What does the new duration of status rule mean for international students and workers?

On July 17, 2026, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published a regulation that ends a longstanding U.S. government practice called “duration of status.” Duration of status or “D/S” historically allowed international students, scholars, physicians, and other specific types of temporary visa holders to remain lawfully in the country while they complete their program or degree.¹

The DHS regulation replaces that flexibility with a new discretionary extension application. While the regulation sounds like a technical fix, it has the potential to hurt American workers and companies. Recent immigration policies, such as adding a $100,000 fee for H-1B visas, are easier to understand. By contrast, D/S is in the weeds, even for immigration lawyers. Below, we explain the details of the new regulation and discuss its likely practical and economic impacts.²

What is “duration of status?”

Most temporary immigration categories, such as investors, workers, or tourists, have a fixed end date. However, for decades, groups such as international students, scholars, and medical trainees have been admitted to the U.S. for “duration of status.” That means they can stay in the U.S. as long as they continue their program. Notably, the new regulation does not cite evidence of a problem that needs to be fixed by eliminating D/S.

There are two main visa categories for which this regulatory change is most relevant. First, F-1 status was created in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 for international students at all levels, from elementary school to Ph.D. F-1 also includes full-time nondegree students (such as students in certificate programs or English language schools) and visiting students (such as a student completing a Ph.D. abroad who spends a year in the U.S. doing research toward the Ph.D.).

Second, since it was created by the Fulbright-Hays Act in 1961, J-1 status has facilitated exchange visitors as part of U.S. public diplomacy. Around 300,000 J-1 exchange visitors come to the U.S. each year, from camp counselors and au pairs to international researchers and post-doctoral fellows to foreign physicians doing clinical training programs.

Early on, F-1 status was granted for one year at a time, but the legacy Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) published a regulation in 1978 to adopt D/S.³ The Federal Register notice announcing this change stated that this would not be a “material change” over the previous one-year extensions, but the “purpose of the proposal is to eliminate the paperwork connected with routine applications for extension of stay… It is our considered judgment that the proposed regulation is the only effective way to accomplish that purpose.” D/S was extended to J-1 status in 1985, with INS stating that it had “determined that this change will reduce the paperwork burden on the public and the Service and will not adversely affect control.”

Today, DHS oversees F-1s and the Department of State (DOS) oversees J-1s. Each agency delegates the authority to extend or transfer F-1 or J-1 status to program sponsors. The program sponsors then designate certain employees to act on their behalf (Designated School Officials, commonly known as international student advisers, for F-1s, and Responsible Officers for J-1s). For example, an F-1 community college student finishing an associate degree in nursing could ask the international student adviser to facilitate a transfer of the F-1 record to a university to begin a bachelor’s degree in nursing. Similarly, in the J-1 context, a doctor completing a four-year surgery residency could ask the Responsible Officer of his sponsoring program to transfer and extend the J-1 record to a specialty hand surgery fellowship program.

For almost 50 years, the international student adviser or Responsible Officer would make a decision about transferring and extending F-1 or J-1 status based on academic and institutional policies, and federal regulations and guidance. D/S is the policy that allows for this flexibility. All changes are documented in the DHS-run Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) database. DHS and DOS have access to this information on international students and exchange visitors, including personally identifiable information, as exceptions to the Privacy Act and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

What are the regulatory changes related to “duration of status” and what will they mean in practice?

The new regulation eliminates D/S and replaces it with a system that admits F-1 students and J-1 exchange visitors with an exact date based on the initial plan for program length, up to four years maximum. Students and exchange visitors now have a variety of situations (discussed in more detail below) where they have to file a formal application with a fee to ask DHS’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for permission to continue, amend or complete their degrees or programs. Also, the regulation requires an application to USCIS to transfer schools, change the field of study, or continue for additional training or education. Last, the regulation does not clarify the standard by which applications will be adjudicated, or the processing time required. As will be discussed in detail, these changes create significant uncertainty for F-1 and J-1 visa holders in planning to study or train in the United States.

Policy and economic implications of the rule change

Given the complex nature of the regulation and pace of government action, one might have expected little activity during the public comment period last fall. However, over 20,000 comments were submitted when the proposed regulation was published in the Federal Register. Commenters included business groups, economists, higher education organizations, state attorneys general, scientific societies, and education policy organizations. Not only were the comments numerous, but many were detailed, and data driven. Below, we review the likely effects of the regulation, relying on public data, academic reports, and the comments themselves.

First, the regulation is likely to hurt U.S. competitiveness and growth because the populations affected are powerful drivers of the U.S. economy. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), education-related travel service exports⁴ were valued at approximately $53.58 billion in 2024. A study from NAFSA: Association of International Educators found that international students at U.S. universities contributed $42.9 billion to the U.S. economy and supported 355,736 U.S. jobs in the 2024-25 academic year. At the state level, 16 state attorneys general stated in their comment to the proposed regulation that international students paid $217 million to New Jersey public institutions during the 2023-24 academic year, $230 million to public California institutions during the 2024-25 academic year, and $190 million to public Oregon institutions in the 2023-24 academic year alone. NAFSA statistics also show that international students paid $2.5 billion to Texas institutions, $1.5 billion to Florida institutions, and $339.5 million to Alabama institutions in the 2024-25 academic year.

The largest group affected by this new regulation is students on F-1 visas. These approximately 1.2 million people account for around 6% of students in the United States. International students’ tuition payments also support domestic students. On average, for each additional international student who enrolls in a public university, two additional in-state students enroll. If students choose to study in another country, they are very likely to end up staying there, depriving the United States of their economic benefit.

Domestic talent does not meet the demands of our technology-driven economy. A report from Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology on the needs of the U.S. artificial intelligence workforce found that more than half of computer scientists with graduate degrees employed in the U.S. were born abroad, as were nearly 70% of current students in U.S. computer science programs. Additionally, the National Science Foundation showed that 83% of international Ph.D. recipients earned science and engineering degrees, and that international Ph.D. recipients earned 60% of all engineering doctoral degrees and 54% of all mathematics and statistics doctoral degrees awarded in the U.S. As the American Physical Society (with over 50,000 physicists and quantum science members worldwide) noted in its comment on the proposed regulation, the U.S. needs “all hands on deck,” including international students, for the U.S. to advance in critical and emerging technology fields.

The additional uncertainties and expenses created by the regulation will discourage international students from applying to U.S. schools, at a time when the United States has already seen a 20% drop in international student applications. It will increase uncertainty for international students , especially in a heightened U.S. immigration enforcement environment. As the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration observed in its comment on the proposed regulation, international students are increasingly choosing other countries, such as Australia, Canada, and the U.K., for their studies.

The final regulation will likely have significant economic costs, well above those estimated by DHS. A recent report by Michael Clemens (coauthor of this explainer), Amy Nice, and Jeremy Neufeld commissioned by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine estimated these costs. It estimated that the new regulation will create an annual loss to the U.S. economy of up to $72-145 billion over the course of ten years. The authors project economic impact for two scenarios. As they explained in a subsequent comment on the regulation, one scenario (which they call “plausible”) concluded that “This annual cost is more than 22x the cumulative total cost of $3.3 billion [DHS] identifies as the ten-year cost of the rule.” That “equates in size to the loss the U.S. economy would suffer from the disappearance of the entire economy of the state of Delaware, New Hampshire, or the entire Research Triangle metropolitan area.”

The report focused on the long-term productivity losses for the U.S. economy that will arise from a diminished supply of science and technology workers. The authors gathered survey data on about 1,000 current international Ph.D. students and postdoctoral fellows at U.S. universities, asking them if they would have come to the United States to study in the first place if they knew that D/S would be terminated. Roughly half said either “definitely not” or “probably not.” This calls into question DHS’s assertion that the regulation will have only a “marginal” effect on the supply or retention of international students. DHS offered no evidence for that assertion.

Another analysis from NAFSA: Association of International Educators focused on the regulation’s direct, short-term costs to universities and university-town economies. It estimated that “the U.S. economy is likely to lose $7 billion in revenue and more than 60,000 jobs” if ongoing restrictions such as this regulation continue to curb international student interest in the United States. Setting aside the economic loss from the loss of international students, the Attorney General of California cited a New Jersey estimate that this regulatory change will cost implementation fees of $1.5 million, followed by an average of $1.3 million per year, and will cause a one-third drop in international STEM graduate students transitioning to the U.S. workforce.

Second, the regulation does not account for academic realities. The regulation limits international students and scholars to four years, unless USCIS grants an extension. While that may sound reasonable on its face, this time frame is unrealistic. For example, more than 50% of first-time bachelor’s degree recipients need more than 4 years to complete their degree, and the median doctoral student spends nearly 6 years to finish a dissertation, with some taking over 7 years. For Ph.D. students then in particular, the initial grant of four years is not enough to finish the degree, meaning that the student must invest in starting a long, challenging program without certainty of being able to finish. Students who follow all the rules and make excellent progress in their studies will nevertheless face needless stress, cost, and uncertainty.

The regulation also applies this four-year limit to international physicians who complete their training in the United States. The International Medical Graduate Taskforce plainly stated that “it would be impossible” for physicians to complete many critical graduate medical education training programs within four years, including those for general surgery, geriatrics, and cardiology. Again, this means physicians who often spend years preparing for clinical training in the U.S. will now have to come here unsure of whether they will receive permission to complete their program in time or at all.

The regulation may therefore exacerbate the physician shortage in the U.S. The Health Resources and Services Administration estimates that the U.S. will have a shortfall of 141,160 physicians by 2038. International physicians currently account for almost 25% of the U.S. physician workforce, and many work in medically underserved areas. If fewer international physicians choose to train in the U.S. because of this regulation, fewer Americans will have access to care, especially in rural and underserved areas.

Third, the regulation will delay or preclude extensions by creating a new application process. Currently, for example, if a student completes an associate degree at a community college and then transfers to a bachelor’s program at a university, the international student adviser at the community college transfers the student’s record in the DHS’s Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) to the international student adviser at the university, and reports the details in real time to DHS through SEVIS. Under the new regulation, foreign students and scholars must ask permission through an application from USCIS to make these changes.

As NAFSA described in its comment, given academic realities, permission from USCIS through a formal application process is now required to do any of the following:

• “Complete a Ph.D. program;
• Complete any educational, research, or teaching programs that require more time than 4 years;
• Complete any program where a student falls a few credits short of graduation requirements;
• Engage in post-completion Optional Practical Training (OPT) or academic training;
• Move to a higher level of study;
• Transition from an English language program into a degree program; or
• Transfer to a new school or program sponsor.”

Regarding transferring programs specifically, the comment from the Association of American Universities described common situations when a student may need to transfer, such as when a graduate student or postdoctoral fellow follows a professor who takes a job at a new university.

The Center for Immigration Studies, which supports the new regulation, suggested a way to mitigate the effect on USCIS’ backlog by eliminating post-completion student work permission altogether. This has long been a goal of immigration restrictionists. Yet doing so would take away most international students’ ability to use their education in the workforce after graduation for 1-3 years through a long-standing program created by regulation called Optional Practical Training (OPT).

Because international students comprise 20.9% of all STEM university graduates in the U.S., the above study commissioned by the National Academies estimated that “this would imply a reduction of 12.5 percent of the total number of new STEM graduates—regardless of nationality—entering the U.S. workforce directly after graduation.” Moreover, a survey revealed that 54% of current international students would not have enrolled in their academic program if OPT were not an option.

This translates to an estimated enrollment decline of roughly one-third of international students in U.S. higher education institutions, in the long-term reducing the stock of overall high-skill STEM workers in the U.S. by 6.2%. That means less productivity for the U.S. economy as a whole, stemming from foregone innovation, entrepreneurship, and specialization. Economists have quantified the effect of such a hit on lost productivity, which reduces the production and wages of all workers collectively. That loss of high-skill STEM workers could be expected to reduce the wages of U.S. workers with college by about 0.4% per year (an annual loss of around $42 billion), and the wages of workers without college by 0.2% per year (an annual loss of about $13 billion). A recent piece published by the Peterson Institute for International Economics goes into more detail.

One might argue that vocational students on M-1 visas have never had D/S and so the end of F-1 D/S should not be a problem. But the context of vocational students is different. M-1 is a visa for international students pursuing full-time vocational, technical, or other non-academic programs. There are only a few thousand M-1 students studying in the U.S., so USCIS can keep up with the related workload. More importantly, a vocational student may continue studying, by regulation, while their extension is pending.

USCIS is already overwhelmed by the number of cases in the queue. Processing times have risen dramatically, with some cases taking more than a year.

The regulation’s new requirement to ask USCIS for permission to make changes would add significantly to an overburdened system. A comment from members of Congress explained that the immigration service (then called INS) tried to implement a similar regulation for international students in 1973 and 1981 but decided not to do so because of the administrative burden. In those years, there were a few hundred thousand international students in the United States. Now, there are over 1 million international students, and USCIS has the largest backlog ever—over 11.3 million cases.

DHS itself estimates that more than 400,000 additional applications would be filed with USCIS each year because of its regulation (about half for F-1s and half for J-1s). As the Association of American Universities noted in its comment, this is a 163% increase for this application type, when USCIS is already taking at least 6 months to issue decisions on current cases. Although the regulation states that an applicant’s immigration status will be extended for 240 days while the application is pending, a multisector group of 39 science, education, and policy organizations highlighted that this significant increase in applications, combined with existing USCIS delays, may likely cause USCIS to fail to decide a student or scholar’s application within those 240 days. If that happens, the student or scholar will be unable to continue studying or training or could lose the ability to work. To speed things up, they would need to pay more than $2000 for a “premium processing” fee, in addition to paying over $400 for the application itself.⁵

Fourth, the regulation restricts international students and scholars from making changes to their programs. DHS states that acceptable reasons include a “compelling” academic or medical need, as well as a natural disaster or national health crisis. As the American Council on Education explained in its comment, these reasons do not account for practical academic reasons, “such as the international undergraduate student participating in a study-abroad program or co-op program, which are freely offered to domestic students. For graduate students, academic reasons could include required practicums, internships, clinical study, or extended dissertation research.”

The Association of American Universities also expressed alarm that the regulation does not clarify specific standards USCIS will use to adjudicate these new required extensions. Additionally, the regulation does not discuss an appeal process, which adds to the uncertainty. A survey from the Institute for Progress and NAFSA found that 49% of current enrolled international graduate students and postdoctoral researchers would not have enrolled if this regulation were in place.

Fifth, the regulation takes decision-making away from university and medical school sponsors. The Departments of Homeland Security and State have delegated initial responsibility for certain kinds of visas to program sponsors such as universities and academic medical centers. For decades, these sponsors have determined, within clear guidelines, how long a program will take.

Consider a community college student studying architectural drafting. There are many reasons why the student may take longer to complete the program than expected. Perhaps she did not take strong science or math classes in high school, or she had a medical issue during the school year. Or maybe she started community college training to be a nurse and shifted after her first year. Before the new regulation, the student’s academic adviser and international student adviser would work together to evaluate whether to give the student another semester to finish her degree.

Also consider graduate students. For instance, if one is accepted to a Ph.D. program, that person would have to apply for USCIS permission to consider studying toward a higher degree. Similarly, a student may choose to get two master’s degrees (such as MBA and engineering to help run a tech startup), or may start a degree but then want to add on a second degree. Last, the MD/Ph.D. track is arguably one of the most difficult and lengthy educational programs in the country and involves moving back and forth between medical school and thesis research. MD/Ph.D. programs train some of the very top physician scientists in the country and have exacting standards at each step. The new regulation introduces significant uncertainty for an MD/Ph.D. student by adding multiple additional applications to USCIS along the way.

There is no need to change the D/S policy. DHS tracks F-1 and J-1 visa holders through its SEVIS database in coordination with universities. SEVIS governs the duration of an international student’s stay in the U.S., and is updated each time the student extends, changes, or ends the program. As NAFSA noted in its comment, “international students and exchange visitors are already the most tracked of all nonimmigrant categories in the United States.” In their joint comment, the American Immigration Lawyers Association and the American Immigration Council argued that DHS should leverage SEVIS to ensure compliance rather than create new burdens.

When the new regulation takes effect 60 days after publication in the Federal Register (September 15, 2026), the decision to allow international students to make changes to their program will go to an immigration officer with limited discretion. As a comment by the Association of Public & Land-grant Universities stated, the regulation “requires DHS immigration officials to become experts on academic programs and systems for which they are not trained nor qualified.” Like other commenters, it highlighted that dependence on international STEM talent, which this regulation will deter, “spans the American map”: it is not exclusive to so-called coastal elites. The new regulation will hit universities, and by extension, the economic vitality across the country.

Sixth, the new regulation gives USCIS discretion to stop international students on F-1 visas from engaging in practical training activities after graduation. OPT is a bridge between graduation and the U.S. workforce for approximately two-thirds of foreign STEM graduates from U.S. universities. USCIS Director Joseph Edlow has publicly stated, and confirmed, that he plans to significantly limit international students from staying after graduation in all but “certain situations.” If this discretion is used as such, the administration would significantly curtail the supply of STEM talent in the U.S. economy. That means fewer patents because foreign STEM workers who studied in the U.S. patent more than either U.S. natives or the foreign trained. It also means less entrepreneurship in the U.S. by natives, because foreign graduates of U.S. universities often team up with U.S. natives to start firms. In particular, it means fewer high-growth startup companies, because three quarters of the foreign-born founders of venture-capital-backed startup firms came to the U.S. as students.

Director Edlow has also stated that “there is no statutory basis for OPT,” meaning that Congress has never stated whether F-1 students can work. This is untrue. In 1960, Congress explicitly exempted workers on F-1 student visas from FICA (Social Security) tax withholding on labor income (26 U.S. Code § 3121(b)(19)), confirming Congress’s intent for F-1 visas to allow work. Congress did provide a statutory basis for F-1 visas to be used for work, and it did not delegate to USCIS the decision of whether they may be thus used.

Conclusion

DHS advanced a similar proposal in 2018 to eliminate D/S. That was challenged in court successfully, leading to a preliminary injunction stopping implementation. The first Trump administration appealed but then withdrew its appeal. One key issue was whether ending D/S could be done by memo or was a significant enough change that it had to go through the formal notice and comment rulemaking process set out in the Administrative Procedure Act. To address that issue, DHS then published the policy as a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in September 2020. By that point it was too late to finalize before the end of the term, and the Biden administration withdrew the proposed regulation early the next year.

Fast forward to 2026, and the regulation has now been finalized. DHS went through formal notice and comment rulemaking but did not provide careful consideration of the many thoughtful comments. The U.S. economy, STEM workforce, academic institutions, and U.S. healthcare will feel the impact.

We urge Congress to exercise its oversight authority to hold hearings on the regulation’s effects. This would build on a comment submitted by 35 members of Congress, and a recent bipartisan letter from four congressional representatives urging DHS to hold off implementation of the regulation. We have started to see strong bipartisan bills that address international education, such as the Keep Innovators in America Act. Without addressing D/S, those efforts are insufficient. Congress should do more to take leadership in this area.