The phantom worker problem A new fight over the Optional Practical Training program started with a messy discovery: federal investigators say they found more than 10,000 foreign students tied to suspect employers, including cases where the workers never actually showed up at the job sites they claimed. That is the kind of finding that makes Washington act shocked, as if programs built with loose rules and weak checks are not naturally attractive to fraud. The program lets international students on F-1 visas work in jobs related to their studies, but critics say it has grown into a large guest worker pipeline with very little discipline. Once the numbers got big, the abuses got bigger too. The tax break that tilted the board At the center of the fight is a tax break. Under current law, employers do not have to pay Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes for workers in OPT, while they do pay those taxes for American hires. That creates a clear financial nudge, and corporate HR departments rarely miss a nudge when it saves money. Rep. Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin says that is backwards and that Washington should not hand companies an incentive to choose foreign workers…

The strike came with a pricey travel bill Five unions tied to the Long Island Rail Road strike reported more than $3.2 million in 2025 spending on hotels, resorts, restaurants, and event venues, according to LM-2 filings reviewed by Fox News Digital. The groups were the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen, International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and Transportation Communications Union. That is a lot of money for organizations that were telling the public workers were feeling squeezed by rising costs. Apparently the squeeze stops just short of the minibar. What the filings show LM-2 forms are annual labor disclosures filed with the Labor Department and list receipts, spending, officer pay, and other expenses. The filings reviewed here show payments to premium hotels, casinos, waterfront resorts, and higher-end restaurants. Union spending on travel and meetings is not unusual, since groups often host trainings, conferences, and other business events. But the scale is still hard to ignore when the same unions were pushing the case that pay had not kept pace with inflation. Where the money went The details read like a corporate offsite with better union branding. BLET and…