Report: F-1 OPT Numbers Significantly Increased from 2004-2016

I was interviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle’s Trisha Thadani for her well-researched article regarding the F-1 OPT program and the latest results of the Pew Research Center’s 12-year period study into this program, released today, in which it found that “Federal training program sees 400% increase in foreign students graduating and working in STEM fields from 2008 to 2016“.

Though it looks as if we can expect a further hobbling of the F-1 OPT program, I believe that such an act would only damage our nation’s precarious international lead in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).  There is a very real and obvious workforce problem in our country, for which the OPT or the H-1B is a temporary salve: not the cause. Rather, the issue is that among the tens of thousands of things that America has stopped manufacturing en masse include American STEM Graduates. That is the single biggest reason why half of our Ph.D. candidates as well as a quarter of our STEM workforce are foreign born.

Ultimately, instead of scapegoating “Srinivas from Hyderabad” for daring to pay U.S. tuition fees, studying hard, and filling one of the 480,000 open computing jobs nationwide in OPT or H-1B status, we should be asking ourselves why “Suzy from Ohio” is majoring in Italian Art History or Anthropology or Philosophy instead of Computer Engineering. Anti-immigrationists must stop playing the victim, stop shifting the blame onto the voiceless, and start taking personal responsibility, the American Way: by enrolling themselves or their own children into Mathematics, Biochemistry, Engineering, or Information Technology programs.