In the matter of a few minutes yesterday evening, the following happened. I was texted this story from a local TV station: Visas affected for multiple international students studying in Alabama, which includes students at my former institution. Then I rapidly saw this from AL.com (the basics of which were also in the first story), Visas for 15 Auburn students, staff revoked in immigration crackdown: ‘Political ping pong’. And not long after, I noted this on a friend’s FB feed about a school in Georgia only a few hours away, Four Mercer graduate students have student visas revoked since Trump administration took office.
You know, a nice, relaxing Friday evening.
All of which eventually led to a linked AP story* that has a lot more details: Visa cancellations sow panic for international students, with more than 1,000 fearing deportation.
So, to be as fair as possible, there are legitimate reasons for student visas to be revoked, and it happens all the time. While I do not know what a normal amount of revocations would be for a typical mid-March to mid-April period, this is clearly a surprising and highly unusual amount of activity in a very brief amount of time.
From the AP:
The speed and scope of the federal government’s efforts to terminate the legal status of international students have stunned colleges across the country. Few corners of higher education have been untouched, as schools ranging from prestigious private universities, large public research institutions and tiny liberal arts colleges discover status terminations one after another among their students.
At least 1,024 students at 160 colleges, universities and university systems have had their visas revoked or their legal status terminated since late March, according to an Associated Press review of university statements, correspondence with school officials and court records. Advocacy groups collecting reports from colleges say hundreds more students could be caught up in the crackdown.
Further, the context is not normal. The Trump administration has a clear anti-immigrant approach and has threatened mass deportations. We have seen international students targeted for political speech, and Secretary Rubio has basically asserted that he will remove anyone he wants if he decides they threaten US foreign policy.
The fact that the administration is willing to use pretexts like traffic violations to oust students is also a sign of the unusual nature of all of this.
Four students from two Michigan universities are suing Trump administration officials after their F-1 student status was terminated last week. Their attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, Ramis Wadood, said the students never received a clear reason why.
“We don’t know, and that’s the scary part,” he said.
The students were informed of the status terminations by their universities via email, which came as a shock, Wadood said. The reason given was that there was a “criminal records check and/or that their visa was revoked,” Wadood said, but none of them were charged or convicted of crimes. Some had either speeding or parking tickets, but one didn’t have any, he said. Only one of the students had known their entry visa was revoked, Wadood said.
[…]
Among the students who have filed lawsuits is a Georgia Tech Ph.D. student who is supposed to graduate on May 5, with a job offer to join the faculty. His attorney Charles Kuck said the student was likely targeted for termination because of an unpaid traffic fine from when the student lent his car to a friend. Ultimately, the violation was dismissed.
Here’s a map from the AP piece:
I would note that it does not show any in Alabama, so it is clearly not a comprehensive display.
While again allowing that sometimes visas should be revoked (like if a student stops going to school and is simply working in the country illegally), but given the pretext of things like old traffic violations (or no pretext at all), this is just cruelly derailing the life plans of hundreds of people because it is an easy way for the administration to look tough on immigration.
For all the talk about going after the “worst of the worst” and getting rid of criminals, thugs, and terrorists, the reality is that Trump, Rubio, Homan, Miller, et al., are more than happy to terrorize a bunch of young adults who are just trying to earn a degree to improve their lives and the lives of their families. For most, I expect, studying abroad in the US has been a long-term, if not lifelong, dream.
Anyone reading this who has lived abroad knows that it takes some degree of courage, but it is also full of anxiety, just in terms of understanding daily life in a different culture. Throw on top of that the possibility that the government might kick you out seemingly at random or, worse, send you to a detention facility (that is not a hypothetical), and I can’t imagine how much stress this is causing.
I suspect that many students currently studying in the US will not be back in the Fall.
And I have little doubt that many potential students are currently reconsidering their Fall plans. I know that if I were a parent, already anxious about the idea of my child living in another country, I would have serious qualms about sending them to the US.
There is also the likelihood that the Trump administration will make visas harder to get in any event.
All of this is going to lead to lower international enrollments.
A lot of life plans are currently being reevaluated. A lot of dreams are being revised, if not crushed.
If one prefers not to be all touchy-feely, worrying about, you know, people, let’s talk dollars and powers. First, for a president who is supposedly worried about the balance of trade, this is a policy that will damage a key trade surplus we have in the United States, which is the service provided by US higher education. Second, international students are a source of revenue for these schools and economic input into communities around the country. If people think scaring away students only affects the Ultra Libs and their Shiny Irony Towers, fewer Chinese students in, say, Troy, Alabama, will mean fewer dollars spent at local stores and restaurants. A lot of salt-of-the-earth non-foreigny locals without fancy college degrees will find their businesses suffering. And a lot of local hourly workers will find their hours cut or jobs eliminated as a result.
While we can certainly have a discussion about the ways globalization and neoliberal policies negatively affected small, rural economies, there are also a lot of ways that the opposite is true (just wait until all those prices at Walmart go up, for example). A large number of international students in communities across the country is a net economic positive for those places, and keeping them out (or scaring them away) will simply hurt those communities. There will be no domestic replacements.
Indeed, while there are finite seats at elite schools like Harvard or even flagships like the University of Alabama, local schools in semi-rural communities typically have a lot of excess capacity. Foreign students have been a source of enrollment stabilization, and even growth in some cases, for these types of schools. These students are not displacing domestic students. If a place like Troy University loses X number of international enrollments in the Fall, replacing them will be difficult, if not impossible.** As a result, apart from the loss of revenue to schools and to economic inputs for local businesses, some programs of study may be closed over time. This will be to the detriment of local domestic students who want those areas of study. Faculty who no longer have jobs do not stay in these communities. That affects local real estate and the local barber shop and restaurants, and on and on and on (the same way losing a local textile mill did during the era of off-shoring). This is all economics 101 stuff, but if the Economics Department is shuttered, I guess people will have to learn these lessons the hard way.
And the diminution of international enrollments in the US will diminish US power and influence and cut off the brain power currently being imported into US businesses. Those not in higher education or certain industries may not realize how many students, especially in STEM fields, are then employed in the US.
Still others caught in legal limbo aren’t students at all. They had remained in the U.S. post-graduation on “optional practical training,” a one-year period — or up to three for science and technology graduates — that allows employment in the U.S. after completing an academic degree. During that time, a graduate works in their field and waits to receive their H-1B or other employment visas if they wish to keep working in the U.S.
Around 242,000 foreigners in the U.S. are employed through this “optional practical training.” About 500,000 are pursuing graduate degrees, and another 342,000 are undergraduate students.
Some might think that this will just mean more jobs for Americans, and maybe in some cases it will. More likely, however, US companies will find it harder to find the talent they need. And, back to that power thing, it is in the interests of US power for US companies to attract and keep the most talented international students here in the US instead of going home and innovating elsewhere.
How any of this makes America great is beyond me. It is cruel and counterproductive. And while I may just be a simple country Political Scientist, I am pretty sure that cruelty and counterproductivity are not elements of greatness, national or otherwise.
*My apologies for resorting to the AP, which I realize is a tainted source since they will not use the proper name of the body of water to our south. One must use the right name for things! Still, for whatever reason, the local TV news stories I linked just lack much in the way of serious reporting and seem to mostly just be running vacuous statements from the universities in question. I bet all of their real reporters took the weekend off for Easter!
**One of the flaws of American higher education is that many institutions were built with an assumption of ever-growing populations. But as populations in some areas have contracted or simply leveled off, this assumption has created enrollment challenges. International students were a partial fix to that problem. While I think this issue needs a long-term fix, creating a false shock the way the Trump administration is doing is not a good solution.
