SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – Visas for international students at colleges across the U.S. are being revoked by the new administration of President Donald Trump, causing concern and confusion at campuses. Bill Hing, professor of law and migration studies at the University of San Francisco, joined Audacy this week to discuss.
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The New York Times reported this week that nearly 300 visas have been revoked.
“From what I gather, they focus first on students that may have been supportive of the various encampments that took place at campuses throughout the United States last spring, encampment protesting over what was happening in Gaza,” he told KCBS Radio’s Holly Quan Monday. Students at campuses across the U.S. have been calling for an end to violence in the Israel-Hamas war.
That war kicked off when Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas conducted a large-scale attack against Israel in October 2023. As the war has progressed, concerns about Palestinian civilians in the war zone have increased and some have argued that the war should be considered a genocide against the Palestinian people.
Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder who was a leader of pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, was taken into custody last month by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, according to the Associated Press. Tufts doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk, who co-authored an op-ed supporting Palestinians, was also arrested last month.
Now, the list of students facing deportation keeps growing. According to the AP, some of these students have no connections to known protests. In some cases, the reasons cited were things such as past traffic violations and in others the reasons aren’t even clear.
When commenting on visas earlier this month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said: “We don’t want people in our country that are going to be committing crimes and undermining our national security or the public safety. It’s that simple, especially people that are here as guests. That is what a visa is.”
Per the AP, while visas can be canceled for a number of reasons, college leaders have said the current approach deviates from past practice. For one thing, the visas are being terminated with little notice to schools.
For example, Audacy reported Tuesday that Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pa., learned of the revocation of two current students and five recent graduates, citing a letter written to the CMU community. That message said the news was “distressing” for those impacted directly and the broader global community.
“Students in other countries must meet a series of requirements to obtain a student visa, usually an F-1,” said the AP. “After gaining admission to a school in the U.S., students go through an application and interview process at a U.S. embassy or consulate abroad.”
In the past, students who had their visas revoked were typically allowed to keep their legal residency status and finish their studies. Now, residency status has been removed for students at schools such as Harvard, Stanford, Michigan, UCLA and Ohio State University.
This Monday, The Dartmouth reported that two students at the New Hampshire university had their F-1 immigration statuses revoked, including Ph.D student Xiaotian Liu, a citizen of China. That day, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire and Shaheen & Gordon today filed a lawsuit on behalf of Liu.
The ACLU said he “had his F-1 student immigration status unlawfully and abruptly terminated on Friday with no specified reason as to why – despite having never committed a crime or traffic violation and having never participated in any protest in the United States or elsewhere.”
If a student loses residency status, they must leave immediately or risk detention by immigration authorities, the AP noted. Unfortunately, Hing said that students shouldn’t expect to their universities to have much power to help.
“Universities are hard-pressed to do anything because they are they all have agreement with the U.S. government in order for them to issue these,” he said. Those agreements generally require them to abide by immigration laws. Therefore, they can’t do much other than advise students who lose their visas.
Hing said these revocations have also resulted in concern beyond the world of academia. In Silicon Valley, workers are “concerned because many of them are from countries that are on a preliminary list of over 40 countries where there’s going to be travel bans,” he told Audacy. That list includes Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East.
“Folks are worried that, one, if they supported Gaza activities, or if they travel to a country with travel bans, they may not be able to return, even though they have valid visas,” Hing added.
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