is now appealing that ruling.

While the rule remains a proposal, there may be no lawsuit against it yet. But once the final version is published, legal challenges are nearly certain — centered on the same “fee or tax” question. DHS has already said that if the rule doesn’t survive, the agency would consider shutting down the OPT program entirely.

DHS has already said that if the rule doesn’t survive, the agency would consider shutting down the OPT program entirely.

What students should do now: timeline and current status

The fee isn’t being charged yet: the rule exists only as a proposed regulation, not a law. OPT works exactly as it does today, and no changes will take effect until the final version of the rule is published.

The process ahead unfolds in steps:

1. Public comment period — closes November 9.
2. An additional 30 days after comments close — roughly 60 days total, putting it into December.
3. DHS reviews the comments and publishes the final rule.
4. Another 60 days after the final rule is published — presumably before it takes effect.

That means at least several months stand between the current proposal stage and the fee actually applying, and the process could stretch out longer if it ends up in court.

For students who already have or are getting an OPT recommendation, one detail matters: the fee won’t apply to recommendations issued before the rule’s effective date. It’s also worth noting that pre-completion OPT adds 30 calendar days to the allowed period — a detail worth factoring into any planning.

Frequently asked questions

What happens if a university refuses to pay the fee but the student is willing to cover it themselves?

Technically, the university is required to pay the fee — without it, USCIS won’t approve the OPT recommendation. But the rule explicitly allows the school to pass that cost on to the student, either by folding it into tuition or charging it as a separate payment. So a student can effectively cover the fee, but the payment still has to go through the university rather than directly to USCIS.

Can a student change employers during OPT after the fee has been paid?

The rule doesn’t directly address this: the fee is tied to the OPT recommendation issued by the university, not to a specific employer. Since the money isn’t refunded once authorization is issued, regardless of how the student uses it, changing employers shouldn’t by itself require paying the fee again — it’s still the same OPT recommendation that was already paid for.

Does the new fee apply to students on CPT rather than OPT?

No. The rule doesn’t touch students using CPT, including CPT for off-campus work — the fee applies only to OPT, meaning practical training under the F-1 visa, not curricular practical training.

What happens to students currently waiting on the H-1B lottery and relying on cap gap?

The rule doesn’t directly affect H-1B or green card holders, and the fee is tied to the date the university sends the OPT recommendation, not to cap gap status. If the OPT recommendation was sent before the rule’s effective date, the new fee doesn’t apply to it, even if the student later moves to H-1B through cap gap.