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Washington, D.C. (November 8, 2019) - The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) celebrates National STEM Day by filing an amicus brief with the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in support of Washington Alliance of Technology Workers. The amicus brief informs the court of the policy context of the Optional Practical Training (OPT) Program at issue in The Washington Alliance of Technology Workers ("Washtech") v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, emphasizing the negative effects of OPT on American workers as well as the fiscal health of the nation’s Social Security, Medicare, and Unemployment Trust Funds.
This large scale foreign labor program permits the pushing aside of hundreds of thousands of U.S. college graduates by foreign nationals every year and particularly impacts STEM students; foreign national students with STEM degrees are granted three years of work authorization (and an exemption from payroll taxes), two more years than those with non-STEM degrees. Ironically, middle schools and high schools celebrate National STEM Day, encouraging American students to study and pursue careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math, while U.S. immigration policy makes it difficult for them to find employment and depresses the wages keeping American students from entering the STEM fields.
The lawsuit presents the federal courts with two simple questions of law: (1) does DHS have the authority to allow aliens to remain in the country on student visas when they are no longer students, and (2) does DHS have the authority to allow these aliens to work? These simple questions have been before the courts for over a decade of litigation.
Read the Center’s amicus brief here: https://cis.org/Testimony/Brief-Amicus-Curiae-Support-Plaintiffs-Motion-Summary-Judgment-Washington-Alliance
Learn more about this case here:
https://cis.org/Miano/11-Years-and-Counting-Lawsuit-Challenging-OPT-Guestworker-Program
Highlights:
I. The OPT Program is a regressive income transfer program, which takes $2.4 billion a year from Congressionally-mandated Social Security, Medicare, and Federal Unemployment Insurance Trust Funds for the elderly, the ailing, and the unemployed, and gives it to corporations that discriminate against American citizen graduates.
II. The OPT Program eliminates approximately 300,000 jobs for Americans and permanent residents at any given time and suppresses wages.
III. The Optional Practical “Training” Program is a misnomer: there is virtually no training involved. It is likely the second largest foreign worker program in the United States
IV. The OPT program lacks transparency, with both government and media concealing its true costs both to the treasury and on American wages.
V. The abuses in this program were made possible because the creation of the program by executive fiat was a violation of the democratic process.
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