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Home - California Politics & News - California STEM Push Backfires: Schmitt Calls OPT a ‘Backdoor Jobs Program’ for Foreign Workers

California STEM Push Backfires: Schmitt Calls OPT a ‘Backdoor Jobs Program’ for Foreign Workers

California college graduates have been struggling to take their next steps into the career world. According to one congressman, the issue is not a lack of jobs, but a prioritization of foreign workers.

For years, the Golden State’s Bay Area has been a haven for jobs within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

But Republican Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt told the Daily Signal that companies and universities have been passing up American workers and instead relying on temporary employment tied to international students’ major area of study—known as Optional Practical Training (OPT).

“We went from displacing blue-collar workers with sending jobs overseas, and then illegal immigrants suppressing wages and taking other jobs,” Schmitt said. “Then you also have white-collar job issue[s] with H-1B visa[s], which we tried to highlight, but also displacing recent grads and American students through these programs like OPT.”

Schmitt has long called for the end of OPT. On Friday, he released data that showed California has 46,547 OPT workers with 19,285 employers.

What I've found is staggering.46,547 OPT workers. 19,285 employers.New OPT data from California was provided to my office.🧵 pic.twitter.com/lReSVED74ITRENDING ARTICLES{"title":"TRENDING ARTICLES","limit":"3","offset":0,"range":"last7days","time_quantity":24,"time_unit":"hour","freshness":false,"order_by":"views","post_type":"post","pid":"","exclude":"","cat":"","taxonomy":"category","term_id":"","author":"","shorten_title":{"active":false,"length":0,"words":false},"post-excerpt":{"active":false,"length":0,"keep_format":false,"words":false},"thumbnail":{"active":true,"build":"manual","width":"120","height":"90"},"rating":false,"stats_tag":{"comment_count":false,"views":true,"author":"1","date":{"active":false,"format":"F j, Y"},"category":"1","taxonomy":{"active":false,"name":"category"}},"markup":{"custom_html":true,"wpp-start":"<div class="ds-trending-articles ds-mobile-only">","wpp-end":"<\/div>","title-start":"<h2 class="ds-trending-articles-header">","title-end":"<\/h2>","post-html":"<article class="ds-trending-article" data-post-id="{pid}">\n <div........

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