Data on Dallas Metro Engineering Jobs Being Taken By Foreign Graduates on OPT
Our latest data shows STEM OPT is ripping out the bottom rung of the career ladder for American engineering graduates in the Dallas Metroplex.
Going back to the late 1980s, Americans have been gaslit by politicians and corporations about a scarcity of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) talent. The claim being we don’t have the native talent or the willing workers, and our schools are not producing enough graduates, so we have to import from abroad in ever-increasing numbers. It’s the story that justified Optional Practical Training (OPT), that justified the STEM OPT extension, that justified an entire generation of policy built on the premise that somehow we needed all these foreign guest workers.
Our latest report, which you should check out, does a deep dive into data regarding the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex and how many jobs are being taken by foreign engineering students and graduates on OPT. Meanwhile, recent American engineering graduates are suffering from unemployment or underemployment. I’ll outline our key findings below.
Flat Jobs, But Double The OPT Engineers
Between 2012 and 2022, the total number of engineering jobs in Dallas-Fort Worth had essentially plateaued, hovering around 40,000 positions for that entire decade, even as the metro’s population surged past 7.9 million people.
But while the pie stayed the same size, the guest worker slice doubled. OPT engineers in Dallas went from 1,998 workers in 2012 to 3,913 in 2022. That is an increase from 5% to nearly 10% of the entire engineering workforce in the Metroplex. At the program’s peak in 2018, OPT engineers made up close to 19% of the sector, a fourfold increase in just the four years between 2014 and 2018. The COVID border slowdowns decreased the guest workforce between 2019 and 2022.
The rapid expansion in the 2010s tracks almost perfectly with the expansion of the program by the Obama administration. To rewind, the Bush administration first set the STEM OPT extension at 29 months. The Obama administration then expanded it further, to 36 months, in 2016. Understand that the creation of STEM OPT during the Bush administration and the extension that took it from 29 to 36 months were not authorized by Congress. Rather, they were created through agency deference.
In addition to never being voted on by Congress, there is no numerical cap on the number of work authorizations and no requirement that employers first attempt to hire an American. The year after Obama’s expansion took effect, the OPT share of Dallas engineers jumped from 12.5% to 17% between 2016 and 2017. Work authorizations like STEM OPT, OPT, and Curricular Practical Training work as magnets that attract foreign students to U.S. universities and to American employers, who want cheaper labor.
Who Actually Fills These Jobs
The defenders of these programs like to invoke the image of the genius researcher creating breakthroughs in the lab, leading teams of American engineers. However, the data doesn’t support that framing, at least not in Dallas, where only 11% of OPT engineers in the metroplex were pursuing or held a U.S. PhD.
The other 89%, or 3,487 foreign workers, had bachelor’s or master’s degrees, the exact same credential level held by tens of thousands of young American engineering graduates competing for entry-level roles in the same city.
We are not talking about scarce specialists filling gaps nobody else can fill. They are, credential for credential, direct competitors to American graduates for the same jobs—jobs that, again, did not grow in number over the decade in question.
Moreover, in 2022, for example, 61% of these workers who were on STEM OPT came from India, and a striking 21% of them graduated from a single school, the University of Texas at Arlington. Add the University of Texas at Dallas, which ranked as the second-largest STEM OPT-authorized campus in the country in 2018, and you begin to see that this is not the workings of a free and fair labor market. Rather, what we are seeing is an institutionalized pipeline funneling low-wage foreign workers, with universities as major players.
The Subsidy Nobody Talks About
Here’s the part that should trouble anyone who cares about fair treatment for American workers: OPT and STEM OPT workers are exempt from Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes. It’s a 15% built-in discount for every employer who hires a guest worker over an American graduate, a discount financed by the absence of oversight, the absence of a wage floor tied to displacement protections, and the absence of any requirement to look to hire an American first. It is, functionally, a government-subsidized underbidding mechanism that bars American graduates from that first job out of college.
What This Means for American Graduates
Every year, engineering programs across Texas and the country produce graduates who are told, correctly, that engineering is a stable and in-demand field. What they are not told is employers not only can but also prefer to hire foreign graduates rather than them.
In Dallas-Fort Worth, roughly one in ten entry-to-mid-level engineering jobs is now filled by a guest worker whose employer pays less in payroll taxes to hire them than to hire the American sitting in the next seat at graduation. The OPT program is not just an insult to Americans who are more than qualified, studied hard, and most likely took on student debt; it is a tragedy with broad implications for America’s future. Bypass enough of those graduates enough times, and you don’t just lose a job; you lose the first rung of a career ladder that never gets climbed up for an entire generation.
The Dallas numbers matter because Dallas is one of the largest, fastest-growing metros in the country. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metro area is home to a deep bench of engineering programs but a business community that insists on using guest worker programs when American talent is there. What’s missing is a labor market that gives it a fair shot before reaching for the subsidized alternative.
Our Call to Action
Frederick Douglass aptly stated, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” STEM OPT and the litany of employment visa and work authorization programs used to displace American workers have strong support in Washington, DC, and in governor mansions across the country. These programs aren’t going away simply because they are bad news for Americans. If we are to end them, we must fight back, and we have a plan to do just that.
Join us in signing and sharing our petition to end STEM OPT. Find your state, click on it, sign the petition, and share it with your fellow students, neighbors, colleagues, parents, and alumni. Later this year we will deliver these petitions to each state’s congressional delegation.
If you do not see an active petition for your state, reach out to me at klynn@instituteforsoundpublicpolicy.org and we’ll discuss how you can start one in your state.