Washington, D.C. (April 1, 2021) – The Center for Immigration Studies reports that the Biden administration has significantly reduced transparency into the nation’s foreign student and exchange visitor programs. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published new data for 2020, but excluded employer-related data on the controversial Optional Practical Training (OPT) programs and sponsorship data on the J-1 visa program. This information had been made public in previous years and is managed by DHS in its Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), a national security-focused tracking system developed in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
Extensive data on these programs for 2017, 2018, and 2019 is available online as the result of a much-needed transparency effort spearheaded by the Trump administration. For the first time ever, the media and the public gained access to data ranging from the top 500 academic schools ranked by the largest number of SEVIS records to the entire list of vocational schools ranked by number of SEVIS records, to the top 200 employers hiring foreign nationals through the OPT programs. While school and demographic data was included this year, employer data was not.
Jon Feere, the former Chief of Staff of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said, “The nation’s largest foreign worker programs, which allow hundreds of thousands of foreign students and exchange visitors to work in the United States for years on end, require greater transparency, not less. If the Biden administration is uninterested in promoting transparency, Congress must step in and mandate it.”
The data made available for FY2019 that was not made available for FY2020 includes:
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