A bipartisan duo is pushing back on President Donald Trump’s attempts to end a program that lets hundreds of thousands of foreign students work in the US for a year after graduation. Reps. Sam Liccardo (D-CA) and Jay Obernolte (R-CA) introduced a bill that would codify Optional Practical Training (OPT), which allows international students to work in their field of study for 12 months, with extensi...
The article unveils a critical struggle over the fate of OPT, not as a simple policy disagreement, but as a proxy war reflecting deeper anxieties about technological competition and the perceived flow of talent. The narrative is dominated by a pattern of framing international students not as contributors, but as potential drains – a classic “motte-and-bailey” tactic, where a small difference in opinion (“they want to stop skilled workers from coming here”) is presented as an extreme position (“...