This time: Chinese students.
Via Politico: Marco Rubio: US to ‘aggressively’ revoke visas of Chinese students.
About 277,000 Chinese students studied in the U.S. last year, making them the second largest group of foreign students in the U.S., after people from India.
Even if just a threat, Rubio’s announcement is likely to decisively end the popularity of U.S. universities and colleges for Chinese students.
“The chilling effect on Chinese students choosing the United States as their preferred place to go for study will be enormous,” said Rosie Levine, executive director of the US-China Education Trust, a nonprofit education group. “There are some 99 million Communist Party members in China, so depending on how they enforce this, it could catch up probably every Chinese student interested in coming to the United States who could have some Communist Party connection within their background.”
It would also hurt U.S. institutions, which have come to rely on foreign students to help offset the cost of providing financial aid to Americans. And it comes as President Donald Trump exerts pressure on colleges and universities to address allegations of antisemitism by threatening to withhold federal funding and grants.
If the goal here is to harm China, it is just pointlessly stupid. The Chinese government will simply help direct students to Australia, Canada, the UK, and elsewhere. The damage will be, as I keep noting, to colleges and universities up and down the elite to non-elite scale, with substantial collateral damage to the communities where those schools exist.
