The Trump administration is introducing new fees for H-1B visas and considering a $100,000 charge for the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program. Additionally, the grace period for students to stay in the U.S. after graduation has been reduced from 60 to 30 days.
These changes come as the U.S. faces competition from China, which launched the Thousand Talents Plan in 2008 and attracted over 7,000 people within ten years. Examples include Yang Zhilin, a Carnegie Mellon PhD, who founded Moonshot AI in China, and Nobel laureate Omar Yaghi, who moved from UC Berkeley to Tsinghua University.
