Expanding OPT internships for international students, lawmakers are worried about grabbing jobs for local students

> Expanding OPT internships for international students, lawmakers are worried about grabbing jobs for local students. Recently, the Obama administration has expanded the scope of applicable departments for the 29-month OPT internship program for foreign students...

Expanding OPT internships for international students, and lawmakers are worried about competing for jobs for local students. Recently, the Obama administration has expanded the scope of applicable departments for the 29-month OPT internship program for foreign students, adding about 90 new fields. The OPT (Optional Practical Training) work internship program allows foreign students with degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields to work in the United States for 29 months without a work visa. The Obama administration began to expand the implementation of OPT last month, adding 90 eligible departments and fields, bringing the number of applicable fields to 400, but it did not receive attention at the time. OPT applicable departments have added "computer and information sciences, other" (computer and information sciences, other), "computer programming, other" (computer programming, other) and other broad categories. These names may be keywords for interdisciplinary majors. Some of the new OPT-eligible non-IT fields include urban forestry, behavioral sciences, sustainability studies and archeology. Costa, an immigration policy analyst at the Center for Economic Policy Research, said he is not too worried about the increase in qualifying fields. His main concern is that these areas are not determined based on labor market shortages, and OPT intern workers do not have wage protection, which affects the wages of American workers. Critics of the expanded implementation of OPT believe that this approach is tantamount to opening a backdoor for increasing H-1B visas, and will leave this backdoor wide open for abuse. For example, employers hiring workers on H-1B visas must pay market wages, while employers on OPT are not subject to these regulations. The OPT list originally had "Computer Programming/Programmer, General" and "Computer Science". Grassley said some people will question whether these newly added majors can be called science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields and meet the requirements that OPT is only open to qualified high-skilled U.S. labor shortage fields. From 2006 to 2010, a total of 430,515 OPT applications were approved in the United States. This number includes all OPT students, not just applications extended to 29 months. In addition, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced on June 1 that the U.S. unemployment rate in May this year was 8.2%. If differentiated by educational background, the unemployment rate for those with a college degree dropped slightly by 0.1% from April to 3.9%. During the same period, the unemployment rate for those with a high school degree rose slightly from 7.9% to 8.1%. As for those with a high school degree or below, the unemployment rate was even higher.