Recent months have seen a series of blockbuster fraud stories: childcare fraud in Minneapolis, Medicaid fraud in Ohio, hospice fraud in California. Vice President JD Vance held a press conference this week targeting fraud at the state level. The latest revelation comes from the Department of Homeland Security: massive abuse of a work program for former foreign students.
The Optional Practical Training program, or OPT, was turned into a guest worker scheme by the George W. Bush administration and expanded under the Obama administration. It allows foreign students who’ve completed their studies in STEM fields to stay on their student visas, even though they’re no longer students, and work for up to three years.
In a press conference this week, acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said investigators found locked and empty buildings where hundreds of OPT “students” were supposed to be working, small private homes listed as worksites for hundreds of OPT workers, multiple OPT employers with the same address, and more. Lyons said, “This is only the tip of the iceberg,” since ICE had only started looking at the top 25 employers of OPT workers.
ICE should be commended for turning over rocks and exposing this corruption. All the criminals involved should go to prison, including the foreign “students,” who after serving their sentences should be deported and banned for life from returning the U.S. But what’s the longer-term outcome of this investigation? Everyone following this issue already knew there was massive wrongdoing; Lyons himself said the OPT program is “a magnet for fraud.”
There are two possibilities: this is either the first step in making the case for the abolition of this harmful and illegal program, or it’s a diversion designed to placate the increasingly vocal critics of the program without angering powerful donors who profit from it. I hope it’s the first, but I fear it might be the second.
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