Revocation of Chinese students' visas reignites fear of being othered

UPI

04-06-2025

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the policy to 'aggressively revoke' visas in a two-sentence statement last week. Photo by Ken Cedeno/UPI | License Photo
June 4 (UPI) -- The Trump administration's new policy to revoke the visas of Chinese students has advocates for the Asian American community fearful of the potential for broad discrimination.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the policy to "aggressively revoke" visas in a two-sentence statement last week. With that, roughly 25% of international students are forced to reassess their academic plans and consider continuing their education and pursuing their careers outside of the United States.
Nearly 300,000 international students studying in the United States on visas come from China each school year, the second most of any country, according to the Institute of International Education. A majority of them are studying in STEM fields.
Rubio's announcement has Rekha Sharma-Crawford, an immigration attorney at Sharma-Crawford Attorneys at Law, wondering why Chinese students are being targeted.
Sharma-Crawford told UPI that the lack of information provided by Rubio leaves advocates like her with only speculation.
"They really don't indicate what they're looking at. What their concerns are," Sharma-Crawford said. "They don't really indicate why only the Chinese students."
Sharma-Crawford has been helping clients navigate what she calls a "flurry" of actions by the Trump administration targeting immigrants. In the spring, there was also a flurry of Student and Exchange Visitor Program revocations, putting the eligibility of international students in doubt.
Then there were threats to block funding from universities, namely Harvard University.
"It doesn't seem tied truly to a student issue," Sharma-Crawford said. "It feels more like a show of economic might. 'How do we use students as a way to make universities kneel to the will of this administration?'"
Rubio added slight clarification outside of his press statement, posting on X that visas will be targeted for students "with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields."
Martin Kim, director of the Asian Americans Advancing Justice's immigration advocacy program, told UPI this clarification paints all Chinese students as a threat. Kim said his organization and others are in the information gathering phase as they determine who to respond and support students and others who are affected.
Without more details, Rubio's broad statements are left to interpretation. The interpretation that Kim and other advocates have found is that the broad policy is a deliberate catch-all to exclude all Chinese students, however its effects will be broader still.
"One of the things we are trying to emphasize is what they do want and what they often want with these kinds of announcements is to create fear," Kim said. "Unfortunately we have seen this and from our perspective it's obviously bad for our community members but it is just bad for the U.S. and national security more generally. A climate of fear and mistrust among students, among scholars, professors, whoever, is ultimately bad for the United States."
"It causes people not to want to come to the U.S. It creates pressure that can lead to loss of talent in critical fields and fields that are critical to national security," he added.
OCA - Asian Pacific American Advocates is a nonprofit organization that has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over its executive order attempting to end birthright citizenship. Thu Nguyen, executive director of the organization, told UPI that policy, the revocation of visas and several other moves by the Trump administration harken back to the United States' history of oppressing or othering Chinese and Japanese people and Asian Americans as a whole.
Nguyen's organization works to change the narratives around the Asian American community to combat hate, racism and xenophobia. In light of the Trump administrations' unwelcoming policies toward those communities and people of Asian descent in general, OCA is exploring more strategies to protect those it advocates for.
"With the way this administration and some of their policies are headed, especially the immigration policies, who is being deemed American at this point?" Nguyen said. "It just reminds us of the time of Japanese-American incarceration here in the U.S. And really a lot of our community members are wondering, 'What if that's what's next for us again?'"
More than 120,000 Japanese Americans were detained in internment camps in the United States during World War II.
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, a law that restricted Chinese immigrants from coming to the United States, and the racist 19th century term "Yellow Peril" -- marking Asian Americans as unsuitable for citizenship -- also echo as Nguyen surveys the current landscape.
Incidents of violence against Chinese immigrants were prevalent in the 19th century. Nineteen were killed by a mob in the Los Angeles Chinese Massacre in 1871. In 1885, Chinese miners were attacked and their homes were burned during the Rock Springs Massacre in Rock Springs, Wyo., driving more than 500 out of the town.
The COVID-19 pandemic ignited a more recent surge of racist acts and violence against Asian Americans.
From 2019 to 2020, hate crimes against Asian Americans increased significantly in cities observed in a study published by the Journal of Interpersonal Violence. In Seattle, anti-Asian hate crimes increased by 129% and in New York they increased from one to 33.
"The blanket assumptions connecting anyone with an Asian face to the [People's Republic of China] -- that's kind of what we saw in 2020 post-COVID-19 with the rise of anti-Asian hate incidents," Nguyen said. "We're really concerned that will come around again with more waves of anti-Asian hate incidents on the streets."
OCA has had undergrad students who were signed up for its summer internship program withdraw from the program in response to the Trump administration's policies.
"They've decided to stay in their home country and not further pursue higher education here because the opportunities here in the country, it seems like the country is cutting off all the opportunities," Nguyen said. "The broader Asian American community who have come to this country for the opportunity to achieve the American dream, it feels like the U.S. is walking back on its promise as a country where you can pursue life, liberty and happiness."