The Department of Homeland Security has released the text of its long-awaited Optional Practical Training (OPT) fee proposal. The fee is $70,000 for a student’s first OPT authorization and $30,000 for any later one, including the 24-month STEM OPT extension. The notice of proposed rulemaking (RIN 1653-AB01, DHS Docket No. ICEB-2026-0100) went on public inspection at the Federal Register on October 7 and will be formally published on October 8, 2026 as FR Doc. 2026-20660. The AP covered it the same morning, and a link to that story was the top news post on r/USCIS within an hour.
This settles the two biggest open questions from when the White House cleared the rule on September 11. First, the amount is not the $100,000 figure that circulated after a July Wall Street Journal report. Second, the fee is charged to the school, not the student. Under proposed 8 CFR 214.13, an SEVP-certified institution would have to pay the fee before its Designated School Official (DSO) enters an OPT recommendation in SEVIS, and the student could not file Form I-765 until that payment is recorded. DHS says outright that schools “may pass the financial obligation” on to students, all students, or employers, and that it would welcome that because it “would further discourage misuse of OPT.”
How the fees would stack up:
- Initial OPT, $70,000. This applies to the first OPT of any kind, whether pre-completion or post-completion.
- Subsequent OPT, $30,000. This applies to every later OPT recommendation, including the STEM OPT extension. A student who uses pre-completion OPT and then post-completion OPT would cost the school $100,000 in total.
- Refunds. A school could get its money back only if the student never receives the EAD. Once the card is issued, the fee is non-refundable “under any circumstances.”
- Who is grandfathered. Students already working on approved OPT, already approved, or holding a DSO recommendation dated before the final rule’s applicability date would not be charged. Fees would apply to DSO recommendations dated 60 days or more after a final rule is published. Read the transition text carefully: the $30,000 rate applies only where the $70,000 fee “has been paid.” DHS’s own cost model assumes that in Year 1, students moving from current OPT into STEM OPT would be billed the full $70,000.
The numbers DHS uses: 194,554 F-1 students were granted OPT EADs and reported working in 2024, up from 160,627 in 2023. DHS estimates annualized transfers to the government of $8.7 billion to $16.9 billion (primary estimate $12.8 billion), and lost-participation costs of up to $8.2 billion a year. The rule’s stated rationale is fraud, including ICE site-visit findings of shell employers and students reporting work at addresses with no real business. DHS also says the fee is meant to stop OPT being used to “bypass H-1B caps, fees, and prevailing wage requirements.” CPT is outside this rule, though DHS says it is “monitoring” CPT. Separately, universities sued on October 5 over SEVP’s recent CPT broadcasts.
What to do now: nothing changes until a final rule is issued, and that requires a comment period first. Comments are due 30 days after the October 8 publication (around November 9; the official deadline will be printed in the Federal Register) at regulations.gov under docket ICEB-2026-0100. Students who can file now, within the 90-day pre-completion window, should not wait. Many H-1B, EB-2 and National Interest Waiver cases are built on the U.S. work record earned during OPT and STEM OPT. If this proposal is finalized as written, F-1 graduates could lose access to that bridge, so it is worth considering earlier self-petition options such as the NIW.
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Source: Reddit r/USCIS