Chinese international students could be banned from obtaining visas

Earlier this year, U.S. Rep. Riley Moore (R-West Virginia) introduced the Stop Chinese Communist Prying by Vindicating Intellectual Safeguards in Academia Act, or the Stop CCP VISAs Act. This bill would bar Chinese nationals from seeking student visas in the United States. Moore explains that he introduced the bill to bolster American national security and alleges that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been using American educational institutions as a means of espionage. Since then, many Chinese international students have had their visas revoked without explanation. These developments have created a climate of fear in the international student community, and drawn the ire of many Asian Americans.

A disproportionate response to a perceived national security threat 

Joanna YangQing Derman, the director of the anti-profiling, national security and civil rights program at Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC), rejects the national security rationale of the bill. Derman says AAJC recognizes that the CCP does want to try to exert malign foreign influence on the United States. However, she does not believe that the solution is to “paint every single Chinese student as a national security threat, and deny them—full stop—an immigrant visa to come and study in the States,” describing this response as a “disproportionate and over-broad reaction to that perceived threat.” “Chinese citizens do not necessarily reflect the ideological beliefs of their government,” she says. “It is unfair to punish them as if they do. That nuance, that distinction, is clearly not present in this bill.” She fears that this will be a repeat of the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Japanese American concentration camps—all measures that were enacted in the name of American national security that had horrific consequences on the Asian American community. She also fears that this will lead to Asian Americans being racially profiled as a result of this act. “I really don't think that this is in the strategic, targeted interest of U.S. national security. I mean, bills like this one, generally, we have found, generate a climate of fear and mistrust in the AA+PI community, particularly the AA+PI scholarly, academic community,” Derman says.

A 2023 study from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that surveyed Chinese scientists working in the United States found that 35 percent of respondents felt unwelcome in the United States, 42 percent were fearful of conducting research, 65 percent were worried about collaborations with China, and a whopping 86 percent perceived that it was harder to recruit top international students in 2023, compared to five years ago. 

Derman believes the climate of anxiety that envelops Chinese academics and students who are currently working and studying in the United States is counterproductive to national security. “If our goal is to be a leader in scientific innovation and technology that advances our national security, then we should not be turning some of the top talent that we can recruit in our universities away from the United States,” she says. 

A ‘super controversial’ background

Since the Stop CCP VISAs Act was introduced, many Chinese international students who are currently studying in the United States are voicing their worries—often in hushed tones, as many are fearful of the consequences of speaking publicly. “I am an international student from mainland China. I know my background is super controversial and hated by a lot of people,” one student wrote in a now-deleted post on an online Asian American forum. The student asked to remain anonymous and for her name and any identifying details to not be shared, for fear of severe repercussions on her immigration status. She goes on to state that her original plan was to immigrate to the United States after finishing her studies. “However, the political atmosphere has worsened significantly since Trump’s first term. I don’t know if I will ever be able to immigrate given (that) the current government is cutting down immigration,” she continued. “Trump’s government also believes all Chinese international students are spies and I might not be able to finish my degree…How can I convince people that I am not a spy so they don’t hate me?” 

“I think now (freedom of speech is) definitely way more stifled. Because why would I speak out?...We've seen that you can literally just be at home, and they can come knock on your door, and you're gone. Nobody wants that to happen."

Christina Yao, a professor of higher education at the University of Southern Carolina, is not surprised by these concerns, saying there's been a lot of fear and concern from international students in general since the inauguration. “Because pretty much the next day, that's when there were all these executive orders that are very much talking a lot about immigration, about visas,” she says. “More recently, there is some of the stuff about, if any international student is found to be protesting Israel, they can be deported. I think that causes a lot of fear.” She believes the Stop CCP VISAs Act will have a chilling effect on the freedom of speech of Chinese international students, incentivizing them to keep a low profile until graduation and making them less likely to participate in protests. “I think now (freedom of speech is) definitely way more stifled. Because why would I speak out?...We've seen that you can literally just be at home, and they can come knock on your door, and you're gone. Nobody wants that to happen,” Yao says. 

Brain drain

Yao believes that what is happening now is a logical continuation of the China Initiative from President Donald Trump’s first administration, which was designed to prosecute Chinese spies in U.S. territory, but in practice targeted Chinese scientists working in the United States. Yao thinks the result of these policies will be a drop in Chinese international student enrollment. “I think we'll see less people coming from China. I think we'll see, maybe, fewer people staying as faculty and as researchers, because nobody wants to stay here feeling like they're being under surveillance all the time,” she says. Yao believes the Stop CCP VISAs Act, and other Trump administration bills targeting Chinese nationals, will lead to the United States losing a lot of talent. “The majority of our international students are in some kind of STEM field. The United States also has a lot of compelling interest in trying to be at the top in the STEM race,” she says. “So if we're losing a lot of our talent (because) they're not able to stay because of visa issues, if they're not able to purchase homes or do things like that…I think we're going to see some pretty major impacts as far as with our economy and our technology development.” She adds that the antagonism the United States has shown for Chinese students will just make these students take their talents elsewhere in the Western world, such as Canada or the United Kingdom.

Yao would not be surprised to see even more surveillance on Chinese scholars in the United States, which would put a damper on the country’s collaborations with scholars in China. “At universities, they tell us all the time, ‘We value international partnerships. We value that you have collaborators in other countries.’ But now maybe it's not as valuable to collaborate with people in China,” she says, adding that this would create an untold loss of knowledge.

Yao believes that universities, concerned that they may be losing Chinese international students who typically pay full price for tuition, would be invested in fighting the bill. “I think overall, universities are very concerned about what this will mean for their enrollment of international students in general,” she says, as her research has demonstrates that American universities see international students as valuable commodities in terms of the talents, tuition money and added diversity they bring to campus. 

Chinese international students and Asian Americans

OiYan Poon, a race and education scholar and co-director of the College Admissions Futures Co-Laborative, believes Chinese international students are targeted in this way because of their precarious immigration status in the United States. “We are seeing things slip very quickly into folks with legal status—whether they're H-1B visa holders or green card holders. We are one step away from folks who are naturalized citizens,” she says, citing the decades-long history of Chinese international students coming into the United States to study and establishing themselves in the country as professional-class workers, and becoming Americans in the process. It is a topic that she is intimately familiar with, as her own father came to the United States from Hong Kong in the early 1970s as an international student. It is not lost on her that her own father would not have been able to come today with the current bill and that her own family would not have been able to establish themselves in the United States and become Americans. “The first couple days of the new administration, my brothers and I were saying to (my dad), ‘Oh, my goodness, he's coming after birthright citizenship!’” she says. “And I had to ask my dad, ‘In what year did you and mom become green card holders? Because I don't think I was born before they became permanent residents.’”

“We are seeing things slip very quickly into folks with legal status—whether they're H-1B visa holders or green card holders. We are one step away from folks who are naturalized citizens."

Yao believes now is a good time for Asian Americans to be in solidarity with Chinese international students, but she fears that the hostile political climate will cause more separation between the two groups. “This could really be a time of, ‘If we see this happening to a population of people or to anybody, we should be in solidarity. We should be concerned,’” she says. “But in the U.S., we’re not great at being a collectivist society…A lot of people will think, ‘That’s happening to them, that’s not me.’...Not thinking of the sociohistorical context of the United States that no matter what, a lot of times you are lumped together based on how you look, perceptions of what your last name might mean."