Students walk near the Widener Library in Harvard Yard at Harvard University in Cambridge. (File/Reuters)
The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has identified around 10,000 foreign students, including several from India, who are suspected of misusing the Optional Practical Training (OPT) component of their student visas by fraudulently claiming employment with highly suspect employers.
The disclosure was made by acting ICE Director Todd Lyons at a press conference on Tuesday, where he described the OPT programme as having “become a magnet for fraud” and confirmed that it has been the subject of multiple investigations by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Federal investigators conducted on-ground site visits that revealed OPT beneficiaries were being “managed” by employees based in India, a direct violation of the programme’s core requirement that training and direction must come from within the United States.
Lyons painted a stark picture of the range of crimes uncovered through these investigations.“We’ve encountered cases involving espionage, biological threats, intellectual property theft, visa and employment fraud, and even scams targeting elderly Americans, all perpetrated by individuals abusing their status as students,” Lyons said.
ICE has framed the crackdown squarely as a national security matter. “Our nation will not tolerate security threats originating from the foreign student programme,” Lyons further commented, calling the OPT fraud a blatant attack on American goodwill toward foreign nationals who are granted access to the country’s education system.
The development comes amid broader scrutiny of the US student visa ecosystem under the current administration, with Indian students, one of the largest groups on OPT, likely to face heightened compliance checks in the weeks ahead.
“Instead, OPT ballooned into an uncontrolled guest worker pipeline with hundreds of thousands of foreign students working in the United States. As the programme’s size has exploded, so has the fraud,” Lyons said.
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The Optional Practical Training programme allows foreign nationals on student visas to work in the United States for up to 12 months, extendable to 24 months in certain cases. It also serves as a pathway for students to transition to an H-1B work visa sponsored by a US employer. Introduced during the George W. Bush administration, the programme was originally designed to benefit only a few thousand students who would receive training before returning to their home countries.
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