Republican Rep. Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin introduced a bill Thursday, titled the “OPT Fair Tax Act,” that requires employers to pay the same Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes for international students as paid for American workers.
Currently under federal laws, foreign students and employers participating in the Optional Practical Training (OPT) extension program are exempt from paying Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes, which companies are required to pay for domestic workers. Some lawmakers believe this creates a significant financial incentive for employers to hire foreign OPT workers over Americans.
“Americans should not be put at a disadvantage because Washington created a loophole that favors hiring foreign workers over qualified U.S. citizens,” Grothman told Fox News Digital. He added that “too many young Americans graduating from our colleges and universities are forced to compete against a system that tilts the playing field against them.”
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According to a Fox News report, the development follows comments by Todd Lyons, director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who said federal investigators identified more than 10,000 foreign students linked to “suspect employers” associated with the OPT program.
Lyons said the OPT program, which lets international students on F-1 visas work temporarily in the country in jobs related to their field of study, had “ballooned into an uncontrolled guest worker pipeline with hundreds of thousands of foreign students working in the United States.”
“Today, we are announcing we have identified over 10,000 foreign students who claim to be working for highly suspect employers, and that’s just among the top 25 OPT employers. This is only the tip of the iceberg,” he said.
Lyons also claimed investigators identified what he described as “phantom employees” — foreign students who allegedly obtained work authorization through the OPT program but never reported to the workplaces they listed as their employment sites.
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Responding to the findings, Grothman told Fox News that the reports expose “serious vulnerabilities within the OPT program” and “should alarm every American.”
Grothman further argued that the scale of the program’s tax advantages has been substantial. He cited data from the technology and industry think tank Institute for Progress, which found that an average of roughly 330,000 students participated in OPT annually between fiscal years 2017 and 2022.
The think tank also estimated that eliminating the tax exemption would increase federal revenue by between $27 billion and $36 billion over a 10-year period.
This comes amid rising debates about immigration during President Donald Trump’s second term. Issues related to immigration, visas and job market have been the source of much discussion and controversy of late.