Trump administration threat to revoke Chinese student visa roils California

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6 days ago

The Trump administration's announcement this week that Chinese students' visas would be 'aggressively' revoked has inflamed the uncertainty among the nation's international students — and in California has ignited anger among leaders in the Chinese American community who said such a targeted action is 'xenophobic.'
Little has been disclosed about the administration's plan, which represents yet another salvo in President Trump's combative push to reshape higher education, which has roiled academia, disrupted campus life and spilled into courts across the country.
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced in a social media post that the visa revocations will include 'those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields,' without elaborating on what areas of study would be targeted or whether the move would apply solely to college students.
Rubio said in a statement that the U.S. State Department and the Department of Homeland Security would revoke the visas, while also revising 'visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from the People's Republic of China and Hong Kong.'
Scholars and international students fear such an action could jeopardize the academic future of tens of thousands of Chinese students enrolled at colleges across the country, and threaten billions of dollars in tuition payments desperately needed by universities already facing the loss of research funding and other cuts effectuated by Trump's education policies.
The potential financial fallout is of acute concern in California, where Chinese students constitute the largest international group. About 51,000 Chinese nationals in California make up more than a 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 triggered dark recollections of past anti-Chinese policy, including 1882's Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned immigration from China.
Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) called the visa decision 'xenophobic,' and said it would 'only hurt America.'
'This is yet another example of the Trump administration targeting Chinese people instead of the Chinese government, assuming that every Chinese person is a pawn for the Chinese Communist Party,' Chu said. "That is what xenophobia is all about, and it is reminiscent of the Chinese Exclusion Act."
State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said at a news briefing Thursday that the agency would not elaborate on the criteria that the U.S. would use in vetting visas. She said the department is thinking about 'the nature of how we keep America safe and secure and more prosperous.'
Bruce raised the specter of intellectual property theft by China — a well-documented scourge that is estimated to have cost the U.S. billions of dollars.
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"The United States ... will not tolerate the CCP's exploitation of U.S. universities or theft of U.S. research, intellectual property or technologies to grow its military power, conduct intelligence collection or repress voices of opposition, ' she said. "... The nature of what China has been doing with technology, stealing information, intellectual property, U.S. research, copyrights, etc. — this is not new or confusing, and this is one way that we certainly can try to mitigate that issue.'
Even as some educators questioned the administration's willingness to carry out its plan — one UCLA professor likened it to posturing designed to rattle students and scholars — others said they expected the policy to initiate a wave of departures that could touch off a major "brain drain." Such an exodus could hand China an advantage in the global race for supremacy in key fields including technology, defense and medicine, they said.
"The U.S. basically has succeeded by not caring what passport a brain carries — we care about the brain," said David M. Lampton, a professor emeritus at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and an expert on China. "This is just senseless, counterproductive policy. We will drive many [Chinese scholars] away, for sure. And it will make China a more attractive place for research for some professors."
But it isn't just about China. Lampton and others said that revoking Chinese student visas will have a chilling effect on academia and could turn off the brightest minds from other countries as well.
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"This is unattractive to scholars all over the world," said Lampton, who noted that countries such as England and Germany could benefit from academics seeking safe harbor outside the U.S. The visa revocation plan, coupled with other elements of Trump's assault on universities — such as the slashing of research funding from the National Institutes of Health — will "weaken the competitive advantage of the United States," he said.
Universities in California expressed concern. The University of California has 17,832 Chinese students across all of its campuses. Locally, USC has nearly 6,000 and UCLA has 2,208.
"The University of California is concerned about the U.S. State Department's announcement to revoke visas of Chinese students," said Rachel Zaentz, UC senior director of strategic and critical communications. "Chinese students, as well as all our international students, scholars, faculty and staff, are vital members of our university community and contribute greatly to our research, teaching, patient care and public service mission."
Ray Wang, a Chinese student at UCLA, said he and others "feel kind of helpless."
'All of us are constantly monitoring the news,' said Wang, who will graduate next month. 'I think the biggest problem is that there's no clear road map. The administration is issuing very mixed signals, and the real issue is with the inconsistency.'
Chinese students have been a boon for American universities, because, like other foreigners, they pay a lot more than U.S. students do. Foreign students typically pay a school's full rate and, in some cases, a special fee.
At the University of California, for example, there's a nonresident fee of $34,200 per year for those entering the system. So how much do Chinese students contribute to UC coffers?
With annual tuition and fees of $49,134 per Chinese student, they could pay a total of more than $876 million a year, according to an estimate calculated by The Times. And their overall economic impact, inclusive of other items such as room and board, is much higher.
'This is a significant source of income for the universities,' especially in a year with so many other financial strains, said George Blumenthal, former UC Santa Cruz chancellor and former director of the UC Berkeley Center for Studies in Higher Education. In the current moment, 'this will have a significant financial impact on at least the public universities in California.'
Blumenthal said universities are simultaneously dealing with financial hits and stressors on multiple fronts, including state cuts related to a tight budget year, widespread cancellation of federal health- and science-research grants, and a sharp reduction of federal reimbursement for overhead costs related to research.
The Trump administration's dizzying array of executive orders and other directives focused on higher education has been especially overwhelming for international students and faculty.
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This week, the State Department stopped scheduling visa interviews with students from foreign countries and said it was preparing to increase the vetting of prospective international students' social media activity.
"Using social media as a valid means to identify bad foreign students also seems an inadequate and invasive tool, but part of a larger pattern of an administration bent on political cleansing," said John Aubrey Douglass, a senior research fellow at UC Berkeley Center for Studies in Higher Education. "... It's all part of an effort to erode the autonomy and credibility of American universities, with a surprising level of intensity."
On Thursday, a federal judge extended an order that had blocked an attempt by the Trump administration to stop Harvard University from enrolling foreign students — the latest in an increasingly rancorous fight between the nation's oldest university and the federal government.
But among those in L.A.'s Asian American community, the issue of the visa revocations was top of mind.
Connie Chung Joe, chief executive of the Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California, said the visa issue called to mind the Chinese Exclusion Act — 'a part of American history that has widely been denounced as racist against those of Chinese descent' because it wrongly labeled them as untrustworthy or inherently dangerous.
'It seems the administration is choosing to repeat history by implementing an immigration policy that specifically targets students of Chinese nationality without clear and justifiable cause,' she said.
Wang, the UCLA student, will soon be applying for a work visa — under a cloud. He said the unpredictability of the Trump administration has left him feeling unsafe.
And, he said, "unprotected."
Times staff writer Jaweed Kaleem contributed to this report.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.