Chinese students rattled by Trump plan to ‘aggressively' revoke visas

Straits Times

7 days ago

The vague parameters had a chilling effect on May 29 as students wondered how broadly the Trump administration would apply its new criteria. PHOTO: REUTERS
CHICAGO – It had been all figured out, Ms Wang Cici said. Summer at home in China, then back to get her master's degree in Chicago. After that, if she was lucky, a job in the United States.
Now, all of that is up in the air, she said, a potential casualty of a crackdown that has upended the future for more than 277,000 Chinese nationals studying in this country.
'Hopefully, I'll be fine,' said Ms Wang, a 22-year-old aspiring computer scientist, sitting with her parents in the stately main quad of the University of Chicago on May 29. 'But I'm not sure.'
Across the country, Chinese students reeled on May 29 from Secretary of State Marco Rubio's announcement that the Trump administration would begin 'aggressively' revoking visas for Chinese students studying in the United States.
More than two dozen students studying in the United States, most of whom did not want their names published for fear of retaliation, told The New York Times that they worried they could lose their academic opportunities in an instant, with little explanation.
In a statement late on May 28, the State Department announced it was focusing on those who were studying in 'critical fields' or who had ties to the Chinese Communist Party and was revising visa criteria to 'enhance scrutiny' of all future applications from China, including Hong Kong.
The vague parameters had a chilling effect on May 29 as students wondered how broadly the Trump administration would apply its new criteria.
Mr Rubio did not define 'critical fields', but science students felt particularly vulnerable because US officials have expressed concerns about the recruiting of US-trained scientists by China. Nor was it clear how US officials would determine which students had ties to the Communist Party.
The news came amid heightened tensions with China, a broad push to slash the number of immigrants in the United States and major headwinds in court for the Trump administration on global tariffs. China is a top target in President Donald Trump's trade war.
Student visas offer a potent tool for the Trump administration, if the courts allow it. Roughly one-fourth of the nation's total international student population is from China, a cohort larger than any except Indian students, according to a report published in 2024 by the State Department and the Institute of International Education, a nonprofit group.
Professors and laboratories depend on the students' skill as teaching assistants and researchers. At public colleges, university administrators rely on the full tuition Chinese students typically pay to help subsidise the education of in-state students.
At campuses large and small, Chinese students are an American fixture. At the University of Southern California, where international students have for decades been crucial to the campus's academic and business model, Chinese students make up about one-eighth of the 47,000-member student body.
'Our international students are vital members of our Trojan family and have been since our founding in 1880,' USC's president Carol Folt said in a statement on May 29. 'This is a confusing time.'
From New York to the Midwest to California, students called the decision worse than confusing. At New York City's Columbia University, where about 6,500 Chinese students were enrolled last year, several Chinese students asked to be referred to only by their English first names, fearing retaliation from US authorities.
Caroline, 22, who just graduated with a bachelor's degree in art history, said she was leaving in June for Canada, where she had gone to high school.
'I'm looking forward to it,' she said. 'This place doesn't feel welcoming anymore.'
At the University of California, Berkeley, where more than 2,500 Chinese students are enrolled on student visas, Mr Zhang Hongxian, a sophomore from Shanghai, said he had come to the United States because it had the world's best education system.
His parents gave him some advice.
'Just follow the rules, be yourself, be a good person, don't offend any laws, and you'll be fine,' said Mr Zhang, who is enrolled in global studies courses this summer.
But the administration's announcement this week reminded him, unsettlingly, of the period during the Covid-19 pandemic when he lived in China and couldn't get access to websites from other countries because the Chinese government had blocked them.
'I can't say Trump is doing something bad, because he's looking out for his own country,' he said. 'I can understand that. But a country needs some interaction with the people outside your country, some international communication.'
He said his previous impression of the country had been that 'America always accepts everything.' Watching the crackdown on international students unfold has been 'so weird,' he said. 'It's not like the US'
At UCLA, Tony, 19, a freshman who declined to share his last name because he feared retaliation, agreed.
Tony, sitting outside at a dining commons, where the jacarandas were like purple lace in the spring sunshine, said that he had been drawn by the effortless beauty of Southern California and a professor he had met during a summer session. It had seemed a reward, he said, for the brutal intensity with which he had studied in China.
But since his arrival, he said, the unpredictability of his status under the Trump administration has been a constant source of anxiety. 'I'm a person who worries about everything,' he said, 'and I can't stop thinking about it.'
He said he had avoided talking about his visa fears with his parents, 'normal people' who don't have the same access to news that he does. But he can't escape the sense, he said, that he is now a bargaining chip in some larger negotiation.
'It seems like when they finished with the tariff thing, they turned to students,' he said. 'It's like a strategy.'
Asked what he would tell Mr Rubio or Mr Trump, the teenager laughed wearily as students chattered around him, hearts light, minds sharp, plates overflowing with pizza and salad.
'First of all,' he said, 'I'm not a spy.' NYTIMES
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