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It’s no secret that the Trump administration has pursued quite a lot of avenues to hold foreigners out of the U.S., together with by a latest overhaul of the H-1B visa program for high-skilled international staff that can require employers to pay H-1B staff larger wages and slender the forms of levels that might qualify an applicant — a transfer which has prepared triggered quite a few lawsuits.
Still, it might shock some to study that U.S. visas issued to students all over the world have fallen as dramatically as they have this 12 months. According to a new report in Nikkei Asia, citing U.S. State Department knowledge, simply 808 F-1 scholar visas have been granted to candidates in mainland China between April and September’s finish, which is 99% fewer than the 90,410 F-1 scholar visas granted throughout the identical interval final 12 months.
The story is far the identical for students of different nations: with 88% fewer F-1 visas granted to students in India, 87% fewer for students in Japan, 75% fewer for students in South Korea and 60% fewer for students from Mexico.
What’s occurring? A confluence of things, seemingly.
Coronavirus is most definitely amongst them, as households develop extra hesitant to ship their kids to the U.S., which reported 93,581 new instances on Sunday alone, in contrast with 24 in China, 38,310 in India, 468 in Japan, 97 in South Korea and three,762 in Mexico.
So is racism, with many Asians and Asian-Americans noting that Donald Trump’s rhetoric across the coronavirus has sharpened the racism they’ve confronted all through their lives, with phrases like “kung flu” and “China virus” frequent in responses, per a latest survey by Washington State University researchers who say that growing experiences of racial discrimination since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic coincide with a rise in reported damaging well being signs. (The Nikkei notes that students already learning within the U.S. have been targets, too, citing a 23-year-old Chinese lady who was yelled at to go away the U.S.)
Yet an aggressive concentrate on Chinese espionage in Washington has performed a much bigger function, suggests the outlet, which speculates that the problem in acquiring American visas is probably going to drive some Chinese students to different nations, together with Canada.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, for instance, stated in remarks on the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in July that, “We opened our arms to Chinese citizens, only to see the Chinese Communist Party exploit our free and open society. China sent propagandists into our press conferences, our research centers, our high schools, our colleges and even into our PTA meetings.”
A backlash towards Chinese students particularly isn’t a brand new one for the Trump administration, even whereas it’s been accelerated vastly in latest months. In 2018, the State Department started limiting to one 12 months visas for Chinese graduate students learning in sure analysis fields, after which they want to reapply. The transfer rolled again a coverage established through the Obama administration that allowed Chinese residents to safe five-year scholar visas.
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