President Donald Trump has again proposed tightened visa regulations for Chinese nationals—the latest in a flip-flopping approach towards what the Trump Administration has called a national security threat.
The proposal, released Wednesday, seems par for the course in the Administration’s broader crackdown on immigration during Trump’s second term in office, of which Chinese nationals have been a particular target of restrictions to legal visas. But it’s an about-face from just days ago when Trump said he would double the number of Chinese students entering the U.S., much to the furor of his MAGA base.
“It’s very insulting to say students can’t come here,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, defending his comment. “I like that their students come here. I like that other countries’ students come here.”
“And you know what would happen if they didn’t? Our college system would go to hell very quickly,” he added.. “And it wouldn’t be the top colleges, so it’d be colleges that struggle on the bottom. And you take out 300,000 or 600,000 students out of the system.”
Mixed signals towards Chinese nationals
The latest proposed policy will effectively shorten visa durations by introducing fixed periods of stay for F visas for international students, J visas for cultural exchange students, and I visas for journalists. Currently, all three visas are valid for the “duration of status,” which for students typically includes the duration of the program, authorized time away from the U.S., and authorized practical training after they complete their studies; and for journalists includes the full duration of their employment duties in the U.S. Under the proposal, the F and J visas would be valid for four years, and the I visa would be valid for 240 days; visa-holders would then have to apply to extend their visas beyond those terms.
There’s a more stringent cap for Chinese I-visa holders, however, whose visas will only be valid for 90 days under the proposed change. The Administration said the change would allow the government to better “monitor and oversee” visa-holders. There is a 30-day comment period beginning Thursday on the proposal.
It’s not the first time that Trump’s Administration has suggested such a change. The same rules were proposed in 2020 during his first term. Non-profit association of professional educators NAFSA opposed the proposal in a comment letter that said, “the damage done by this rule will be felt on our campuses and in our communities and will negatively impact our country’s standing in the world.” Former President Joe Biden withdrew the proposal when he took office in 2021.
It’s also far from the first time Trump and his allies have targeted Chinese nationals through visa restrictions.
Trump officials have long called Chinese students a national security threat. In 2018, the first-term Trump Administration began investigating scientists affiliated with China as part of the “China Initiative” out of stated concerns about espionage, resulting in charges against more than two dozen academics. Trump also introduced Proclamation 10043, a restrictive visa policy on Chinese graduate students and researchers with ties to China’s “military-civil” universities, in 2020, which resulted in around 1,000 Chinese scholars having their visas revoked.
During his second term, the Trump Administration has said it will more heavily scrutinize Chinese student visa applicants, require social media profiles of all student visa applicants be made public, and “aggressively” revoke Chinese student visas. Trump has also broadly targeted international students in his pressure campaign on elite universities, including targeting pro-Palestinian foreign-born students and revoking Harvard’s ability to enroll international students partly based on allegations that the university had hosted and trained people with ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
“Our adversaries, including the People’s Republic of China, try to take advantage of American higher education by exploiting the student visa program for improper purposes and by using visiting students to collect information at elite universities in the United States,” Trump’s proclamation in June read.
Yet, even as his Administration continues to crack down on Chinese students, the President seems to have changed his tune.
“I hear so many stories about we’re not going to allow their students—we’re going to allow their students to come in,” Trump said on Monday during a meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae-Myung.
“We’re going to allow, it’s very important, 600,000 students. It’s very important,” Trump added. “It’s a very important relationship. We’re going to get along good with China.” Currently, around 300,000 Chinese nationals study in the U.S.
Trump said he told Chinese President Xi Jinping that “we’re honored to have their students here.”
Reactions from China
Beijing welcomed Trump’s remarks but noted the various restrictions that have been placed on Chinese students up until now.
“We hope the U.S. will act on President Trump’s commitment to welcoming Chinese students to study in the country, stop groundlessly harassing, interrogating or repatriating them, and earnestly protect their legitimate and lawful rights and interests,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said on Wednesday.
The Chinese government has in recent years pushed for more people-to-people exchanges with the rest of the world, including the U.S., and over the past few months has tried to strengthen its position on the global stage as the U.S. withdraws from it. The country has opened itself up to an unprecedented level of visa-free travel while tourism to the U.S. has fallen, sought to develop its international trade ties while Trump has imposed hefty tariffs on much of the world, and pushed to be seen as a potential global peace mediator as conflicts increasingly erupt around the world.
China also could stand to benefit from the Trump Administration’s clampdown on academia and international students. Universities in China and Hong Kong have courted international transfers from Harvard, while more and more Chinese scientists have left the U.S. for China.
Reactions from Trump supporters and allies
Trump’s apparent departure from his Administration’s stance on China seemed to worry his MAGA base.
“Why are we allowing 600,000 students from China to replace our American student’s opportunities?” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) posted on Monday. “We should never allow that.”
“If colleges and universities go out of business because they no longer receive CCP approved tuition from students from China, then that’s fine,” she added in another post on Tuesday.
In a Monday interview on Fox News, host Laura Ingraham questioned Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on how is “allowing 600,000 students from the communist country of China putting America first?” (Lutnick defended the policy from a financial standpoint, arguing that without those students, “the bottom 15% of universities and colleges would go out of business.”)
Conservative media pundit and former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon called Trump’s reasoning “mind-bendingly ridiculous.”
“Any foreign student that does come here ought to have an exit visa stapled to his or her diploma to leave immediately,” Bannon said in a Tuesday episode of his podcast “War Room,” days before the Trump Administration went on to propose almost exactly that.
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