More Attacks on International Students
This time: Chinese students.
Via Politico: Marco Rubio: US to ‘aggressively’ revoke visas of Chinese students.
About 277,000 Chinese students studied in the U.S. last year, making them the second largest group of foreign students in the U.S., after people from India.
Even if just a threat, Rubio’s announcement is likely to decisively end the popularity of U.S. universities and colleges for Chinese students.
“The chilling effect on Chinese students choosing the United States as their preferred place to go for study will be enormous,” said Rosie Levine, executive director of the US-China Education Trust, a nonprofit education group. “There are some 99 million Communist Party members in China, so depending on how they enforce this, it could catch up probably every Chinese student interested in coming to the United States who could have some Communist Party connection within their background.”
It would also hurt U.S. institutions, which have come to rely on foreign students to help offset the cost of providing financial aid to Americans. And it comes as President Donald Trump exerts pressure on colleges and universities to address allegations of antisemitism by threatening to withhold federal funding and grants.
If the goal here is to harm China, it is just pointlessly stupid. The Chinese government will simply help direct students to Australia, Canada, the UK, and elsewhere. The damage will be, as I keep noting, to colleges and universities up and down the elite to non-elite scale, with substantial collateral damage to the communities where those schools exist.
Indeed, these moves will almost certainly harm non-elite, regional public schools far, far more than places that have more applicants than they have seats.
To be clear: elite schools like the Ivies or public flagships have far more applicants than they have room for each year. But Regional Direction U has more space than they have qualified applicants. There is no making up for the loss of revenue at those schools, which will in turn put pressure on legislatures, or simply lead to schools closing programs and laying off staff.
These moves are also part of an ongoing destruction of American soft power in a way that is truly staggering in its stupidity. The own-goalness of it all is just off the scale.
Within the own goal of it all, is this:
An exodus of Chinese students may also deprive the U.S. of skills and expertise that are valuable to the economy, especially in the tech sector.
“If you go around Silicon Valley, you see thousands of Chinese students or former Chinese students who are making enormous contributions to the United States, to our entrepreneurship,” said Stephen Orlins, president of the nonprofit National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. “Revoking their visas will cut off the pipeline and create long term damage to the United States.”
I will note that there have been real espionage concerns with Chinese students, but even that does not warrant these policy moves.
Even those who say the U.S. has legitimate security concerns say a broad revocation of visas may be unproductive.
“The U.S. government needs to take into account risks of non-traditional espionage, but the way they’re drawing these boundaries is too broad and too undefined,” said Mary Gallagher, dean of the Keough School of Global Affairs at Notre Dame University and an expert on Chinese politics. “ All universities in China are in some ways affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party, so it seems to me overreach and damaging to not just U.S.- China educational exchange, but also to U.S. science and technological competitiveness.”
It is as if electing an admininstration that is both xenophobic and prone to crude and simplistic policy moves was a bad idea.
But the GOP has become the party of xenophobia.
Republicans were quick to offer support of the administration’s threat to revoke visas.
“America First. The U.S. is no longer in the business of importing espionage,” Florida Sen. Ashley Moody wrote on X. “This is great leadership by @SecRubio and @POTUS.”
“America first,” echoed Indiana Sen. Jim Banks.
“What did you think America First meant? Vibes? Papers? Essays?” wrote West Virginia Rep. Riley Moore.
Again, America loses influence because of these moves; America loses revenue because of these moves; and America loses tech workers because of these moves.
But, hey, it hurts foreigners, so it must be good!
For no reason at all, here’s a cartoon by Theodore Geisel to cheer you up!
And if it hurts non-white foreigners, it must be gooder!
@Kathy: Ayup!
As both a high school and a college drop-out (also community college, but that hardly counts) I’m perhaps not the one to make this point, but stupid people fear education. Education has a tendency to narrow the Duning-Kruger window, to separate the ‘thinks they’re smart,’ from the smart.
This is another point of attack for us. 1) Billionaires, 2) Corrupt billionaires, 3) Corrupt billionaires making sure your kids will be their illiterate serfs. This works at the state level, too. Congressman Dicktwaddle has a degree, but he doesn’t think your kids should have one. And you pair it with local attacks on school boards and school libraries.
I like the connection of those three targets, it simplifies a narrative.
Hold what we have in the Senate, take Maine, North Carolina and possibly get a Dem-leaning independent in Alaska? That gives us a 50/50 Senate. Not impossible. Getting rid of Graham in SC might be too heavy a lift. But with a failing Trump, and a Democrat House, a split Senate would be paralyzed.
To underscore my point about our local economy’s reliance on foreign students generally, this will not play well with the high-rise dorm operators that literally cater to Chinese students.
@Michael Reynolds:
I don’t know, man. I think it just encourages a different kind of stupid. Rather than the plain idiot’s “common sense solutions,” the educated idiot will believe that because they know a lot about biochemistry or the history of the Oxford comma they can figure out anything about economics, appendectomies, or the lasting effects of slavery in American culture.
At least the plain idiot starts his idiocy with “I’m just a dog walker, but…”
@Michael Reynolds:
…and yet simultaneously also believe that the only thing keeping their kids out of Harvard or any other selective college are all of these (waves hands) “others” from “elsewhere” taking up all of the slots.
What Rubio is doing here is going after a fly with a Howitzer. There are much better ways to address potential espionage filtering in through higher ed.
“Again, America 1) loses influence because of these moves; 2) America loses revenue because of these moves; and 3) America loses tech workers because of these moves.
We lose spys and intellectual property theft. We don’t influence spys. We lose no material revenue; people line up to get into these schools. We don’t lose tech workers, we have plenty of people capable of filling the slots. This is red herring stuff. You might as well tell me we can’t imprison a crook because we lose a plumber.
As for non-Chinese foreign “students.” We lose paid anti-Semites.
@Gustopher:
Smarter people with more knowledge are also better at rationalizing their misconceptions, idiocies, bad ideas, errors, etc. And find better ways to ignore or discount evidence that demonstrates they’re wrong.
I notice that one of the people pro this move is a Senator from Indiana. Just for fun I googled “ cardiologist in Terre Haute.” Found a Patel, no Smiths. Got a Desai, a Ramesh Shatogopam, and so forth. Check it out yourself.
Chinese guys in Silicon Valley? Call me, I know a great dim sum place in San Francisco.
@Jen:
Exactly.
But it also fulfills the bigoted needs of the administration to fuel their own simplistic prejudices and to placate their supporters (see a couple of comments up from this one).
One thing I’ve always liked about Drew/Connor/Whoever is that he’s a reliable source for anodyne RWNJ responses on every topic. Case in point: All we’re losing from keeping foreign students out is “
spys*spies and intellectual property theft.”
Do dismantling FEMA next, Connor.
*spelling correction provided at no additional charge (and at pre-tariff pricing, as well)
@Connor: Your bigotry is showing.
As I mentioned in the open thread, Judge Burroughs has extended the block on Trump preventing foreign students from entering Harvard.
All those state secrets and classified documents floating around undergraduate universities these days have to be protected by someone – apparently only Taco is willing to do it. On another note, I am sure all the Trump loving states will gladly plug the gaps in the public university budgets with taxes on their citizens; esp after the recent loss of federal grant money and now declining enrollment of students (who likely pay the out of state rate).
The students don’t need government help. An inclination to look to countries other than the US began in 2017. Example:
@Ken_L: The first Trump administration helped start that trend. International enrollments suffered during the first Trump administration because he made the US less welcoming, even then. The current effort is levels of magnitude higher.
When I say the Chinese government will help those students, I think this is accurate, as the Chinese government was involved in the students who came to the US. Based on limited knowledge, but still some exposure to it all, I don’t think that any Chinese student studying abroad doesn’t have to, in some way, work through their government.
Dealing with (such as recruiting) Chinese students versus Indian students, for example, was not the same kind of process.
@Mike:
I will confess to some level of amusement that the Trump-loving upper-upper administration of my former institution is really going to be sweating this in the Fall. I always knew they were voting against the university’s interests, and here we are.