US secretary of state Marco Rubio has said the Trump administration would “aggressively” revoke the visas of Chinese students.
This is as part of the latest effort to crack down on foreigners hoping to study in the US and comes a day after Rubio ordered US embassies across the world to stop scheduling interviews for new student visas.
Rubio said in a statement that the state department would work with the Department of Homeland Security to “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist party or studying in critical fields”.
He said the US would also revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from China and Hong Kong.
During the first Trump administration, the justice department created the “China Initiative”, a project to increase the focus on Chinese espionage in the US and even though the program was shut down, US authorities have remained skeptical of Chinese students.
In the 2023-24 school year, nearly 280,000 international students were from China, representing more than a quarter of all foreign students in the US, second only to India.
China’s ministry of foreign affairs on Wednesday called for “the US to protect the lawful and legitimate rights and interests of all international students, including those from China”.
Widespread International Students Crackdown
The latest efforts is part of a wide-ranging crackdown on international students that has sent a chill through American campuses and caused panic for thousands of international students in the US.
The moves to restrict student visas are part of President Donald Trump’s broader assault on the US’s elite universities, which he accuses of failing to tackle antisemitism during large-scale pro-Palestinian protests after the start of Israel’s war in Gaza.