In the 2024/25 scholastic year, trainees from India( 363,019 )and individuals’s Republic of China (PRC )(265,919)comprised 53 percent (India, 31 percent; PRC, 23 percent)of all foreign trainees (1,177,766) at the post-secondary level, according to the Institute of International Education’s (IIE)yearly census. The number of F-1 trainee visas the U.S. State Department provided from May to August 2025 to Indian and PRC nationals fell considerably from previous years’levels.
Comparing the variety of F-1 visas provided throughout the May-August duration from 2017 to 2025 (leaving out 2020, when visa issuance fell considerably due to the fact that of the Covid pandemic), in 2025:
- The variety of visas released to nationals of India (22,149) decreased by 60 percent from the typical number provided throughout 2017-19/2021 -24 (55,717), and by 62 percent from 2024 (58,694); and
The number released to nationals of the PRC (40,034) decreased by 46 percent from the 2017-19/2021 -24 average (73,853), and by 34 percent from 2024 (61,075).
Information and source info is offered in the Appendix.
I picked the May-August duration for functions of contrast for 2 factors. The bulk of each year’s F-1 visas are released in this duration in anticipation of the upcoming scholastic year. In 2024, 77 percent of all F-1 visas released to Indian nationals and 76 percent provided to PRC nationals were provided throughout this duration. Second, figures from September 2025 are the most current offered from the State Department.
These decreases, if sustained, will significantly benefit American trainees and our nationwide security. Let me discuss why.
Optional Practical Training
Of the more than one million foreign trainees in the U.S. throughout the 2024/25 scholastic year, totally one-quarter (294,253) had actually currently finished their degrees and were operating in the U.S. pursuant to “Optional Practical Training” (OPT) according to IIE’s census. And of these, an impressive 70 percent originated from India (49 percent, 143,740) or the PRC (21 percent, 61,981).
OPT permits aliens on trainee visas to work for companies in the U.S., usually after finishing or finishing the coursework for their degrees. These non-student “trainees” can normally get approximately 12 months of work permission, with those in STEM (science, innovation, engineering, or mathematics) fields qualified for an extra 24-month extension, for an overall of approximately 36 months of work.
According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, of 165,524 foreign trainees licensed to take part in STEM-OPT in 2024, 68 percent (113,138) were Indian residents (48 percent, 79,331) or PRC people (20 percent, 33,807).
In 2008, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) produced STEM-OPT for the express and freely acknowledged function of preventing the congressionally developed mathematical cap for H-1B short-lived foreign employees in specialized professions, specifying that:
Congress … has actually restricted USCIS from giving H-1B status to more than 65,000 … aliens throughout any.
The failure of U.S. companies … to acquire H-1B status for extremely proficient foreign trainees … has actually negatively impacted the capability of U.S. companies to hire and maintain competent employees and produces a competitive drawback for U.S. business.
[T]he oversubscription of the H-1B program makes acquiring even short-lived work permission an unpredictable possibility. … This guideline will assist alleviate this problem.
DHS acted after Microsoft’s head lobbyist Jack Krumholtz went to a D.C. supper celebration in 2007 at which DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff was a visitor. Krumholtz later on composed to Secretary Chertoff (see here, pp. 747a-753a) that “I valued quite the opportunity to talk with you just recently at the supper” and “am composing to follow up in more information on the recommendation we quickly talked about for action that [DHS] can take quickly and instantly … to assist attend to the H-1B visa lack … [by] extend[ing] the duration of [OPT] … beyond its existing optimum of one year”.
The variety of aliens who might be provided H-1B visas is topped at 65,000 each , though the cap is efficiently 85,000 as it does not use to aliens who have actually made postgraduate degrees from U.S. schools “up until the number … who are excused … surpasses 20,000” (and it does not use to aliens who will work for colleges or universities and particular research study companies).
Many every year, need for H-1B visas far surpasses the offered supply. In the past, Congress increased the H-1B cap– however just momentarily, since as your home Judiciary Committee described:
There will be a bumper crop of American college graduates competent in computer technology start in the summertime of 2001. These trainees have actually been attracted into the field … by the lightening up chances in this boom or bust occupation. [T]he chances generated by a tight labor market are bringing fresh entrants into the field … [Any] labor scarcity … need to not last past the graduation dates of these trainees. Therefore, Congress must not threaten the[ir] future professions … by broadening the H– 1B quota forever.
DHS has actually approximated that (since September 30, 2019) an overall of 583,420 aliens were licensed to operate in the U.S. under the H-1B program. This is due to the fact that while the optimal duration of licensed remain in H-1B status is usually approximately 6 years, aliens can remain in H-1B status forever in specific circumstances. By 2024, 340,066 aliens were taking part in OPT (which has no mathematical limitations) and an extra 165,524 were taking part in STEM-OPT, an overall of 505,590. Therefore, OPT (which is no place even pointed out in the INA) now matches the H-1B program itself in the variety of aliens operating in the U.S.
As my coworker Elizabeth Jacobs has actually composed, “OPT can drawback current U.S. graduates by producing an unequal labor market in which foreign trainees can be worked with more inexpensively than their American graduate peers.” She elaborated that:
OPT … does not have much of the labor securities that Congress needs in other places in migration law. Statute needs that companies pay H-1B employees the greater of the real or fundamental wage of employees in their professions. Companies need to likewise vouch for the Department of Labor that, to name a few things, the work of the H-1B employee will not weaken the working conditions of likewise used U.S. employees before they can petition for an H-1B employee. These systems are flawed, however … there are no mutual requirements for OPT companies.
And Jacobs discussed that:
Since F-1 visa holders on OPT are categorized by the IRS as “trainees” (even after graduation), their companies are exempt from paying federal payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare– conserving approximately 7.65 percent in labor expenses per employee– while American graduates produce these expenses for companies. This tax aid makes OPT employees economically more appealing to business, particularly for entry-level positions in competitive markets.
I have actually promoted for the termination of OPT in order to 1) safeguard the incomes and job opportunity of American trainees and employees; and 2) end the George W. Bush and Obama administrations’ disgraceful usage of the OPT program to overturn the will of Congress. Brief of that, minimizing the OPT pipeline of foreign trainees from India and the PRC– who make up the bulk of all OPT individuals– will minimize the negative results of OPT on American trainees and employees.
Science, Technology, Espionage, and Math
PRC authorities freely declare that armed dispute with the United States is inescapable and have actually been assiduously pursuing the objective of military supremacy over the U.S. to be able to dominate in a war. The Chinese Communist Party is intently concentrated on updating its military to close the space in between U.S. and Chinese military power, accepting important and emerging innovations to act as “assassin’s mace” or “silver bullet” innovations.
A RAND Corporation expert has actually concluded that must the PRC be successful, this would “represent possibly the most destabilizing geostrategic advancement of the 21st century. [S]teep advances in the PLA’s [People’s Liberation Army’s] standard abilities … could, for the very first time in modern-day history, pit the United States versus a militarily exceptional enemy.”
In 2005, my then-boss U.S. Rep. John Hostettler (R-Ind.), chairman of your house Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims, concluded that “There is no country that participates in surreptitious unlawful innovation acquisition for functions of both industrial piracy and military development on a scale that approaches that of individuals’s Republic of China.” This is a lot more real today. In 2022, Matthew Olsen, assistant attorney general of the United States for nationwide security, cautioned that”[T]he dangers from the PRC federal government are ‘more brazen [and] more harmful than ever in the past.’ [It] threatens our security through its collective usage of espionage, theft of trade tricks, harmful cyber activity, multinational repression, and other strategies.”
Much of the espionage and theft of trade tricks is performed by trainees from the PRC. A personnel report of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, developed by Congress to evaluate the nationwide security ramifications of trade and financial ties in between the U.S. and the PRC, concluded that PRC President “Xi Jinping, has … [made] clear that abroad Chinese trainees and scholars are crucial to his strategies to change China into an ingenious and militarily powerful world power.”
It is not always that all trainees come here from the PRC meaning to take part in espionage. Rather, numerous are undoubtedly pressed to do so by the PRC. Edward Ramotowski, the Trump administration’s deputy assistant secretary of State, affirmed in 2018 that “foreign trainees, typically without any wicked intent in their strategy of research study in the United States, are later on co-opted to work for their federal government”. And previous CIA officer Joe Augustyn specified that “We understand without a doubt that anytime a college student from China pertains to the United States, they are informed when they go, and informed when they return.”
And yet, the variety of trainees from the PRC at U.S. universities has actually escalated. As just recently as 2008/09, they represented just 15 percent of all foreign trainees; in 1994/95 just 9 percent; and in 1984/85 just 3 percent.
I have actually composed in confusion in the Washington Examiner that, “Believe it or not, we are participating in a project of turbocharging the PRC’s war preparations. Crazy? Apparently.” I concluded that, “It might be time to think about disallowing the entry of, or issuance of visas to, all trainees and exchange visitors from the PRC, or a minimum of those who will be studying in STEM or other fields most likely to provide access to info and research study of worth to the PLA.” Brief of that, decreases in the number of PRC trainees coming to U.S. colleges and universities will lower the general level of espionage and innovation theft on school and will be to the advantage of U.S. nationwide security.
Appendix
The underlying trainee visa information is readily available here; F-1 visa numbers originated from the U.S. State Department Visa Office’s regular monthly report “Visa Issuances by Nationality”, readily available here: August 2025, July 2025, June 2025, May 2025, December 2024, November 2024, October 2024, September 2024, August 2024, July 2024, June 2024, May 2024, April 2024, March 2024, February 2024, January 2024, August 2023, July 2023, June 2023, May 2023, August 2022, July 2022, June 2022, May 2022, August 2021, July 2021, June 2021, May 2021, August 2019, July 2019, June 2019, May 2019, August 2018, July 2018, June 2018, May 2018, August 2017, July 2017, June 2017, May 2017.