At a recent Turning Point USA event, a group of college students told JD Vance that the system isn’t working for them and voiced frustration with the H-1B visa program, a program that allows U.S. companies to hire foreign workers for less than American workers in specialty occupations. They described a job market that has grown more difficult to enter, even in fields once considered stable. Vice President Vance agreed and urged them to press elected officials to take a clearer stance on the program, adding that they should support candidates who favor ending it.
That exchange reflects a broader frustration that has become difficult to ignore. For many recent graduates, especially in fields like computer science, the entry-level job market has tightened noticeably. Hiring has slowed, competition has intensified, and roles that once served as a reliable starting point now feel far less accessible.
In Washington, officials with power point to Congress, cite gridlock, and call for new legislation. Yet in this case, that framing obscures more than it clarifies. The executive branch already exercises substantial control over several of the programs shaping this part of the labor market. The question is not whether the government can act, but whether it is willing to use the authority it already has.
The debate over H-1B visas goes to the heart of how companies use guest worker visa programs to legally displace American workers. At the same time, focusing exclusively on H-1B risks overlooking a broader and more consequential shift. Over the past two decades, a set of programs, many created or expanded through regulation rather than statute, has come to play an increasingly central role in entry-level hiring.
The OPT Loophole
The Optional Practical Training program, known as OPT, offers the clearest example. Originally designed as a limited training period for foreign students closely tied to their field of study, OPT allows up to 12 months of work after graduation. Think of it as an internship, meant to let foreign graduates gain hands-on experience before returning home or transitioning to a different visa.
That baseline is what makes the subsequent expansion so significant. In 2008, the George W. Bush administration introduced a STEM extension through regulation alone, allowing graduates in science, technology, engineering, and math fields to remain in the workforce beyond that initial year. The Obama administration later expanded that extension further, ultimately allowing up to three years of work authorization.
What began as a one-year training benefit now functions as a multi-year work visa in all but name.
By 2024, more than 289,938 foreign graduates were granted permission to find work through OPT and its STEM extension. Since 2015, annual approvals under OPT, especially STEM OPT, have continued to accelerate without drawing nearly all the political attention. Even a substantial overhaul of H-1B would leave this parallel system largely untouched.
What makes this especially significant is not just scale but origin. Because the STEM OPT extension was created through regulation, not by Congress, it can be modified the same way: by the executive branch, without a single vote on Capitol Hill. Unlike H-1B, OPT is not subject to an annual cap. Employers can hire from a large pool of foreign graduates outside the numerical limits Congress set for temporary work visas. That makes it squarely an executive problem, but also an executive opportunity.
If this administration is serious about the effect of guest worker programs on entry-level employment, it is difficult to explain why attention remains fixed on Congress while the largest of these programs goes largely unaddressed.
The Spouse Loophole
A similar pattern appears in the work authorization granted to certain spouses of H-1B visa holders, known as H-4 EAD (Employment Authorization Documents) issued to H-4 dependent visa holders. In 2025, the Institute for Sound Public Policy estimates 150,000 H-4 EADs working in the country. The Obama administration created this benefit through regulation in response to severe green card backlogs, particularly for Indian nationals, who face the longest wait times in the employment-based immigration system.
In practice, the program has grown well beyond its original rationale. The benefit is overwhelmingly concentrated among Indian nationals, who account for roughly 90 percent of recipients. Unlike H-1B workers, these spouses are not tied to a specific employer and are not subject to comparable wage or labor protections. Congress never authorized this open-ended labor market access. It was created by regulation and can be rescinded by regulation.
The program has also begun to shape behavior within the green card process itself. Because spousal work authorization kicks in at certain stages of the sponsorship process, it can create incentives to pursue employer sponsorship even where the underlying job relationship is weak or largely transactional — pursued not for the job itself, but for the path it opens toward permanent residence. As more applicants enter the pipeline under these conditions, pressure builds on an already backlogged system and makes it harder to distinguish genuine employment relationships from those driven primarily by immigration incentives.
A System More Permissive Than It Appears
Taken together, H-1B, OPT, STEM OPT, H-4 spousal work authorization, and the Curricular Practical Training (CPT) program, which allows foreign students to work off-campus as part of their studies—these programs form a system that is far more expansive than most Americans realize. They are also riddled with fraud.
The good news is that the administration already has the authority to act on all of them.
On H-1B, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) can tighten the definition of a “specialty occupation.” In plain terms: if a job does not truly require a specific degree in a specific field, it should not qualify. DHS can also require employers to demonstrate that they — not a staffing intermediary or outside client — actually control the worker’s duties, supervision, and worksite.
This approach has precedent. In 2010, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services issued what became known as the Neufeld Memo, which required employers to prove a real employer-employee relationship, particularly when placing workers at third-party client sites. The target was a widespread staffing model in which firms sponsor H-1B workers on paper, then lease them out to end clients who direct their work, set their hours, and control their assignments. That arrangement allows companies to access H-1B labor without taking on the legal responsibilities of being the employer of record and makes it nearly impossible to enforce wage and working condition protections. The Neufeld Memo made that model far harder to sustain. Legal challenges largely failed. Industry pressure eventually got it watered down and then shelved. Reinstating it through formal rulemaking would strike at the heart of how the H-1B program is most commonly abused.
On OPT and STEM OPT, DHS can return the program to its original purpose. The most defensible step would be to eliminate the STEM extension, the expansion from one year to three, which rests on a thinner regulatory foundation and would be harder to challenge in court. Restoring OPT to its original 12-month limit would bring the program back in line with its stated training purpose while significantly reducing its labor market footprint.
On H-4 EAD, DHS can rescind the regulation that created spousal work authorization. H-4 spouses could continue living lawfully in the United States as dependents, but without open-ended access to the labor market. A prospective phaseout, letting existing permits expire while ending renewals, would reduce disruption and strengthen the rule’s legal standing.
On CPT, DHS can clarify that employment must be a genuine component of an academic program, not a workaround for extending work authorization indefinitely. It can also increase oversight of schools that appear to use enrollment primarily as a vehicle for work permits rather than education.
Across all of these programs, DHS can strengthen enforcement through more frequent site visits, better data sharing with the Department of Labor, and closer scrutiny of high-volume employers and universities.
The Lesson From the First Term
None of these ideas requires new legislation. But it does require disciplined rulemaking.
Both the Obama and Biden administrations showed how to use the administrative process to advance immigration policy while building a legal record capable of withstanding judicial review. The Trump administration’s first-term effort to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), for example, was blocked by the courts because the agency’s reasoning was found to be arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which is the law that governs how federal agencies make rules.
If this administration intends to continue pursuing a more restrictive approach to work authorization, it would be well served to follow that model: build the evidence, follow the procedure, and make the decision defensible.
For many young Americans entering the workforce today, the stakes are already clear. The tools exist. The question is whether they will be used.
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