Biden Admin Accelerated White-Collar Job Transfers to Migrants Via Student Visa Programs

President Joe Biden’s deputies massively accelerated the transfer of U.S. white-collar jobs to foreign graduates, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

The bad news was revealed in a June 5 report by the Department of Homeland Security which showed massive jumps in job transfers via the two Optional Practical Training [OPT] work-permit programs:

In 2024, a total of 194,554 foreign [graduates] obtained [new] work authorization through OPT, while a separate population of 95,384 foreign [graduates] obtained work authorization through STEM OPT [sub-program], and 130,586 foreign [undergraduate] students obtained work authorization through CPT [for undergraduates].

Compared to 2023, this was an increase of 21 percent for OPT, an increase of 54 percentfor STEM OPT [emphasis added].

“In 2024, the total number of unique foreign student SEVIS records with work authorization … [was] 381,140 [emphasis added],” the report added. That number included 165,524 foreign graduates in the two-year STEM OPT program.

A chart posted at a DHS website showed that Biden’s deputies raised the population of college-migrants with “Employment Start Dates” by 98,425 from 2020 up to 399,909 in 2024.

The chart may understate the number of OPT college-migrants in U.S. jobs because it seems to exclude many of the 62,306 STEM-OPT migrants who may have started using their two-year work permits in the prior year.

The 400,000 work permits issued to foreign college-migrants in 2024 likely have a huge career impact on the roughly 800,000 Americans who graduate with technology-intensive, four-year degrees in business, science, computer, math, architecture, and healthcare. Census data from 2021 showed that many Americans are pushed out of the technology careers and salaries they studied to achieve.

Nationwide, companies use multiple visa programs — such as the H-1B visa — to cut salary costs by keeping at least 1.5 million foreign white-collar visa workers in jobs sought by Americans.

Biden’s pro-migration border chief, Alejandro Mayorkas, expanded the OPT programs by allowing universities to relabel many non-technology degrees as high-tech STEM degrees. For example, in January 2022, Mayorkas added 22 new courses to the STEM-OPT category, including forestry, data visualization, environmental studies, and organizational psychology.

Many of the university migrants are hired via ethnic and family networks that discriminate against Americans. Those programs are also a springboard for migrants to win H-1B visas, U.S. careers, and U.S. citizenship.

Overall, foreign students can use university payments to get four years of work permits, regardless of the quality of the education. The dangled promises of U.S. work permits raise at least $40 billion in extra revenues for the universities and colleges each year.

The expanded foreign-worker programs were quietly created by President Joe Biden’s deputies without approval by Congress. Biden’s deputies also allowed employers to get a 15 percent tax break for hiring the college migrants in place of Americans.

But Trump recently announced he would prefer to halve the number of foreign students. “We have people who want to go to Harvard and other schools, they can’t get in because we have foreign students there,” Trump said as he suggested the universities should lower the population share of foreign students from 27 percent to 15 percent.

The agency’s 2024 data showed that almost 2,366 Harvard students held OPT work permits. Another 2,218 held J-1 visas, often for federally funded work in universities’ laboratories.

Trump is also using his control over the student visas to force universities to comply with federal civil rights laws, end their illegal diversity policies, and reduce their cooperation with China. “Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard,” a Harvard lawsuit insists.

In 2024, Indians comprised the largest national group in the work permit programs. India sent 422,235 students or college-workers, while China’s resident population dropped slightly to 329,541.

India’s college-migrant population has more than doubled since 2020, when 207,460 Indians were enrolled in U.S. colleges. In 2019, 63,744 Indians were enrolled in the STEM-OPT program.

The Indian population in the United States is rising because India’s industrial policy seeks to transfer its huge population of mixed-skill graduates into white-collar jobs across the developed world and especially into the United States. The resident population of Indian students or workers rose by 12 percent in 2024, the report noted:

Most foreign students participating in the post-completion science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) OPT extension were from India (48.0%) or China (20.4%).

The CPT and OPT programs are a subset of the many mixed-skill visa programs that keep at least 1.5 million foreign graduates in white-collar jobs that would otherwise go to U.S. graduates and professionals. The imported workers have little power or inclination to argue with the C-Suite, ensuring massive damage to American careers, salaries, productivity, and innovation.

The work permit programs are rarely mentioned by establishment media outlets. When they are mentioned, it is usually in a favorable tone that ignores the damage to Americans. For example, the Associated Press reported on May 30:

Many international students come to the U.S. with hopes of gaining work experience and returning to their home countries or pursuing a career in the U.S. But the administration’s intensifying scrutiny of international students — and signs that formal career pathways for them may be closed — are leading some to reconsider their plans.

…

Like many international students, Marko, 29, finds himself glued to the news with a growing sense of alarm. His Optional Practical Training expires in a month, and he has applied for an extension but hasn’t heard back, leaving him in limbo. Lawyers for the tech company where he works in New York City advised him to carry proof of his legal status in his wallet, which he finds “dehumanizing.”

The AP article was headlined: “Career pathways in the US dim for international students as Trump cracks down on visas.”

Reporters rarely, or never, report the damage to Americans.

Computer professional Jim from Herndon recently told Breitbart News that he has a nephew who graduated last year with a degree in engineering and computers, and a nephew who is about to graduate with a degree in Geographic Information Systems: “They found nothing, so they think they’ll be doing lifeguarding in the summer.”

STEM graduates “only have two years after they graduate to get a pipeline [career-starting job], and then [recruiters] move on to the next new grads,” he said. In contrast, his two nieces with degrees in sociology and film studies landed administration and marketing jobs for roughly $100,000, he added.

This semi-official media silence helps to minimize Americans’ understanding of the white-collar outsourcing that threatens their livelihoods and their children’s careers.

The white-collar inflow has deeply damaged career prospects for many American graduates who are locked out of career-starting jobs by foreign graduates. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently reported:

The labor market for recent college graduates deteriorated noticeably in the first quarter of 2025. The unemployment rate jumped to 5.8 percent — the highest reading since 2021 — and the underemployment rate rose sharply to 41.2 percent.

The unemployment rate for high-tech graduates was higher than average, according to the report. For example, the unemployment rate for “computer engineering” graduates was 7.5 percent, and for “computer science” graduates was 6.1 percent.

“Something strange, and potentially alarming, is happening to the job market for young, educated workers,” the Atlantic magazine reported in April. “Even newly minted M.B.A.s from elite programs are struggling to find work.”