America’s Student Visa Program Should Not Give China a Pass

By Julie Kirchner and Christopher Schorr

With aggressive oversight, the Trump Administration has fundamentally changed the dynamic regarding student visas, implementing a series of much-needed, integrity-based measures. President Trump has made it clear that America will no longer allow foreign students to receive an American education while engaging in violence, spreading dangerous ideologies, or supporting entities that are hostile to America’s interests. President Trump also challenged elite American universities—which reap significant revenue from foreign students—to change their business practices to prioritize Americans.

This paradigm shift is a critical change to a student visa program that has spiraled out of control, largely due to lax regulation. There are no numerical limitations on the number of foreign students allowed into the United States each year, nor are there rules on how many foreign students colleges and universities may accept. The result has been a skyrocketing increase in enrollment of foreign students at American colleges and universities. In the 2024-25 academic year, the number of foreign students in America reached an all-time high of 1,177,766—more than double the number of foreign students just 20 years ago.

Refusing to accept this as the status quo, the Trump Administration quickly launched a reform effort grounded in the America First principle that a student visa is not a right, but a privilege conferred by the U.S. government. Putting this principle into action, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has swiftly removed public safety and national security threats from the foreign student population. First, recognizing that universities were inadequately maintaining the records of foreign students and flagging criminal violators, the State Department worked with the Department of Homeland Security to vet student visa holders through the National Crime Information Center database to identify those who had come into contact with law enforcement.

Secretary Rubio also announced that his agency would “enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong,” and would “aggressively revoke” the visas of Chinese students who were associated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or who were studying in critical fields that could raise national security concerns.

Secretary Rubio then expanded social media vetting for all foreign students. The new vetting policy instructed consular officers to identify applicants who (1) “bear hostile attitudes towards our citizens, culture, government, institutions or founding principles”; (2) “advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to U.S. national security”; or (3) “perpetrate unlawful antisemitic harassment or violence.”

By August, the State Department had revoked over 6,000 student visas of various nationalities, with more than 4,000 visas revoked due to criminal activity and several hundred revoked due to support for terrorism.

The message these policies changes sent to foreign students is clear: if you hate America, support our adversaries, commit crime, or want to do our nation harm, you will not benefit from an American education.

The Trump Administration also took action aimed at universities, asking Harvard and other elite colleges to limit foreign student enrollment to 15% and to limit enrollment from any single country to 5%. The Administration even pushed to terminate Harvard’s foreign student program over the university’s alleged failure to share documentation. These actions demonstrate that, unlike previous administrations, President Trump understands the significant national security and economic risks posed by hundreds of thousands of foreign students entering the United States each year and is willing to take necessary actions.

While the Trump Administration deserves praise for much-needed action to curb widespread abuse of our student visa program, we must recognize the unique threat the CCP poses to American higher education. Given multiple national and economic security risks, Americans should not let our guard down when it comes to extending student visas to America’s primary strategic adversary, China.

First, the Communist leadership in Beijing has a particular interest in sending its students to American universities. Between 2000 and 2025, the number of Chinese students in the United States increased by 340%. Now, Chinese students constitute nearly one-fourth of the foreign student population in the United States. The CCP has repeatedly demonstrated its desire to spread its ideology, pursue its interests, and increase its economic reach well beyond its borders.

Second, China has used its access to America’s universities to engage in espionage and terrorism, resulting in numerous documented cases. In 2020, Yanqing Ye was indicted for hiding links to China’s military while conducting research at Boston University. Ji Chaoqun, who studied electrical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology, was convicted in 2022 for acting as an intelligence agent for China. Most recently, three Chinese nationals were charged by federal authorities for smuggling a biological pathogen into the United States through research being conducted by the University of Michigan. While not every Chinese student in America is a spy, every Chinese national, including international students, is required by China’s National Intelligence Law to comply with CCP intelligence activities when asked.

Unfortunately, America’s colleges and universities have been China’s unwitting accomplice in this process. For decades, they have relied on foreign students for revenue, disregarding the effect on America and its interests. The lax regulation and oversight of our student visa program have given universities wide latitude to admit, and even recruit, foreign students who boost revenue by paying full tuition rates. Indeed, many colleges and universities consider foreign students a “financial lifeline” and have actively sought to increase foreign enrollment. The result is that universities are giving highly coveted academic slots to foreign students instead of Americans. It also means American students receive fewer grant dollars, fewer positions as teaching assistants, and fewer jobs post-graduation.

The revenue that foreign students bring into the United States is so great that recruiting foreign students is now part of many universities’ business model. Some have argued that without 600,000 Chinese students, a number of U.S. universities would close. While this may be true, the fact is that eliminating poor-performing schools should be a goal of the America First movement, as it would help to redirect young Americans to better postsecondary education options and dramatically improve returns on university students’ educational investments by reducing the oversupply of low-value degrees that have saddled generations with student loan debt and weak job prospects. If an American university cannot exist without a high supply of foreign students, it should either adjust its business model to benefit Americans or close entirely.

The bottom line is this: permitting hundreds of thousands of foreign students from America’s primary strategic adversary into the United States is not in America’s best interest. It undermines American citizens’ access to their own colleges and universities, which are subsidized by American tax dollars. It also brings significant national security risks. Thus, the administration should accelerate its reform efforts by conducting stringent vetting of foreign students and placing numerical limitations on a system that has been overwhelmed and abused.