Weaving the Threads: Visa Categories Are No Longer a Specialist’s Subject

The administration is investing in American science while rewriting the immigration arrangements on which universities built their research and graduate programs. The consequences land in offices that may not be fluent in immigration law.

On October 8, the White House announced more than $6 billion in public and private commitments to scientific research and workforce development, including a $100 million Energy Department fellowship supporting accelerated doctoral programs with research experience in national laboratories and industry.¹

The same day, the Labor Department’s inspector general announced subpoenas to nine research universities investigating potential fraud in their J-1 exchange visitor programs, the visa category through which universities bring in many visiting scholars and postdoctoral researchers.² The Department of Homeland Security also published a proposed rule requiring universities to pay $70,000 before recommending an international student for Optional Practical Training (OPT), the principal form of postgraduation work authorization available to F-1 students, with another $30,000 for subsequent participation.³

The announcements came from different agencies pursuing different responsibilities. They also reveal a common policy direction.

The administration wants to strengthen the domestic scientific workforce, protect American workers from what it regards as unfair competition, and exercise greater control over the conditions under which foreign nationals study and conduct research in the United States. Its investments in American science and restrictions on immigration serve complementary purposes. One seeks to expand opportunities for American scientists. The other questions how much universities and employers should rely on international talent. The OPT proposal states the premise plainly: the F-1 student visa, in DHS’s words, was never intended to provide a pathway to employment in the United States.

For universities, the implications are substantial because international education and research developed around arrangements that cross the boundaries between academic programming, employment, and immigration. Federal policy is now challenging the assumptions on which those arrangements depend, and it is doing so in several parts of the university at once.

Practical training is the clearest case. Universities have long offered international students professional experience through employment after graduation and internships during their studies. Those opportunities help attract students, connect academic programs with employers, and contribute to the economics of graduate education.

The government is reconsidering both ends of that arrangement.

The proposed OPT fees reach the end that follows graduation. DHS expects the cost to reduce participation and make universities more selective about which graduates receive recommendations. A university with 200 international graduates seeking initial OPT would face $14 million in fees if it supported every request; the actual exposure would depend on how many recommendations an institution chose to make. The university would pay the fee. Whether it then absorbs the cost, charges international students, spreads it across tuition, or seeks contributions from employers is left to the institution; DHS says any of those is acceptable.

The other end comes during the degree. In August, the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, the DHS office that certifies schools to enroll international students, issued guidance restricting Curricular Practical Training (CPT) to experiences required of all students to complete a degree.⁴ The interpretation reaches arrangements under which international students undertake internships as electives or as alternatives within otherwise legitimate academic programs. Higher education associations have challenged it in court.⁵

No international student office can resolve these measures alone. The curriculum belongs to the faculty. Graduate deans decide what professional experience a program offers, admissions describes it to applicants, and the finance office has already counted the enrollment it produces. A change to practical training reaches all of them, even though immigration specialists administer the authorization.

The J-1 investigations expose the same pattern in university research.

According to its inspector general, the Labor Department is examining alleged misuse and misclassification of J-1 exchange visitor status at nine institutions, including whether it was used to avoid employment obligations. The inspector general’s announcement cited a comparison showing that about 61 percent of federally supported postdoctoral workers and researchers at those institutions are foreign nationals, against 38 percent elsewhere. The figures do not establish misconduct. They explain where the government is looking.

The administration has also expanded coordination among agencies responsible for visa fraud, labor enforcement, civil rights, and research security.⁶ An appointment that looks routine from inside a university may draw questions from several federal authorities, each asking something beyond the visa itself.

Government inquiries reach well beyond employment records. In May 2025, DHS revoked a research university’s certification to enroll international students after finding its responses to requests for student records insufficient. As a condition of restoring certification, the department demanded five years of disciplinary records and footage of protests involving international students. A federal court blocked the revocation.⁷ The dispute showed how records created for campus discipline could become central to an institution’s authority to enroll thousands of students.

Student affairs offices write conduct codes and administer disciplinary processes with free expression and campus order in view. Those same records may become immigration evidence. The office that writes the protest policy and the office that maintains immigration records have rarely needed each other. Federal enforcement can bring their work together, regardless of whether the university anticipated that connection.

Washington views these institutional arrangements through objectives that universities have traditionally considered separately. A graduate internship is an academic opportunity to the faculty, an enrollment advantage to admissions, and a potential substitute for domestic labor to federal regulators. A foreign postdoctoral researcher represents scientific expertise to a department while raising questions about employment classification or research security elsewhere in government.

For years, immigration could be treated as a specialized administrative function because the underlying arrangements were predictable. Specialists administered the categories, counsel were consulted when a case went wrong, and the fundamentals were not widely known beyond the international office. That was a reasonable allocation of attention when the rules held still, but it no longer matches the federal government’s approach. Washington increasingly treats international student enrollment, employment authorization, research security, and civil rights as connected questions. Universities still assign them to separate offices. Each office may be right on its own terms and the institution wrong on the whole.

The practical task is to identify where international participation has become part of an institution’s operating assumptions. Some programs depend on practical training to sustain enrollment, and some research groups depend on classifications that investigators may now compare against payroll and grant records. Which conduct records would a federal agency ask for, and what would they show? Who is responsible for noticing when a federal immigration initiative changes the premise behind an academic, personnel, or financial decision?

Those questions belong in academic planning, research administration, student affairs, and institutional budgeting, with immigration expertise informing the decisions rather than arriving after they have been made. Universities pursuing the administration’s new scientific initiatives will be doing so under its changed approach to the international students and researchers their programs rely on.

The consequential decision may be made long before anyone requests a visa.

AJM Institutional Counsel and Strategy advises universities, colleges, and health systems on federal regulatory strategy and institutional decision-making.

NOTES

1. The White House, “Fact Sheet: Trump Administration Announces the Most Ambitious Set of Science Initiatives This Century,” October 8, 2026, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2026/10/fact-sheet-trump-administration-announces-the-most-ambitious-set-of-science-initiatives-this-century/; U.S. Department of Energy, “FACT SHEET: The Energy Department is Ushering in a Golden Age of American Science,” October 9, 2026, https://www.energy.gov/node/4860596.
2. U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Inspector General, “DOL Inspector General D’Esposito Announces Historic Fraud Investigation into University J-1 Visa Programs,” October 9, 2026, https://www.oig.dol.gov/public/Press%20Releases/OIG-Press-Release-100926.htm; remarks of Inspector General Anthony P. D’Esposito, White House press conference, October 8, 2026, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QAu9FOEOv8.
3. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, “Optional Practical Training Fees,” Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, 91 Fed. Reg. 64566 (October 8, 2026), https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/10/08/2026-20660/optional-practical-training-fees.
4. Student and Exchange Visitor Program, Broadcast Message 2608-02, August 24, 2026, https://www.ice.gov/doclib/sevis/pdf/bcm_260802.pdf; Broadcast Message 2608-01, August 12, 2026, https://www.ice.gov/doclib/sevis/pdf/bcm260801.pdf.
5. Complaint, Association of American Universities et al. v. DHS (D. Mass., filed October 5, 2026), https://www.nafsa.org/sites/default/files/media/document/CPT%20Complaint%20AAU%20v.%20DHS%20.pdf.
6. Executive Order 14431, 91 Fed. Reg. 60501 (September 23, 2026), https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-09-23/pdf/2026-19555.pdf; U.S. Department of Labor, Project Firewall, News Release No. 25-1476-NAT, September 19, 2025, https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/osec/osec20250919; Office of Inspector General release and remarks, supra note 2 (Visa Fraud Strike Team; foreign influence and improper financial relationships affecting federally funded research); U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, “EEOC Acting Chair Vows to Protect American Workers from Anti-American Bias,” February 19, 2025, https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/eeoc-acting-chair-vows-protect-american-workers-anti-american-bias; U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, “Civil Rights Division Secures Settlement with OpenAI for Discriminating Against U.S. Workers,” Press Release No. 26-884, August 4, 2026, https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/civil-rights-division-secures-settlement-openai-discriminating-against-us-workers.
7. Harvard University v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, No. 25-cv-11472 (D. Mass.) (temporary restraining order, May 23, 2025; preliminary injunction, June 20, 2025); Letter from Secretary Kristi Noem to Harvard University, May 22, 2025, https://www.cu.edu/doc/harvardsevpdecertification52225pdf; American Institute of Physics, “Revocation of university SEVP certification,” updated March 15, 2026, https://www.aip.org/research/visa-immigration/sevp-certification-revocation.