Loren Locke on declining foreign student enrollment, new visa policy impact on international IT talent, and the future of STEM OPT.
From the Article
"I expect the numbers to dip much further for 2025-26, because of the new F, M, and J visa policy that went into effect in late June, and because of how international students have been treated and talked about under the new Trump Administration."
"Essentially, graduates with IT degrees can remain in F-1 student status for three years after graduation. That gives them three chances to enter the annual H-1B cap lottery and take full-time work here."
"Greater consistency in immigration rules, smoother processing, and a clear message that skilled professionals are valued long-term would further strengthen the U.S.'s position as the top destination for global talent."
Locke Immigration Law's Take
The Spiceworks piece names a specific structural mechanism that's done a lot of quiet work for US tech hiring over the last twenty years: STEM-degree graduates can stay in F-1 status for three full years after graduation through the OPT and STEM OPT extensions, which gives each graduate three separate chances to win the annual H-1B cap lottery. As Loren noted in the article, that three-shot architecture is the real reason the US has been able to retain international IT talent at scale despite the H-1B cap's mismatch with actual demand. When the upstream supply — international student enrollment — drops, the downstream H-1B pipeline drops with it, on a three-year lag.
The new F, M, and J visa policy that took effect in late June 2025 is, in that frame, a supply-side constriction. The article reports declining foreign student enrollment, and Loren's prediction was that 2025–26 numbers would dip much further. For employers who've built workforce plans around the F-1 → OPT → H-1B pipeline, that supply curve flattening matters two and three years out, not just this year. The hiring math you ran in 2023 isn't the hiring math 2027 will support.
What's underdiscussed in the article: the alternative pathways that don't depend on the F-1 pipeline at all — O-1 for the truly top-of-field international hires, EB-1A self-petition for employees with the profile to support it, EB-2 NIW for those whose work clears the national-interest test. None of these need an H-1B cap lottery. None need an F-1 pipeline. For employers reading the supply trend correctly, this is the planning window to build out those alternative-pathway capabilities.
Key Takeaways
- The STEM OPT extension's three-year window gives each graduate three separate H-1B cap lottery chances — the structural mechanism that's quietly powered US tech hiring at scale.
- The June 2025 F/M/J visa policy is a supply-side constriction; declining international enrollment compounds downstream into the H-1B pipeline on a 2–3 year lag.
- Workforce plans built on the F-1 → OPT → H-1B pipeline need to be revisited for 2027–28 hiring math.
- O-1, EB-1A, and NIW pathways don't depend on the F-1 pipeline or H-1B cap; the planning window to develop those capabilities is now.