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A Troubling Lack of Transparency

Biden administration eliminates OPT employer data in newest SEVP report

By Jon Feere on April 1, 2021

The Biden administration has significantly reduced transparency into the nation’s foreign student and exchange visitor programs, inexplicably choosing not to post employer data that had been made public over the last three years.

Specifically, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) chose not to post the 2020 data on employers related to the controversial Optional Practical Training (OPT) programs, or the 2020 data on employers under the J-1 visa program administered by the State Department. The data related to these programs is managed by DHS in its Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), a national security-focused tracking system developed in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

Extensive data on these programs for 2017, 2018, and 2019 is available online as the result of a much-needed transparency effort spearheaded by the Trump administration. For the first time ever, the media and the public had access to data ranging from the top 500 academic schools ranked by the largest number of SEVIS records, to the entire list of vocational schools ranked by number of SEVIS records, to the countries of citizenship of all foreign students participating in STEM OPT, to list a few examples. This data has been very helpful for reporters and policy-makers seeking a better understanding of the nation’s foreign student programs.

But last week, without explanation, the Biden administration published the 2020 data without any of the employer-related data that was made available in previous years. Here’s the 2019 data that is not available for 2020:

The “SEVIS by the Numbers” annual report is the central publication of the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP), the division within U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that manages SEVIS and the foreign student program generally. That report declined in content quality under the Obama administration, but was developed to a detailed, informative report under the Trump administration.

Under the Obama administration, the report improved graphically from previous years, but the content became more limited and not all that useful for research purposes. For example, the Obama-era reports provided foreign student gender breakdowns by sending country, and informed readers that 58 percent of students from Nepal studied in a STEM field, for example, but offered nothing about the massive OPT employment program run by SEVP that allows hundreds of thousands of former foreign students to work in the United States, even though they ceased being students upon graduation.

Under the Trump administration, I worked with SEVP and ICE leadership to develop the SEVIS annual report into a more detailed, informative product that presents information in a straightforward format. It also linked to 16 comprehensive annual datasets developed directly from the SEVIS database. Six of them were the employer data sets linked above.

Not only did ICE’s SEVP not publish the employer datasets, it also removed all data on OPT from the 2020 “SEVIS by the Numbers” report. Here’s what the 2019 “SEVIS by the Numbers” report looks like:

Optional Practical Training and Curricular Practical Training

Nonimmigrant students can participate in various types of practical training related to their field of study while they are in the United States.

  • Pre-completion OPT takes place prior to a student’s program end date and can last up to 12 months.
  • Post-completion OPT takes place after a student’s program end date and can also last up to 12 months.
  • STEM OPT is a 24-month extension of OPT for qualifying students with STEM degrees.
  • CPT takes place prior to a student’s program end date and is integral to the school’s established curriculum.

Note: To participate in any form of OPT, a nonimmigrant student must receive an EAD from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

In calendar year 2019, there were 140,137 pre- and post-completion OPT students with both an EAD and who reported working for an employer, 72,168 STEM OPT students with both an EAD and who reported working for an employer, and 116,337 CPT students who reported working for an employer.

The total number of nonimmigrant students working at any point during a calendar year may exceed the number of employment authorizations issued each year because STEM OPT extensions are two-year authorizations and OPT authorizations are granted on a rolling basis throughout the year. Reporting the number of authorizations issued allows for precise reporting on how many individuals pursued work authorization under the program in a given year. More information on total annual employment authorizations is available on the SEVP Data Library.

Please visit the SEVP Data Library for annual data on OPT, STEM OPT, and CPT.

Below are the top 25 employers for students participating in pre- and post-completion OPT in calendar year 2019. This does not include students participating in STEM OPT. [Internal citation omitted.]

This section of the report is followed by three tables: the top 25 employers for students participating in OPT; the top 25 employers for students participating in STEM OPT; and the top 25 employers participating in CPT. Each table is followed by a link to the full datasets, which include the top 200 employers in each category. Here is the OPT table contained in the 2019 report:

Please visit the SEVP Data Library for the 2019 Top 200 Employers for Pre- and Post- Completion OPT students.

The 2020 version of the report, the first to be published by the Biden administration, contains only the following:

Optional Practical Training and Curricular Practical Training

International students can participate in various types of practical training related to their field of study while they are in the United States.

  • Pre-completion OPT takes place prior to a student’s program end date and can last up to 12 months.
  • Post-completion OPT takes place after a student’s program end date and can also last up to 12 months.
  • STEM OPT is a 24-month extension of OPT for qualifying students with degrees in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM).
  • Curricular Practical Training (CPT) takes place prior to a student’s program end date and is integral to the school’s established curriculum.

PLEASE NOTE: To participate in any form of OPT, an international student must receive an EAD from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The total number of international students working at any point during a calendar year may exceed the number of employment authorizations issued each year because STEM OPT extensions are two-year authorizations and OPT authorizations are granted on a rolling basis throughout the year. Reporting the number of authorizations issued allows for precise reporting on how many individuals pursued work authorization under the program in a given year. More information on total annual employment authorizations is available on the SEVP Data Library.

As noted earlier, the link to the SEVP Data Library does not contain the detailed employer data for 2020 that was provided for the previous three years.

Furthermore, though SEVP tracks exchange visitors on J-1 visas via SEVIS, the 2020 report includes no data on that population and no tables have been produced. To be clear, the “EV” in both SEVP and SEVIS stands for “Exchange Visitors”, but it’s as if SEVP wants the public to forget that they are responsible for tracking this population. SEVP has the data and can produce at least the numerical count of participants. The only possible excuse for not including the list of the top 500 J-1 sponsors as ICE did in previous years (see, e.g., 2019) might be that the State Department — which is tasked with more closely monitoring the J-1 sponsors — has not yet been able to put the sponsorship data together or clear it for publication. Of course, this is data from fiscal year 2020, which ended about six months ago.

When I was spearheading this transparency effort at ICE, some career officials at the State Department pushed back on ICE publishing the list of J-1 sponsors and raised alarm bells at the last minute, the day before the SEVP data was going online. ICE had given State a heads up months prior, so it wasn’t a surprise. But they suddenly questioned why we wanted the J-1 data published, noting that they had never made it public before. They were also concerned that sponsors hosting fewer numbers of J-1 visitors would be upset that some sponsors were hosting five to 10 times as many exchange visitors as others. My answer as to why we were posting it was: “Transparency.” For that, they had no counterargument and the data was made public. But under the Biden administration it appears that the State Department and SEVP have been allowed to go backward when it comes to transparency.

Finally, it should be noted that last year, former ICE Director Tony Pham signed a directive instructing SEVP to continue publicly reporting the same information it had produced in previous years by April of each year, and also directed it to include an additional table titled, “All Countries of Citizenship by Number of SEVIS Records with Authorizations to Participate in OPT”. While SEVP should be commended for producing this report sooner than directed, the Biden administration should be questioned about its decrease in transparency. Did the new ICE leadership rescind the transparency directive and, if so, why did they make such a troubling move?