Why are Edlow and Vaughan calling OPT unlawful? Right here’s the true story

Within the quietly panicked corridors of worldwide training coverage, a storm is gathering round the US’ Non-compulsory Sensible Coaching (OPT) program—and for as soon as, it’s not hyperbole to say that the injury could already be carried out. The numbers are stark, the coverage narrative even starker. In keeping with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) SEVIS 2024 report, over 194,554 worldwide college students obtained work authorisation below OPT final yr. Of those, a staggering 95,384 secured extensions below the STEM OPT provision. And standing on the centre of this tectonic shift are Indian college students, who account for practically 98,000 of these OPT authorisations throughout the 2023–24 cycle, as confirmed by the Indian Ministry of Exterior Affairs.However now, the very scaffolding of this bridge—from tutorial promise to skilled foothold—is below coordinated assault by voices each influential and ideological. Main the cost are Jessica Vaughan, Director of Coverage Research on the Heart for Immigration Research (CIS), and Joseph Edlow, the newly confirmed Director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Companies (USCIS). Each have testified earlier than Congress in 2025 that OPT shouldn’t be solely legally suspect however structurally harmful.The rhetoric could also be wrapped in legalese, however the intent is obvious: Dismantle the post-study work rights which have lengthy made U.S. levels a prized aspiration for worldwide—and notably Indian—college students. What’s at stake is greater than immigration. It’s the erasure of a pipeline that has quietly underwritten America’s dominance in international tech and innovation.

Edlow and Vaughan’s case in opposition to OPT: Congress did not signal it, so let’s burn it

On the core of the marketing campaign to dismantle the Non-compulsory Sensible Coaching (OPT) program lies a foundational dispute—not merely about visas or overseas labour, however about who will get to outline the boundaries of lawful work in postsecondary America. And on this ideological contest, Jessica Vaughan and Joseph Edlow have emerged because the architects of what they body as a long-overdue correction.Their argument is deceptively easy: OPT shouldn’t be regulation—it’s regulation. Worse, they declare, it’s unregulated regulation, sustained not by statute however by administrative inertia and authorized loopholes.In her detailed testimony earlier than the Home Judiciary Subcommittee in June 2025, Vaughan—Director of Coverage Research on the Heart for Immigration Research (CIS)—delivered a withering critique of what she known as “the biggest unregulated visitor employee scheme in the US.” Drawing from inside knowledge units supplied by ICE and the Division of Homeland Safety, Vaughan revealed that over 540,000 work authorisations had been granted below OPT and CPT (Curricular Sensible Coaching) in FY2023 alone.This, she argued, was not simply administrative generosity—it was regulatory anarchy.In her phrases, OPT had “spawned an business of diploma mills, faux colleges, bogus coaching applications, and unlawful employment.” In keeping with her testimony, the Pupil and Change Customer Program (SEVP)—the physique meant to supervise the legitimacy of those tutorial affiliations—was too chronically under-resourced to vet the size of demand. The consequence, she concluded, was a parallel ecosystem of educational storefronts and coaching programmes designed not for studying, however for visa preservation and labour substitution.However maybe her sharpest critique was constitutional in tone. OPT, she reminded the Committee, shouldn’t be authorised by the US Congress. It was created as an extension of government rulemaking, first formalised below the Bush administration and later expanded below Obama. “There has by no means been a vote in Congress,” Vaughan famous, “to permit lots of of hundreds of overseas graduates to work on US soil below this program.”Edlow, a former Trump-era official introduced again to revive “authorized constancy” to immigration enforcement, seconded the legalistic rebuke. In a number of briefings earlier than the Senate and in inside USCIS memoranda from April–June 2025, Edlow contended that the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) makes no provision for post-completion work for F-1 visa holders. “The INA is unambiguous,” he stated. “Pupil visas are for examine—not for work after commencement.“He took specific intention on the 2023 D.C. Circuit Courtroom ruling, which upheld the legality of OPT and its STEM extension. The choice, Edlow claimed, rested on an “misguided studying of statutory intent”—one which unjustifiably enlarged the chief department’s energy to outline immigration eligibility standards with out congressional consent.In his congressional appearances and in inside DHS paperwork, Edlow has additional proposed reorienting USCIS enforcement priorities. Particularly, he has known as for an expanded position for the Fraud Detection and Nationwide Safety (FDNS) directorate in vetting OPT candidates and employers—a transfer that alerts a coming compliance-heavy period, the place pupil employment data could possibly be re-audited, revoked, or flagged for deportation if discovered wanting.Each Vaughan and Edlow converge on the identical coverage prescription, said both in tender legalism or onerous numbers: The OPT program should both be terminated outright or restricted so severely that it turns into operationally nonviable for many worldwide graduates. In different phrases, OPT have to be stripped of its present utility to make sure it can’t proceed below the guise of administrative legitimacy.

What actually lies beneath Edlow and Vaughan’s constitutional and authorized arguments?

Behind Edlow and Vaughan’s polished authorized rhetoric lies a deeper mission—one which has much less to do with statutes and extra to do with reshaping America’s relationship with international expertise. Woven beneath the testimony is a broader, extra ideological perception that worldwide pupil mobility has been hijacked by company pursuits, and that overseas graduates are actually indistinguishable from visitor employees, employed to avoid wage flooring, sidestep payroll taxes, and bypass labour market assessments that will in any other case favour American graduates.To this finish, Vaughan and Edlow’s critique shouldn’t be merely of OPT as coverage, however of OPT as financial structure—an invisible scaffold that helps tech giants, universities, and international expertise mobility. For them, eradicating that scaffold shouldn’t be disruption. It’s restoration.

Come, pay, tuition and go away

What Edlow and Vaughan suggest is greater than a coverage repair—it’s a structural decoupling of training from employability, one which threatens to return the F-1 visa to a slender, transactional instrument: come, pay tuition, and go away.It’s this return to pre-globalisation pondering that almost all alarms educators and economists alike. And it’s this model of “authorized readability” that would go away lots of of hundreds of scholars—together with the 98,000 Indian graduates at present working below OPT—on the sting of a bureaucratic cliff, with no security internet past the 90-day unemployment cap.TOI Training is on WhatsApp now. Comply with us right here.