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Reuters
3 days ago
- Business
- Reuters
Chinese students face anxious wait for visas under US crackdown
BEIJING, May 30 (Reuters) - Caught in the middle of Washington's renewed visa crackdown on Chinese international students, Beijing postgraduate Lainey is anxiously waiting to resume the visa process to study a PhD at her dream school, the University of California. "We feel helpless and unable to do anything," said the 24-year-old sociology student, who declined to give her surname for privacy reasons. "The situation in North America this year is not very good. From applying for my PhD until now, this series of visa policies is not very favourable to us. But we have no choice but to wait." The U.S. State Department said on Thursday it would not tolerate the "exploitation" of American universities or theft of U.S. research and intellectual property by Beijing. Spokesperson Tammy Bruce did not elaborate on how many Chinese students would be affected by a new plan announced on Wednesday to "aggressively" revoke visas. The visa crackdown is the latest in a series of moves targeting the international student community, especially Chinese nationals, who make up roughly 1 in 4 of all international students in the U.S., as the Trump administration pursues its hardline immigration agenda. If applied to a broad segment of the 277,000 Chinese students already at U.S. colleges, the visa revocations could disrupt a major source of income for universities and a crucial pipeline of talent for U.S. technology companies. Chinese students make up 16% of all graduate science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) students in the United States. The announcement on Chinese student visa holders came after the Trump administration ordered its missions worldwide to stop scheduling new appointments for student and exchange visitor visa applicants. If the visa appointment system is not resumed soon, Lainey wishes to defer enrolment for a year. "Although everyone says the U.S. admissions system may be biased against Chinese students, in reality U.S. schools are indeed the top in terms of academic quality," she said. "I may also consider (applying to) some places outside the U.S., such as Europe, as well as Hong Kong and Singapore." The measures are a sign of the increasing spillover from a bruising trade war between the two global superpowers, and threaten to derail a fragile truce reached mid-May in Geneva. A Friday editorial by China's state-owned Global Times newspaper said the new visa measures raised "the spectre of McCarthyism" and likened them to an "educational witch-hunt". "In recent years, the suppression of Chinese students has increasingly become an important part of the U.S. strategy to contain China," the commentary said. Potentially even more damaging than the immediate economic impact for the U.S. could be a long-term erosion of the appeal of U.S. universities and the subsequent brain drain. International students - 54% of them from India and China - contributed more than $50 billion to the U.S. economy in 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. "If I really have to wait until 2026 to reapply, I might not have such positive feelings towards America," said Lainey. "If I can't even get a visa, then I'd have no choice but to go somewhere else."
Bloomberg
4 days ago
- General
- Bloomberg
Trump Turns His Ire to University of California
Welcome to Bloomberg's California Edition—covering all the events shaping one of the world's biggest economies and its global influence. Join us each week as we put a unique lens on the Golden State. Sign up here if you're not already on the list. The University of California system entered into Donald Trump's flight path as his administration barrels through universities it has accused of not doing enough to curb antisemitism.
Reuters
4 days ago
- General
- Reuters
Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Kenyan author who reckoned with colonial legacy, dies at 87
NAIROBI, May 29 (Reuters) - Celebrated Kenyan novelist and playwright Ngugi wa Thiong'o, whose sharp criticisms of post-independence elites led to his jailing and two decade in exile, has died at the age of 87, Kenya's president said. Shaped by an adolescence where he witnessed the armed Mau Mau struggle for independence from Britain, Thiong'o took aim in his writings at colonial rule and the Kenyan elites who inherited many of its privileges. He was arrested in December 1977 and detained for a year without charge in a maximum security prison after peasants and workers performed his play "Ngaahika Ndeenda" (I Will Marry When I Want). Angered by the play's criticism of inequalities in Kenyan society, the authorities sent three truckloads of police to raze the theatre, Thiong'o later said. He went into exile in 1982 after he said he learned of plans by President Daniel arap Moi's security services to arrest and kill him. He went on to become a professor of English and comparative literature at the University of California-Irvine. Thiong'o ended his exile in 2004 after Moi left office following more than two decades in power marked by widespread arrests, killings and torture of political opponents. Kenya's current president, William Ruto, paid tribute to Thiong'o after his death in the U.S. following reports of a struggle with ill health in recent years. "The towering giant of Kenyan letters has put down his pen for the final time," Ruto said on his X account. "Always courageous, he made an indelible impact on how we think about our independence, social justice as well as the uses and abuses of political and economic power." Although Thiong'o said upon returning to Kenya in 2004 that he bore no grudge against Moi, he told Reuters in an interview three years later that Kenyans should not forget the abuses of the era. "The consequences of 22 years of dictatorship are going to be with us for a long time and I don't like to see us returning to that period," he said. Thiong'o's best-known works included his debut novel "Weep Not Child", which chronicled the Mau Mau struggle and "Devil on the Cross", which he wrote on toilet paper while in prison. In the 1980s, he abandoned English to write in his mother tongue Gikuyu, saying he was bidding farewell to the imported language of Kenya's former colonial master.
South China Morning Post
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
Kenya author Ngugi wa Thiong'o, one of Africa's literary greats, dies at 87
Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong'o, considered one of east Africa's greatest literary figures, died on Wednesday, his daughter announced on social media. He was 87. 'It is with a heavy heart that we announce the passing of our dad, Ngugi wa Thiong'o this Wednesday morning,' wrote Wanjiku Wa Ngugi. 'He lived a full life, fought a good fight,' she added. Messages of support and respect quickly poured in for the celebrated author, whose decision to stop writing in English and start using only his native Kikuyu made him a powerful symbol of postcolonial African identity. 'My condolences to the family and friends professor Ngugi wa Thiong'o, a renowned literary giant and scholar, a son of the soil and great patriot whose footprints are indelible,' wrote Martha Karua, an opposition leader in Kenya, on social media. A social activist, Thiong'o served as a distinguished professor of English and comparative literature at the University of California-Irvine for more than two decades and penned a number of plays and short stories in addition to his novels. His most acclaimed works include Petals of Blood, a 1977 book chiding Kenya's emerging class of post-independence elites for exploiting the poor, and Wizard of the Crow, which examined the legacy of colonialism and was published in 2006, more than two decades after he had moved abroad.
CBS News
6 days ago
- Business
- CBS News
Children of divorce face increased chance of teen pregnancy and jail, University of Maryland study finds
U.S. children whose parents divorce when they are age 5 or younger have reduced earnings as adults and increased chances by young adulthood of teen pregnancy, incarceration and death, according to a study conducted in part by economists at the University of Maryland. After a divorce, a household's income typically is halved as a family splits into two households, and it struggles to recover that lost income over the ensuing decade. Families after divorce also tend to move to neighborhoods with lower incomes that offer reduced economic opportunities, and children are farther away from their non-custodial parent, according to the working paper by economists at the University of California, Merced; the U.S. Census Bureau; and the University of Maryland. The three events — loss of financial resources, a decline in neighborhood quality and missing parental involvement because of distance or an increased workload required to make up for lost income — accounted for 25% to 60% of the impact divorce has on children's outcomes, the study said. "These changes in family life reveal that, rather than an isolated legal shock, divorce represents a bundle of treatments — including income loss, neighborhood changes, and family restructuring — each of which might affect children's outcomes," the economists wrote. Almost a third of American children live through their parents' divorce before reaching adulthood, according to the study. Many children of divorce have reached the heights of professional success, including former President Barack Obama and Vice President JD Vance, who lamented that divorce was too easily accessible during a 2021 speech at a Christian high school in California. The U.S. divorce rate has been on a decline for the past decade and a half, going from over 10% in 2008 to about 7% in 2022, according to the Census Bureau. The economists' study can't show the emotional impact of divorce, but some children of divorce said it resonated through adulthood, no matter what age they were when it happened. Brandon Hellan, 54, said it took him until his mid-30s before he felt like he could commit to getting married and having children. He thinks his parents' divorce when he was in his early 20s played a role since it felt at the time like an immense betrayal. "I really think my parents' divorce made me put up these walls and treat relationships like they were rentals, temporary," said Hellan, who lives in the St. Louis area and wasn't connected to the study. While the study shows the negative impacts of divorce, it can't show what families' lives would have been like if parents had stayed together, said Philip Cohen, a University of Maryland sociologist with no ties to the study. "Probably nobody can tell better than the parents facing the conditions of the marriage and the opportunity for divorce," Cohen said. "I believe parents are aware divorce may have harmful consequences for their children, and make difficult judgments about what is in their own best interest, as well as the interest of their children." Previous academic studies reached different conclusions about the impact of divorce on children. Some argued that unhappy marriages harm children by exposing them to conflict between their parents and that, generally, divorce is a better option for both parents and children. Other studies said divorce leads to reductions in financial resources, the time parents have to spend with their children and the emotional stability of their offspring. Yet other studies concluded that divorce has a minimal impact, one way or another. A big shortfall in reaching any conclusions has been a lack of data. But the authors of the new study said they overcame that limitation by linking data from federal tax records, the Social Security Administration and the Census Bureau for all children born in the U.S. between 1988 and 1993. The tax data traced marital histories and income of the parents and the census data provided information about households and outcomes from childhood to adulthood. The study compared outcomes among siblings by the amount of time a childhood was spent with divorced parents. It found that children whose parents divorced when they were age 5 or younger had a 13% smaller income by age 27, but there was little or no impact if the child was older than 18 when their parents divorced. A parental divorce increased the chances of teen pregnancy if it took place before the child was age 15. But that effect disappeared by age 20, as did the impact of any divorce on the chances of incarceration. There was also no noticeable effect on a child of divorce getting married by age 25, according to the study. The impact of divorce was similar across demographic groups, the study found.
