The Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced a major crackdown on foreign students working at the Optional Practical Training program, along with their studies, and said they uncovered a major fraud going on with fake companies, non-existent companies giving OPT jobs to students. Immigration attorney Emily Neumann said what ICE described is very real. Empty buildings do get listed as worksites for hundreds of students, where no actual employees ever work.Neumann said most companies do not indulge in these malpractices but now after the ICE announced this crackdown, they should be cautious that they are doing everything needful, as there will be more site visits.Neumann listed three things the HR and the in-house counsel of the companies that hire OPT students should check immediately.
- Is your Form I-983 current? If the worksite, supervisor, or training description on file does not match what the student is actually doing today, that gap is the first thing an investigator will find.
- Do the supervisors of your STEM OPT students know they are responsible for the training described on that form? On a site visit, the supervisor’s answers are compared against the form that was signed.
- Are you reporting terminations within five business days? That is a regulatory deadline, not a guideline.
Overall OPT checklists
- The student applies for OPT by filing Form I-765 and the employers do not have to submt any petition for standard, non-STEM OPT.
- The work should be directly related to the student’s field of study and the connection should be as such that it can be explained in writing if asked for.
- The student must report the employment information to the Designated School Official (DSO) at the school that issued the Form I-20.
- The employer should expect to provide a written offer letter, a job description, and, if asked, a letter explaining the connection between the role and the degree.
- When the OPT ends, the student needs to communicate this to the DSO.
What irregularities did ICE find?
- Empty buildings, locked doors, and residential addresses serving as the listed work sites for hundreds of students.
- Coordinated employer clusters in shared office complexes, where supposedly separate employers operated nearly identical websites and shared management personnel denying any business relationship with one another.
- A single owner establishinh multiple OPT employer entities, allegedly to structure income, evade taxes, and obscure the true employment relationship.
- International financial patterns spanning multiple countries and bank accounts, missing employment records, and offshore (mostly India) human-resources or payroll arrangements.
- OPT workers never coming to work.