Trump tells foreign students: overstay your visa, face the consequences
Amid all the noise in Washington and simultaneous lack of legislation coming out of Congress, there have been some quiet wins for accountability in our visa system.
One recent win is an administrative final rule that requires foreign students to comply with their visas. Administrative rules govern how the government implements the law in practice.
Most foreign students who qualify get an F-1 visa, which allows them to study at the undergraduate or graduate level. Some get a J-1, which is for international exchange visitors.
When student visa holders arrive here, they are given permission to enter under what’s called "duration of status." That means that as long as they are full-time students, they can stay.
An earlier rule allows students, while still on their student visas, to work in "Optional Practical Training" for a year, with another two years if they have STEM degrees. The definition of STEM is 16 pages long and generous. Because foreigners on OPT are working using their student visa (remember – "duration of status") their employers are not required to pay into Social Security and Medicare. That’s a discount of up to 15% for hiring foreign workers instead of Americans.
"Duration of status" combined with OPT incentivizes marginal students not to complete their degrees in due course and, as they originally claimed they would, go home.
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The education-migration complex is desperate to keep the foreign student gravy train on the rails. They make the new rule seem as if it is cutting off opportunity. Quite the opposite: it’s about asking for responsibility.
It’s not hard to complete a bachelor’s degree in four years, especially for foreign students. Americans can apply to college knowing they’ll need to work or apply for aid and grants. Foreigners, meanwhile, are required to show consular officers in their visa interview that they can afford the entire course of study, including tuition, lodging and incidental costs. They are not, in theory, supposed to work.
If they decide to earn a master’s after their BA, or even a PhD, the new rule just means they have to go home, apply for a new visa, and show the consular officer they are credible students, can afford the entire course of study and intend to return home when done.
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That’s what is really freaking out the edu-crats. Many foreign students intend to stay in the U.S. Some never go to school at all; these get dropped from the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) maintained by DHS. They should then be deported, but many make frivolous asylum claims to remain.
Others do go to school, but drag it out over many years, taking minimal classes to maintain status while working, often illegally. Schools don’t mind, as long as the fees keep coming.
But we should mind. America doesn’t need to import this type of low-motivation student.
What America needs even less are students who come here pre-programmed with hostility to the United States, Western civilization and capitalism, who spend their time protesting on campus.
Some foreign students on campuses across the United States have been here for years, spending far too much time and energy protesting Israel, capitalism, ICE and Western civilization instead of hitting the books and getting a degree. These permanent students aren’t adding to our national prosperity, security, or unity.
America wants students who come, study and finish their degrees. The left will tell you that foreign students are all the best of the best. Not so. As a consular officer, I did thousands of student visa applications in Africa, Asia and Europe. I’ve seen everything from applicants with full scholarships at MIT and Harvard to those wanting to study English at a community college near their uncle, who just happens to own a motel or gas station.
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America welcomes legitimate students. We will always have room for the most talented and entrepreneurial to stay. But our universities are not there to facilitate mass economic migration.
The unemployment rate for recent American college graduates is 5.7%, higher than the national average. They need our support, not millions of foreign graduates to compete with.
The new rule on student visas is timely and welcome. Future presidents would be wise to keep it instead of caving to the education and migration lobby.
