A number of Indian students are not going home to their families in India or travelling outside the US this summer - just like many Indian nationals there on work visas - thanks to the risk of being denied reentry into the country. Referring to the administration's stance on foreign students as ‘threatening', an Indian student at the University of Southern California has taken up an internship at a local company instead of travelling home for college vacations. “The current visa situation is unpredictable. I can't risk it after putting in three years here,” says the undergraduate, who holds a valid student visa, referring to the heightened scrutiny at American airports and reports of foreign nationals being barred.
The tussle between universities and the government was first triggered by on-campus protests against Israel's actions in Gaza. The demonstrations led the Trump administration to blame elite colleges for allegedly tolerating ‘antisemitism'. Soon, foreign students started facing arrests, detention and visa cancellations, and prominent colleges were slapped with funding threats.
The Attack On Columbia And Harvard
Critics say the ongoing attacks on wealthy universities, including Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Pennsylvania, Princeton, etc., is an infringement of academic freedom, a hallmark of these institutions. In fact, even after the University of Columbia initially agreed to a few of the demands, the US government threatened it again on June 4, saying it could strip the institute's accreditation for allegedly not doing enough to protect Jewish students.
Similarly, Harvard University, older than the US itself, has about $9 billion at stake in federal cuts. On its part, Harvard is fighting back by suing the government for withdrawal of funding, threats to its tax-exempt status, and for barring the enrollment of foreign students. On May 23, a federal judge blocked the administration's efforts, allowing the university to continue international admissions. But on June 4, the government invoked the Immigration and Nationality Act to prohibit noncitizens from entering the US to study at Harvard for at least six months, arguing that the institution is "no longer a trustworthy steward" of international students. Calling the step ‘retaliatory', the university reassured its student body that "Harvard will continue to protect its international students".
The White House, on its part, in a fact sheet cited the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) ‘warnings' about how “foreign adversaries take advantage of easy access to American higher education to steal information, exploit research and development, and spread false information”.
The Mass Lawsuit
Amidst the ‘America for Americans' campaign of the current US administration, foreign students, researchers and their colleges have been putting up strong legal battles to save their academic futures. Earlier this year, when foreign students found their visas revoked in the middle of their semesters, a flurry of lawsuits were filed by hundreds of international students across multiple states in the country, a majority of them being from India. The lawsuits compelled the Department of Homeland Security to reinstate their visas and student records (SEVIS) in their database. Ironically, many of these students - some of them just had petty traffic offences to their name, already settled, while others had no prior run-ins with law enforcement - had been given no explanation for the cancellation of their visas.
A New Jersey-based Indian student was relieved to be able to continue her job as part of her course-related practical training, but recounted how other Indian students whose visas had been revoked were forced to leave the US before the lawsuits came about. “Our careers are at stake here. My friend had a student loan of many lakhs, but they self-deported as per DHS [US Department of Homeland Security] instructions,” she says.
With academic and professional dreams in limbo, federal courts have become an important battleground in this tussle between universities and the US administration. Critics say the high-profile institutions being targeted by the Republican administration are campuses that lean largely towards Democratic politics. Foreign students constitute a large share at these institutions. They currently make up 27% of Harvard's student body, bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition fees. Over 11 lakh foreign students in the US - approximately 3.3 lakh of them Indians - contributed $44 million to the US economy in the 2023-24 academic year.
America Stands To Lose, Too
If unwelcome in the US, bright students are bound to start looking for other options in the years to come. That will not only blunt the US's academic supremacy but also cost it economically. An Indian research scholar at a US university whose cancelled visa was reinstated because of his lawsuit against the government is now looking towards Europe. “After studying in the US for eight years, I am facing uncertainty. I have applied and interviewed for two research positions at European universities. They are more inviting,” he says.
Along with the risk of brain drain, the ongoing tensions might spur other countries to strengthen their own academic institutions. On May 29, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested that the US must “aggressively revoke” the visas of Chinese students, especially those “in critical fields” - namely, computer science, mathematics and science. Tech industry leaders in America believe that this can lead to China improving the quality of its colleges further, impacting the pool of talent available to the US in the long run. China produces 50% of the world's AI graduates and double the number of STEM doctorates as the US. That's not encouraging given the intense tech war the US and China have been engaged in already.
For decades, US colleges had been beacons of the American dream - a good degree, followed by a job and life in the US. These colleges have played a huge part in the country's economic success. With their excellent labs and resources, they have been a gateway for attracting and training international talent, filling the vast number of jobs America's high tech and medical sectors require, making the country a world leader in these industries.
The US administration's action against foreign students will likely impact the choices of a rising number of high school and undergraduate students in India. They might take their time and money elsewhere. Dr Rajika Bhandari, an international higher education expert and author of America Calling: A Foreign Student in a Country of Possibility, sums it up well. “There are basically four countries - Canada, the UK, Australia and the US - all anglophone destinations where the largest mass of Indian students keeps circulating. Every few years we see these ebbs and flows for a particular country depending on what happens with immigration policies and world events. We've seen that with the UK, we've seen it with Canada, now maybe it's the turn of the US that some of that flow is going to get redirected elsewhere.”
(Savita Patel is a San Francisco Bay Area-based journalist and producer. She reports on the Indian diaspora, India-US ties, geopolitics, technology, public health, and the environment. She tweets at @SsavitaPatel.)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
