A Student Visa Policy That Puts America First

In its campaign to shake up higher education, the Trump Administration has taken unprecedented steps to repel foreign college students. These include banning Harvard University from enrolling foreign nationals, ordering American embassies and consulates to pause all student visa interviews, and revoking visas of students from China. While the administration has since walked back some of these measures, the problem of foreign students demands sober reflection.

The available arguments for letting foreigners attend American colleges en masse often appeal to leftist mantras like diversity and the need to create “global citizens.” This position is spelled out bluntly by Kevin Carey in a piece for the progressive outlet Vox:

Modern colleges look like the future that MAGA forces most fear. Visitors to campus today see students from scores of global communities, speaking multiple languages and practicing different cultural traditions. Places where people from other countries are welcome, and no single race, nationality, or religion reigns supreme. People like [Vice President] JD Vance are so terrified by this vision that they would rather destroy America’s world-leading higher education system….”

That Carey feels no need to justify his “vision” shows how multiculturalism has become an article of faith on the Left. Accordingly, legitimate concerns about espionage or the importation of cultural or ideological elements alien to American society are dismissed as racist.

Others say that foreign students are an important asset, as they pay out-of-state tuition and are largely ineligible for financial aid or loans. The National Association of Foreign Student Advisers touts the $43.8 billion and 378,000 jobs generated during the 2023-2024 academic year by foreign college students. Some prominent voices like Elon Musk insist that such talent is indispensable to the tech industry.

These arguments are not without merit. But they all subscribe to a cosmopolitan worldview that avoids having to confront the nationalist perspective, which has seen a resurgence on the Right. This view holds that any economic or strategic value foreign nationals may offer should not obscure the fact that the U.S. has the sovereign right to decide whether to admit or exclude such persons. A nation is an organic community, consisting of a particular people with a particular culture. By definition, America ceases to be a nation if it’s reduced to a sports team comprised of foreign athletes, even if they happen to be, as advocates like to claim, the world’s “best and brightest.”

The problem is that our immigration system inevitably converts guests into permanent residents. Because F-1 student visas are classified as non-immigrant visas, consular interviews ask applicants to show intent to return to their home countries, usually by establishing family or financial ties there. However, many foreign students eventually work in the U.S. through the Optional Practical Training program or the H-1B visa for “specialty occupations” requiring at least a bachelor’s degree. The latter, given its six-year duration, is often used to buy time for an employment-based pathway to lawful permanent residency.

As much as I believe that such dual intent is dishonest—as the promise to repatriate is a prerequisite for the students’ admission to the U.S.—it is impossible to fully prevent immigration by foreign students. Even if American consulates exert maximum effort to detect immigrant intent among foreign students and deny them visas, there is nothing to stop students who are already admitted to the U.S. from wanting to remain once they experience life here.

The only way to make sure not a single student can ever immigrate is to have the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) suspend its Student and Exchange Visitor Program, as Trump has done to Harvard. All current students would lose their visas and face deportation, and prospective students are barred from enrollment. No students means no crypto-immigrants. Alternatively, foreign students may be banned from working post-graduation. That would block most from obtaining H-1B visas or employment-based green cards. However, either option is unwise for two reasons.

First, the entire H-1B quota would be filled by non-U.S. degree holders, many of whom, unlike foreign graduates of U.S. colleges, have never set foot in this country nor contributed to its economy. If those visas are available at all, shouldn’t they go to people who have invested in America? Second, foreign adversaries would retain their U.S.-educated nationals. Tsien Hsue-shen—a Caltech engineer who, despite having worked on the Manhattan Project, was deported in 1955 amidst the Red Scare—developed ballistic missiles for Communist China. “It was the stupidest thing this country ever did. He was no more a communist than I was, and we forced him to go,” recalled Dan A. Kimball, President Harry Truman’s Secretary of the Navy and a personal friend of Tsien.

Since immigrant intent is intrinsic to student visas, conservatives ought to decide whether this problem is so detrimental as to justify uprooting the whole enterprise. If not, the question then becomes one of immigration control and winning support from those foreign students who will one day become American voters.

Taking Their Best

Putting a quota on student visas solves this issue. I propose capping student visas at 100,000, to be divided between the fall and spring semesters. That may seem like a large number, but it is only a third of the roughly 300,000 new foreign students admitted between 2023 and 2024. A majority of the quota would be reserved for undergraduates; the rest would go to higher degree programs.

Foreign students are free to apply for college, but their admission would be tentative until they are selected through a lottery similar to that currently used for the H-1B visa, assuming the number of applicants exceeds the quota. The randomness of the lottery would deter many from applying, so the quota might not even fill up. For the few who still prefer to try their luck, we can presume they have immigrant intent, for no rational person would put himself through this much uncertainty just to attend college.

Students would receive permanent residency if they meet the following criteria.

1. Earn at least a master’s degree from a U.S. college. Those with only a U.S. bachelor’s degree would lose their visa status upon graduation unless they apply to a master’s program within a 60-day grace period. This would make foreign students pay more tuition, partially offsetting the financial loss caused by the quota, and filter out the less academically competent.
2. Finish their studies without relying on federal or state financial assistance.
3. Find employment within 60 days of graduation or lose status. The job has to be related to one’s field of study, which prevents students from seeking low-end jobs just to stay in the country, and also stops pushing less-educated Americans out of work.
4. Receive confirmation from the Department of Labor that the student’s employer pays him no less than the prevailing wage paid to Americans, employees enjoy adequate conditions, and there are no strikes or lockouts at the time of hiring. These attestations are already required for filing employment-based green cards and H-1B visas.
5. Work for a minimum of five years. Those who quit their jobs or are fired would lose their visa status if they fail to secure new employment within 60 days.
6. Agree to DHS scrutiny in the meantime. The student can be deported if he performs, or has performed, activities such as giving material support to designated terrorists, membership in totalitarian governments, harming U.S. foreign policy interests, etc.

My proposal replaces the H-1B visa and the second (EB-2) and third (EB-3) preferences in employment-based green cards, all of which cater to college-educated foreign nationals. Those programs would expire several years after the quota takes effect, although a grandfather clause would protect applications filed before that date.

H-1Bs are currently capped at 85,000 a year, and many more are issued to employees of cap-exempt organizations like colleges and nonprofits. Additionally, EB-2 and EB-3 green cards are each capped at around 40,000 per year. All are open to holders of foreign degrees. This quota would bring the annual number of such workers down to no more than 100,000, and they would be sourced solely from students who have lived in America for years and have undergone vetting and assimilation.

If Congress adopts the above proposals, far fewer foreigners will compete in the U.S. job market, and they will do so on fair terms. The ones who succeed will be eternally grateful to conservatives for handing them the American Dream. As a group of mostly high-achieving Asians, they will join the fight against affirmative action and other racial preferences. Such immigrants will also by their very presence loosen the Left’s grip on Asian Americans, if not college-educated Americans in general.

Meanwhile, elite institutions like Harvard and Columbia will suffer grave losses in revenue under the quota, as tuition-paying foreigners make up as much as 40% of their student bodies. They will come to depend more on federal funding. President Trump can use that as leverage to make administrators rein in radical excesses on campus.

That would be a student visa policy that truly put America first.

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