[zeestephen]

Tragically, the huge expansion of OPT took place under President Trump.

Obama was adding about 30,000 new OPT "student" workers per year.

Trump kicked that up to 125,000 per year, before Covid.

Currently, total OPT student workers in the USA are believed to be around 550,000.

Homeland Security does not publish the numbers - probably because no one at DHS is even tracking the numbers!

Related - political enemies of Elon Musk are trying to get Musk indicted for not actually attending college in the USA, after he entered on a Student Visa.

Today - it is completely legal under OPT to do exactly what Musk did - specifically, enter the USA on a Student Visa, but going directly to a job, instead.

[Bob434]

The left would have gladly allowed him in if he had married his brother lol

[Alberta's Child]

OPT isn't all it's cracked up to be for the employer. In my 15+ years of corporate management experience we hired ONE immigrant employee under the OPT program -- and only because he was a recent graduate of a U.S. college who had worked as an intern for our best client. We basically hired him because the client asked him to.

The first thing I'll say is that the paperwork and HR process to administer this was a pain in the ass.

The second thing was that we found ourselves in a bizarre situation where we negotiated a salary with him, then found out afterward that we had to pay him more than he asked for because the OPT rules require employers to pay the immigrants based on published salary rates for professions. And even though our industry doesn't place a high value on a graduate degree, the published industry salaries for OPT hires with graduate degrees is substantially higher.

[DesertRhino]

“Related - political enemies of Elon Musk are trying to get Musk indicted for not actually attending college in the USA, after he entered on a Student Visa.”

Statute of limitations far exceeded. And he is a US citizen now. It’s over.