Readers of our blog are more than familiar with the incompetence of the federal agency USCIS. We have covered extensively how this agency has no oversight and no accountability and takes years process a simple form that can be adjudicated by a computer program.
Indian students who come to USA on F1 visa get to apply something called OPT. Which enables them to work in the area of their education for around 2 years. This is an important feature of the visa because without this these students wont be able to recover the funds they spend on their education. Without OPT American university system would collapse.
But the corrupt and inefficient people are USCIS wanted a cut of these student’s earnings. So what did they do ? The decides that they would not process OPT applications at all. They will take more than a year to issue OPT to Indian students. By the time you receive OPT in your hand 1 year is lost. The student is stuck in USA without the ability to work or study but still has to pay rent etc.
In normal world, the babus responsible for this inefficiency would be punished and some might even be sent to jail. But not in the world of USCIS. Here they get to decide how much more money they can charge these students.
USCIS already takes $400+ for OPT application. But if you want faster processing (15 working days) they will charge you a whooping $2500. So the cost of OPT is ~$3000.
This is pretty much like the bribe culture of India where you have to pay a bribe under the table to get things moving, except here the bribes are fully legalized and backed by force of law and reasoned by sheer incompetence of USCIS.
We have been constantly warning Indian students to not apply for US universities. Instead focus on UK, Germany and more importantly Canada. But Indian students are far too gullible.
