President Donald Trump is spot-on in his decision to slow the arrival of foreign-born students to universities in the U.S.
The administration has halted scheduling of new student visa appointments at U.S. embassies abroad as the State Department prepares to expand social media vetting of foreign students. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently announced the U.S. would “aggressively revoke” some Chinese students’ visas, especially those enrolled in sensitive courses of study or with ties to the Communist Party of China.
Immigration officials are revoking dozens of student visas, with many more cases going unreported at small colleges anxious to avoid federal scrutiny.
The battle between the Trump administration and America’s oldest university has entered a new front.
At Harvard, about 27% of the student body (about 6,800 students) is foreign-born, a point of pride at the elite Ivy League institution which promotes diversity, equity and inclusion.
Last month, Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem ordered her department to “terminate the Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification”, citing that “Harvard’s leadership has created an unsafe campus environment by permitting anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators to harass and physically assault individuals.” This action would have meant the school could no longer enroll new foreign students, and that current foreign students must either “transfer or lose their legal status.” However, a federal court has temporarily granted Harvard’s motion, allowing the university to continue enrolling international students and scholars as the case proceeds through litigation.
President Trump’s proposed 15% cap on Harvard’s foreign-born students as a percentage of total enrollment may not be sufficiently restrictive. The time is overdue for a complete recalibration on U.S. visa policy. The administration’s goal should be to return the F-1 visa to its original guidelines, which allowed foreign students to study in the U.S., but with a requirement their visas be renewed every year. Such a condition would tamp down on violent anti-Semitic rioting.
International student increases were most pronounced at public colleges and universities, which faced budget cuts during the Great Recession and began to rely more heavily on tuition from foreign students. With visa policies tightening under the current administration, consular officers are expected to be more cautious in approving applications, and visa denials are expected to rise in 2026.
Because employers don’t have to pay FICA or Medicare taxes on employees working on a student visa, they save roughly 8 percent in payroll costs when they hire a foreign national instead of an American. These workers often hold jobs that range from $60,000 t0 $100,000 a year, but they cost Social Security and Medicare about $4 billion dollars annually. Statisticians predict that, at their current pace, Social Security and Medicare might go bankrupt by the mid-2030s.
President Trump’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services nominee, Joseph Edlow, supports ending this so-called Optional Practical Training. During a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing, Edlow said the program has been “mishandled” in recent years and that F-1 employment authorization should not extend past the period that students are enrolled. Edlow’s comments, practical though they are, shocked universities and immigration expansionists.
All in, when comparing 2007 to 2023, an enormous 320 percent increase occurred in the number of foreign students who obtained work authorization through some form of practical training. This program violates federal immigration law, and ending it should not be a partisan issue.
Republican and Democrat administrations have consistently ignored the obvious threat international students represent to national security. In early May, Stanford University discovered a Chinese agent disguised as a student but who was engaged in espionage. A Stanford Review investigative journalist concluded that China is orchestrating a widespread intelligence-gathering campaign at Stanford. Also consider that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s only daughter Xi Mingze, a 2014 Harvard graduate who enrolled under an assumed name, is believed to still be living in the U.S., possibly in Cambridge.
No one knows who the unvetted Xi Mingze knew at Harvard, what secrets she may have uncovered – remember U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell’s tawdry romance with Fang-Fang – or what confidential information she may have shared with her powerful father.
The dangerous truth is on national security, China is a serious and powerful country, while the U.S. is frivolous and unconcerned about self-preservation.
Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. His column is distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.
