Latest news with #AssociationofInternationalEducators
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump says Chinese students can stay at US universities, but uncertainty remains
President Trump said Wednesday that Chinese college students, who two weeks ago were threatened with losing their visas to study in the U.S., can stay here as part of a trade deal negotiated with China. The announcement, though, did little to quell the anxiety and uncertainty brought on by months of the administration targeting international students at the nation's university campuses. 'We'll believe it when we see it,' said Rachel Banks, senior director for public policy and legislative strategy at NAFSA: Association of International Educators, an 11,000-member group that advocates for global education. For now, she said, the situation remains fluid after a series of 'ping-ponging' directives from the White House. It remains unclear how Trump's statement, made in a social media post, would translate to the process of applying for or renewing student visas. During recent months, international students have had their visas revoked, although in some cases they've been restored, and the U.S. has suspended the interviews necessary to apply or renew them. Some have had difficulty re-entering the U.S. after trips abroad, leading some universities to advise students not to travel. Trump said in a post on his Truth Social account that the trade and tariff deal would allow the U.S. to obtain magnets and rare earth materials from China, and in exchange, 'we will provide to China what was agreed to, including Chinese students using our colleges and universities (which has always been good with me!). Students and their college programs have been struggling with how to address the ever-fluctuating directives. 'People who are on student visas, there's a real climate of uncertainty,' said Margaret Pearson, a government and politics professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, who works in the field of Chinese policy. 'It's very confusing in general. There are so many moving parts. It's all so not transparent and constantly changing.' The Chinese students in her PhD program are 'very nervous,' and several declined a request forwarded to them to speak to The Baltimore Sun, she said. One recently admitted student for the coming academic year, who is from Shanghai, will need to get a visa. But Pearson said she does not know if he had been able to schedule the necessary interview at the consulate office there. Last month, the Trump administration stopped scheduling student interviews at U.S. embassies and consular sections abroad. According to news reports, the administration ordered the pause as it considered expanding the vetting of applicants' social media activity. The Chinese students in her program generally return home every three or four years because the expense prevents more frequent visits, Pearson said. Now, they're afraid to travel at all for fear of being questioned or denied entry upon their return, she said. ''Do I go home and renew my visa?'' she said her students have been thinking. ''Do I dare to leave the country?' There's no reliable guidance I can give.' The uncertainty over Chinese students comes after months of the Trump administration targeting different groups of visa holders. In April, an estimated 1,500 student visas were revoked nationwide, including at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland campuses. Later in the month, however, some were restored after a court order led to a reversal of the termination. The focus then turned to Chinese students specifically, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying on March 28 that his department would 'aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students.' And then earlier this month, the Trump administration issued a travel ban against citizens of 12 countries and partial limits against seven other countries. Saying the move 'may add further stress to our international community,' UMCP officials offered services and counseling to students and staff who might be affected. According to NAFSA, students from abroad are about 6% of the U.S. higher education population, although schools like Johns Hopkins University, have a much higher proportion. A recent article in The New York Times found Hopkins had the seventh highest percentage, 39%, of international students among selective four-year schools with at least 1,000 students. Banks of NAFSA said beyond the immense academic and cultural contributions international students and scholars bring to the U.S., they also add an estimated $43.8 billion to the economy. 'It remains to be seen' how chilling an effect the Trump administration's actions on student visas will have on that, she said. 'It certainly is a disconcerting time to be in this moment now.' _____
Irish Times
26-04-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
In Trump's America, it can be dangerous to criticise the president's friends
Mahmoud Khalil , Mohsen Mahdawi, Rumeysa Ozturk and Kseniia Petrova are foreign graduate students in their early 30s. All were in the US legally to study at Ivy League universities. Since February, they have been detained and threatened with deportation. Three are held in detention centres in Louisiana. Mahdawi's whereabouts are uncertain. The Trump administration considers the three who criticised Israel's war on Gaza anti-Semites and terrorist supporters. The fourth, a brilliant Russian scientist, opposes Vladimir Putin . In Donald Trump's America, criticising the president's friends can be as dangerous as criticising Trump himself. The administration has rescinded the legal status of close to 1,000 international university students since mid-March, according to the Association of International Educators. Most have had their visas revoked without notice and have not been told what they have done wrong. Many prefer to 'self-deport' – the administration's term – rather than be expelled by force. Secretary of state Marco Rubio told a press conference last month that he had personally revoked more than 300 student visas, including those of Khalil and Ozturk, under a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act which permits the deportation of noncitizens judged to be 'adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests' of the US. READ MORE 'We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to become a social activist who tears up our university campuses,' Rubio said when asked about Ozturk's case. 'Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa.' Ozturk's 'crime' was to have co-authored an opinion piece in the Tufts University newspaper calling on the university to cut financial ties with Israel and denounce genocide in Gaza. Protesters hold signs in support of Rumeysa Ozturk at Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Photograph: Taylor Coester/Shutterstock/EPA-EFE Khalil is a Palestinian born in a refugee camp in Syria. He earned a degree in computer science at the American University of Beirut and once managed a scholarship programme in Lebanon for the British Embassy. He was to have received his master's degree in public administration from Columbia University next month. His wife, Noor Abdalla, a dentist and US citizen, was about to give birth to their first child, a son, when agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) seized him in the lobby of their building on March 8th. Khalil had led protests at Columbia against Israel's destruction of the Gaza Strip in retaliation for the Hamas atrocities of October 7th, 2023. Mahdawi helped Khalil organise the Columbia protests but renounced activism in the spring of 2024. A refugee from the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Mahdawi is a practising Buddhist. He had a premonition about the citizenship interview where he was instead arrested on April 14th, and met Senator Bernie Sanders and two other lawmakers beforehand. Jewish and Israeli-American students whom Mahdawi befriended at Columbia have spoken out on his behalf. Ozturk, who is Turkish, was a doctoral candidate in child development at Tufts University. She became alarmed when she learned in early March that a pro-Israel group called Canary Mission had 'doxed' her – posted her photograph and resumé and denounced her for 'anti-Israeli activism'. [ US immigration judge rules Palestinian Columbia student Khalil can be deported Opens in new window ] A shocking security camera video shows black-clad plainclothes officers with faces hidden swarming Ozturk on a Massachusetts street and bundling her into a waiting SUV on March 25th. She suffered asthma attacks during the overnight journey to New Hampshire and Vermont, from where she was flown to an Ice facility in Louisiana. The administration usually transfers those selected for deportation to states where judges support Maga ideology. Canary Mission is a far-right Jewish group whose self-proclaimed mission is to pursue those who promote 'hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses'. The source of its financing and location are unknown, leading The New York Times to call it 'shadowy' . Khalil was also 'doxed' by Canary Mission. Immigration lawyers believe that Ice uses blacklists established by Canary Mission and another extreme pro-Israel group, Betar, to target critics of Israel. Betar has boasted openly of distributing a 'deport list' of 3,000 immigrants. Artwork on the desk of Kseniia Petrova, a scientist who fled Russia after protesting its invasion of Ukraine, at Harvard. Photograph: Lucy Lu/The New York Times Petrova was part of a team researching ageing at Harvard Medical School. She was stopped at Boston's Logan Airport on February 16th, ostensibly for carrying petri-dishes containing frog embryos donated by the Curie Institute to her lab at Harvard, an offence that would normally carry a small fine. She had refused to hide her opposition to Putin and fled Russia days after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Ice has rejected Petrova's lawyer's petitions for parole, saying she is a flight risk and a threat to US security. [ Harvard sues Trump administration to stop the freeze of €1.9 billion in grants Opens in new window ] EU staffers bound for the IMF and World Bank meetings in Washington this week were provided with burner phones and basic laptops containing no record of their political opinions. The Committee to Protect Journalists this month urged journalists travelling to the US to leave personal phones or laptops at home. Before Trump, such precautions were taken only for travel to totalitarian countries. Americans, too, are fearful of Trump's assault on freedom of speech and opinion. 'We are all afraid,' the veteran Republican senator Lisa Murkowski said in Anchorage this month. 'I'll tell you, I'm oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real.'
Telegraph
19-04-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Trump's clampdown on foreign students will cost US universities billions
American universities fear the Trump administration's purge of foreign students could trigger a cash crisis. More than 1,000 students, from an estimated 160 colleges, have had their visas or legal status revoked, in some cases because of their views on Gaza, according to the latest figures. But in others they are facing deportation for minor criminal offences and even traffic violations. While many of the cases are being fought in the courts, colleges fear that applications could plummet from overseas. According to NAFSA: Association of International Educators 1.1 million international students at US colleges and universities contributed $43.8billion (£33billion) to the American economy during the 2023-2024 academic year. They also supported more than 378,000 jobs. But the landscape is vastly different now. Given the hatchet the administration is taking to university spending, a dramatic fall in applications from well-heeled foreign students is the last thing American colleges need. 'The thing with foreign students is they pay full freight,' Christopher Galdieri, professor of politics at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, told The Telegraph. 'When you get into graduate programmes you have folks from all over the world who come here and by and large they are paying the full tuition for graduate school. 'If you are an American, most doctoral programs pay you a stipend to attend them. Your tuition is covered by a scholarship or a fellowship or something. 'I went to the University of Minnesota and just in my programme you know there were folks from Turkey, there were folks from China, there were folks from South Korea, and they were paying their way in a way that we Americans were not. 'These folk are an enormous factor in the budgets of every research university in the country. This is going way, way beyond Columbia and Harvard.' With the administration demanding Harvard hands over a list of foreign students, there is a sense that they are no longer welcome in the US, especially if other colleges are made to fall into line. 'You're making it incredibly hostile for them to come here,' Prof Galdieri added. 'You're making their existence precarious because, as we've seen from this administration you know having a visa is no guarantee like if you have a visa when you get up in the morning there's no guarantee you're still going to have that visa come lunchtime.' Harvard is in an especially invidious position. While Columbia University bowed to pressure from the Trump administration, Harvard did not. Already its $2billion federal funding has been frozen, and its charitable status is under threat. The administration has told America's oldest university to disclose its sources of foreign funding. Last week Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem demanded it provided information about the 'illegal and violent activities' of its foreign students by the end of the month. If it fails to comply, Ms Noem threatened to halt visas for its foreign students, who account for about 27 per cent of the total graduate and undergraduate population. Other universities have also warned of the consequences of driving away foreign students. Massachusetts Institute of Technology saw nine visas revoked and its president, Sally Kornbluth, said it would cost the college global talent. 'MIT is an American university, proudly so – but we would be gravely diminished without the students and scholars who join us from other nations,' she wrote in a letter to members of the college. Moody's, a credit rating agency, said it was pessimistic about what lies ahead and rewrote its 2025 outlook for colleges, changing its prediction from stable to negative. It said that the potential for reductions or eliminations of visas for international students, or a decline in the appeal of the US to international students would present difficulties for the portion of the sector reliant on these students, who generally provide higher net tuition and boost enrolment at both the undergraduate and graduate level.
Yahoo
19-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump's clampdown on foreign students will cost US universities billions
American universities fear the Trump administration's purge of foreign students could trigger a cash crisis. More than 1,000 students, from an estimated 160 colleges, have had their visas or legal status revoked, in some cases because of their views on Gaza, according to the latest figures. But in others they are facing deportation for minor criminal offences and even traffic violations. While many of the cases are being fought in the courts, colleges fear that applications could plummet from overseas. According to NAFSA: Association of International Educators 1.1 million international students at US colleges and universities contributed $43.8billion (£33billion) to the American economy during the 2023-2024 academic year. They also supported more than 378,000 jobs. But the landscape is vastly different now. Given the hatchet the administration is taking to university spending, a dramatic fall in applications from well-heeled foreign students is the last thing American colleges need. 'The thing with foreign students is they pay full freight,' Christopher Galdieri, professor of politics at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, told The Telegraph. 'When you get into graduate programmes you have folks from all over the world who come here and by and large they are paying the full tuition for graduate school. 'If you are an American, most doctoral programs pay you a stipend to attend them. Your tuition is covered by a scholarship or a fellowship or something. 'I went to the University of Minnesota and just in my programme you know there were folks from Turkey, there were folks from China, there were folks from South Korea, and they were paying their way in a way that we Americans were not. 'These folk are an enormous factor in the budgets of every research university in the country. This is going way, way beyond Columbia and Harvard.' With the administration demanding Harvard hands over a list of foreign students, there is a sense that they are no longer welcome in the US, especially if other colleges are made to fall into line. 'You're making it incredibly hostile for them to come here,' Prof Galdieri added. 'You're making their existence precarious because, as we've seen from this administration you know having a visa is no guarantee like if you have a visa when you get up in the morning there's no guarantee you're still going to have that visa come lunchtime.' Harvard is in an especially invidious position. While Columbia University bowed to pressure from the Trump administration, Harvard did not. Already its $2billion federal funding has been frozen, and its charitable status is under threat. The administration has told America's oldest university to disclose its sources of foreign funding. Last week Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem demanded it provided information about the 'illegal and violent activities' of its foreign students by the end of the month. If it fails to comply, Ms Noem threatened to halt visas for its foreign students, who account for about 27 per cent of the total graduate and undergraduate population. Other universities have also warned of the consequences of driving away foreign students. Massachusetts Institute of Technology saw nine visas revoked and its president, Sally Kornbluth, said it would cost the college global talent. 'MIT is an American university, proudly so – but we would be gravely diminished without the students and scholars who join us from other nations,' she wrote in a letter to members of the college. Moody's, a credit rating agency, said it was pessimistic about what lies ahead and rewrote its 2025 outlook for colleges, changing its prediction from stable to negative. It said that the potential for reductions or eliminations of visas for international students, or a decline in the appeal of the US to international students would present difficulties for the portion of the sector reliant on these students, who generally provide higher net tuition and boost enrolment at both the undergraduate and graduate level. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
