Trump administration threatens to revoke Chinese student visa

The Trump administration announced this week that Chinese students’ visas would be “actively” revoked, angering uncertainty among international students in the United States – in California, it sparked anger among leaders of the Chinese-American community, who say such targeted actions are “xenophobia.”

There is little disclosure about the administration's plan, which represents another Salvo, a Salvo, a belligerent push by President Trump to reshape higher education, which has vanished academics, ruined campus life and poured into courts across the country.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday Announced in social media posts Visa revocation will include “people who have connections with the Communist Party of China or who study in key areas” without elaborating on what areas of research aims, or whether the move applies only to college students.

Rubio says In the statement The U.S. State Department and the Department of Homeland Security will revoke visas, while also revising “visa standards to strengthen review of all future visa applications in the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong.”

Scholars and international students fear that such actions could jeopardize the academic future of thousands of Chinese students enrolled at universities across the country, and threaten the billions of dollars in tuition payments urgently needed by universities that have faced loss of research funding, as well as other cuts under the effectiveness of Trump’s education policies.

In California, Chinese students form the largest international group, and the potential financial consequences have attracted great attention. California has about 51,000 Chinese nationals represent one-third of the state's nearly 141,000 foreign students.

Trump's plan was widely criticized Thursday by politicians, professors and others in California and beyond. For many, Rubio’s invocation of the Communist Party sparked dark memories of past anti-China policies, including the 1882 China Exclusion Act, which prohibited the Immigration from China.

Rep. D-Monterey Park called the visa ruling “xenophobia” and said it “only hurt the United States.”

“Suppose every Chinese is a pawn by the Communist Party of China, this is another example of the Trump administration's targeting the Chinese government, not the Chinese government,” Zhu said. “This is the whole purpose of xenophobia, which is reminiscent of the China Exclusion Act.”

State Department spokesman Tammy Bruce said in a press conference Thursday that the agency will not elaborate on the standards the U.S. will use in the review of visas. She said the department is considering “how we can keep America safe and safe and prosperous in its nature.”

Bruce raised the ghost of China's intellectual property theft, a well-documented scourge that estimated to cost billions of dollars in the United States.

“The United States … will not tolerate CCP's exploitation of American universities, or theft of American research, intellectual property or technology to develop its military power, conduct intelligence gathering or suppress the voices of the opposition,” she said. “…the nature of what China has been doing in terms of technology, stealing information, intellectual property, research, copyright, etc. – it's not new or confusion, it's a way we can certainly try to mitigate the problem.”

Some warnings about brain loss

Even if some educators question the government's willingness to implement its plans – one UCLA professor likens it to a posture designed to exaggerate students and scholars – others say they hope the policy launches a wave that can touch on the main “brain loss.” Such an Exodus could give China an advantage in global competition in key areas including technology, defense and medicine.

“The United States has basically succeeded, and we don't care about the passports the brain carries – we care about the brain,” said David M. Lampton, an emeritus professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “This is meaningless and counterproductive policy. Of course, we will expel many (Chinese scholars). This will make China the research of some professors.”

But it's not just China. Lampton and others say the withdrawal of Chinese student visas will have a chilling impact on academia and may shut down the smartest minds of other countries.

“It doesn't appeal to scholars around the world,” Lampton said. He noted that countries such as England and Germany could benefit from scholars seeking safe harbors outside the United States, plus Trump's other offensive against universities involves visa revocation programs, and research foundations such as cutting the Research Foundation from the National Institutes of Health, “weak countries have people who are competitive.”

The University of California expressed concern. The University of California has 17,832 Chinese students on all its campuses. Locally, USC has nearly 6,000 and UCLA has 2,208.

“University of California is concerned about the U.S. State Department’s announcement of the revocation of visas for Chinese students,” said Rachel Zaentz, senior director of strategy and critical communications at the University of California. “Chinese students, as well as all of our international students, academics, faculty and staff, are important members of our university community and have contributed greatly to our research, teaching, patient care and public service tasks.”

Ray Wang, a Chinese student at UCLA, said he and others were “a little helpless.”

“We are all constantly monitoring the news,” said Wang, who graduated next month. “I think the biggest problem is that there is no clear roadmap. The government sends a very different signal, and the real problem is inconsistency.”

Chinese students are financial boons

Chinese students have always been a boon for American universities because like other foreigners, they pay much more than our students. Foreign students usually pay the entire cost of the school, and in some cases special costs.

For example, at the University of California, non-resident costs per year for those entering the system is $34,200. So how many Chinese students contribute to UC Coveers?

According to estimates calculated by the New York Times, the annual tuition fee and the cost per Chinese student is $49,134, and their annual tuition fee can be paid in excess of $876 million. Their overall economic impact, including other items such as rooms and boards, is higher.

“It’s a big source of income for universities, especially in a year of many other financial stress,” said George Blumenthal, former UC Santa Cruz Chancellor and former former director of the UC Berkeley Center for Higher Education Research. Currently, “this will have a significant financial impact on public universities in at least California.”

Blumenthal said the university is dealing with multiple financial hits and stressors simultaneously, including state cuts related to a tight budget year, widespread elimination of federal health and scientific research grants, and a drastic reduction of federal reimbursement to achieve overhead costs associated with research.

International Students' Books

For international students and faculty, the Trump administration’s dazzling executive orders and other directives for higher education are particularly overwhelming.

This week, the State Council stopped arranging visa interviews from foreign students and said it was preparing to increase scrutiny of international students' social media activities.

“Using social media as an effective means to identify bad foreign students seems to be a lackluster and invasive tool, but larger governments tend to be politically clean,” said John Aubrey Douglass, a senior researcher at the UC Berkeley Center for Higher Education Research. “…It’s the entire effort to erode the autonomy and credibility of American universities and with surprising strength.”

A federal judge on Thursday extended an order that blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to block Harvard’s admission, the latest in an increasingly fierce battle between the oldest university in the United States and the federal government.

But among those in the Asian American community in Los Angeles, the issue of visa revocation is primary.

Connie Chung Joe, CEO of Asian Americans who advance to Southern California Justice, said the visa issue is reminded of the China Exclusion Act, which “a part of American history is widely condemned as a racist, against racist of Chinese descent” because it mistakenly labels it as distrust or inherent danger.

“It seems that the government is choosing to repeat history by implementing an immigration policy that is specifically targeting students of Chinese nationality without clear and justified reasons,” she said.

UCLA student Wang will soon apply for a work visa under the cloud. He said the unpredictability of the Trump administration made him feel unsafe.

And, he said: “No protection.”

Time worker Jaweed Kaleem contributed to the report.