In a bold and unprecedented move, Florida has become the first state in the nation to take formal action against the use of foreign worker visas in its public university system. Gov. Ron DeSantis’s new proclamation to “pull the plug”on H-1B visas in state institutions, sets a national example, one that could reshape how other states protect their own graduates and taxpayers.

“This is about putting Florida workers and American citizens first,” DeSantis declared. “We can do it with our residents of Florida and with Americans.”

It’s a landmark moment, a state finally standing up to the federal government’s decades-long neglect of American labor. However, the H-1B visa is just one part of a much larger system that feeds cheap foreign labor into American jobs.

The alphabet soup of visa programs

The H-1B visa is the most widely known program, allowing companies to hire foreign workers for “specialty occupations” like technology, engineering and business. Legally, employers are supposed to use it only when they cannot find qualified U.S. workers, but in practice, the system has been massively abused to cut labor costs, replacing Americans with cheaper foreign labor.

But the H-1B is just the visible tip of a much deeper structure of foreign visa pipelines. Another is the F-1 student visa, which allows foreign nationals to study in the United States. After graduation, those students can remain in America and work through programs called Optional Practical Training (OPT) and STEM-OPT (for science, technology, engineering and math fields).

OPT is billed as “hands-on training,” but in reality it functions as a government-approved work program that lets international students hold real jobs for up to one year after graduation – or three years under the STEM-OPT extension. Employers don’t have to pay Social Security or Medicare taxes for these workers, which means they are much cheaper to hire than Americans. In other words, the classroom has become the cheapest recruiting channel in America.

Universities feed the supply, employers feed the demand

The F-1 student visa and its work-authorization offshoots, OPT and STEM-OPT, have become universities’ primary gateway into this system. Once marketed as “cultural exchange,” these programs now function as revenue engines that allow schools fill classrooms with full-pay international students while giving corporations access to a never-ending pool of low-cost labor.

Each foreign student represents tens of thousands in tuition dollars for universities as well as a tax-free employee for participating companies. Under OPT, neither side pays payroll taxes, saving employers roughly 8% per hire while sidelining American graduates who must compete against subsidized foreign labor on their own soil.

According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ FY 2024 H-1B Characteristics Report, more than half of all new H-1B approvals were changes of status for people already inside the United States and 71% of those came directly from F-1 or F-2 student visas.

In plain terms, most so-called “new” H-1B workers aren’t being imported from abroad at all; they’re former international students who never left. The result is a closed-loop system in which universities import students, employers convert them to workers and the federal government keeps the pipeline open – all while Americans are told there’s a “shortage” of talent.

Florida’s universities show exactly how these visa pipelines operate in real life.

The University of Florida case study: When ‘education’ becomes cheap labor

The University of Florida is a case study of how this system operates. In 2024, UF ranked #40 in the nation for international student enrollment with 7,353 F-1 visa holders, according to federal data.

The same year, UF ranked #37 among the Top 200 Employers for OPT and STEM-OPT students, hiring 640 foreign students on OPT and STEM OPT extensions and ranked #43 among the top 100 campuses with F-1 foreign students employed on OPT with 1,675 students working in U.S. jobs through the program.

By comparison, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services records show UF filed just 252 petitions for H-1B visas that year. That means most of the university’s foreign labor did not come from overseas hiring. Instead, most of the university’s foreign labor came from international students already in Florida, who moved seamlessly from classroom to workplace under the F-1 and OPT programs, bypassing American job-seekers entirely.

A new model for protecting American workers

Florida’s action follows on the heels of a major federal reform by President Donald J. Trump, who is once again taking on America’s broken visa system. On Sept. 19, Trump signed a Presidential Proclamation on the Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers, which imposes new limits on foreign-worker entry under H-1B and other categories.

The proclamation, effective Sept. 21, raised the cost of H-1B petitions by introducing a $100,000 application fee, restricting entry for low-wage positions and granting the federal government greater authority to deny visas that do not serve the national interest. The move aligns with Trump’s continuing “America First” labor policy, aimed at reducing corporate reliance on foreign labor and prioritizing American workers.

The state of Florida is the first-in-the-nation to strike against this cycle. By targeting H-1B visas in public universities, Florida has exposed how deeply the foreign-labor system has infiltrated the education sector.

But this is only step one. The F-1 student and OPT work programs are the universities’ contribution to the same problem and they’ve quietly become the largest foreign-labor pipeline in the country. Ending abuse in these programs as well would mean millions of dollars in savings for taxpayers, new opportunities for American graduates and a shift away from the government-sanctioned system of undercutting U.S. labor.

Together, President Trump’s federal crackdown and Florida’s state-level enforcement create a new model of American labor protection, one that holds universities, employers and the federal government itself accountable for using visa programs in ways that undermine American workers.

Why reform can’t stop with H-1B or OPT

For decades, universities and corporations have profited from a revolving door of student and worker visas, turning America’s immigration system into an endless conveyor belt of cheap foreign labor. Now, for the first time in years, with federal and state governments finally aligned, that door is beginning to close.

The U.S. visa system has evolved into a sprawling web of programs that reach far beyond H-1B and OPT. Visas such as L-1 (intra-company transfers), H-4 EAD (spousal work permits), J-1 (trainee exchanges) and even investor visas have been quietly repurposed to serve the same purpose, giving employers a steady flow of lower-cost foreign labor at the direct expense of American workers.

If reform stops at H-1B, the system will simply shift to another category. If it stops at OPT, universities will invent new loopholes to keep the profits flowing. The problem is not a single visa program; it is the pipeline itself and the perverse incentives that reward institutions for bypassing U.S. citizens in favor of cheaper foreign alternatives.

America’s future wellbeing depends on ending this revolving door of imported labor, student conversion and corporate offshoring once and for all. Every loophole, from F-1 to H-1B to L-1, erodes the promise of equal opportunity for the men and women who built this nation. Florida has proven that real leadership does not wait for permission and President Trump has shown that courage in Washington can still rewrite the rules for the working class.

But this fight cannot end with one state or one proclamation. It must extend to every program, every visa category, every offshore pipeline and every institution that profits from putting foreign workers and foreign interests ahead of Americans. Only when the entire system is dismantled, rebuilt and held accountable will the United States return to what it was always meant to be, a nation that rewards its own citizens first, values honest work and defends the American Dream without compromise.