International students in the United States, including Indians, could face the risk of having to leave the country after graduation due to a new bill that seeks to end an immigration benefit allowing them to seek temporary employment after completing their studies.

The Optional Practical Training programme for work authorisation allows foreign graduates to work in the United States for up to a year after completing their academic course. Students who pursued science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, are allowed to extend this authorisation for up to two more years.

More than 3.31 lakh students from India were enrolled in various programmes in the United States in 2023-’24, according to a report by Open Doors, an information resource on international students. Over a third of them were eligible for the Optional Practical Training program for work authorisation, Economic Times reported.

The Fairness for High-Skilled Americans Act proposes to end the Optional Practical Training programme, arguing that it “undercuts American workers, particularly higher-skilled workers and recent college graduates, by giving employers a tax incentive to hire inexpensive, foreign labor under the guise of student training”.

NumbersUSA, an advocacy group seeking to lower immigration levels, said that the proposed law, if passed, would “encourage domestic recruitment of our best and brightest”.

“Fewer than half of all STEM [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics] graduates find careers in their fields,” Roy Beck, the founder of the organisation was quoted as saying by ABC27. "Why should our government discourage employers from hiring our home-grown graduates?”

If the bill is passed, Indian students will either have to leave the US immediately after their academic programmes end or fast-track their transition to an H-1B visa at the earliest, the Economic Times reported.

The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows companies in the US to temporarily employ foreign workers for special occupations.

“The biggest fallout, though, will be missing out on work opportunities and the ability to earn a US salary for a couple of years or so to pay back hefty student loans,” Poorvi Chothani, the founder of an immigration law firm in the US, told Economic Times.

Previous efforts to abolish the Optional Practical Training program have failed. However this bill comes amid a broader anti-immigrant policy shift under the Donald Trump administration.

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