The Optional Practical Training Program, which gives government subsidies to alien college graduates of U.S. universities and colleges, is supposed to provide education-related training programs for these alumni.
This is, of course, total fiction; OPT is simply another, low-wage, labor-market-depressing foreign worker program, as we have written from time to time.
If the government were interested in maintaining some pretense of running an actual post-grad training program, it would look at the OPT help-wanted ads that appear on the internet, such as this one filed by a company called OPTnation:
It continues:
Job Description:
The client of ours is actually focused on offering the students of New York City with secure, unpolluted transportation. OPT is actually charged with administering all administrative and operational features through the workplace.
The Community Associate, Opt will do accountable function within community plans within OPT. The selected prospect will do important and necessary community services as well as community development programs to the customer workplace. Performs associated labour.
Responsibilities
- Provides group services connected to Opt's programs as well as initiatives which include secure conveyance to NYC students to and of school.
- Coordinates operate among community groups leading for good rollouts of community-based programs to help NYC residents in particular.
- Assists with the improvement of surveys to evaluate present programs as well as plans connected to student transportation along with other elements of the local community as well as an organizational value.
- Assists together with the rollout of significant modifications to school processes, which includes different Mayoral initiatives contained & regular.
- Provides education to a staff of methods in system capabilities and works liaison capabilities like the improvement of interaction among City agencies, community groups, as well as organizations.
- Collaborates with Opt staff as well as management concerning OPT initiatives to make sure successful results.
Qualification Requirements
Minimum
- High school graduation or perhaps equivalent and 3 years of expertise in community work or even community-centred activities in a location associated with tasks discussed above; or perhaps
- Education and/or experience that is equivalent to 1.
Preferred
- Excellent created and oral communication as well as presentation skills.
- Excellent as well as powerful information management, project preparation, and communication abilities.
- Highly driven and self-directed, with a record of financial success.
- Internal applicants preferred.
The first question is: What will these workers be doing? It strikes me that they may be driving buses or cars that will ferry students around New York City, or maybe they will seek to sell such services to students. The padded and garbled prose suggests, among other things, that OPTnation should hire an editor before it does anything else. (OPT appears sometimes in full caps, and sometimes it is "Opt"; it is not often that a corporation struggles with the spelling of its own first name.)
What possible education program in the United States would need post-graduate training in providing, or selling, taxi services? And if these are driving jobs, why not require a U.S. driver's license?
There are other problems with the ad: It states that the jobs are full-time, but full-time jobs in the OPT program are for college alumni, and the educational requirement in the ad is only that the worker has a high school diploma. Another part of the OPT program, bearing the initials CPT (curricular practical training) is for undergrads.
Then there is the flat, and unknowing statement: "No benefits are available."
Not true. OPT workers, unlike just about everyone else in the United States, do not pay the payroll taxes that fund the Medicare and Social Security programs. That's a de facto bonus of more than 8 percent for the OPT worker, and another such bonus for the employer. Most of us would think of that as a benefit.