Will Biden restore international students’ faith in American higher education?

Bhadrajee Hewage, Student Chair, London Association of Phi Beta Kappa | 2 May 2021

As we pass the first one hundred days of President Biden’s time in office, perhaps now is a better time than ever to reflect on the conclusion of what has been a rather calamitous few years for America’s international students. Despite being blessed with the opportunity to spend four years as part of Princeton’s Class of 2020, my time as an undergraduate sadly coincided with what I believe was the progressive devaluing of the international student presence in the United States. 

My four years on the F-1 non-immigrant visa, with which many of you are likely familiar, corresponded with almost the entire length of President Trump’s first term in office. Whether he will return to seek a second term, I do not know. Yet ever since his election during the fall of my freshman year, the usual challenges and difficulties that always accompany studying abroad appeared to get much, much worse. 

Indeed, after a decade of climbing steadily during the Bush and Obama presidencies, the enrolment of foreign students fell 3% during the first year of the Trump administration. The second year of the Trump presidency witnessed an even steeper fall of 7%. More alarming, however, was the whopping 43% drop in new international student enrolment during the final year of Trump’s term. 

During these years of decline, several of my peers also found themselves on the wrong end of what was a worsening climate for international students. In 2019, increased processing times for work authorization through the OPT Program forced many foreign students to abandon summer job and internship opportunities within the US. That same year, Palestinian refugee and incoming Harvard freshman Ismail Ajjawi was initially barred from entering the country due to unfavourable social media posts from his friends. Last year, a Presidential Proclamation further halted the entry of Chinese graduate students and researchers deemed supporters of China’s “military-civil fusion strategy.”

Thankfully, this hardline taken against international students appears to have abated (at least, for now). In what is surely a sign of better things to come, President Biden has shown his willingness to drop some of the physical restrictions on student entry imposed by his predecessor. In February, the ban on green-card entries was revoked. A month later, the 2020 Presidential Proclamation suspending the issuance of the J-1 visas popular with exchange students and the H-1 visas required by international graduates to enter skilled US industry was also thankfully allowed to expire. 

Yet whether the Biden administration can move beyond simply reversing restrictive Trump-era international student policies to actively encouraging foreign students to enrol again in American colleges and universities remains to be seen. 

As the disproportionate impact of the coronavirus pandemic on American higher education has shown us, international students remain generous contributors to the greater US economy. In 2018, international students generated as much as $45 billion – more, in fact, than Vermont or Wyoming–to the U.S. economy. Within this figure itself, the contributions of Chinese students alone amounted to roughly $13 billion. In simple terms, the greater the drop in international enrolment at U.S. colleges and universities, the greater the hit to the national economy.

Moving to welcome international students to America once again during the remainder of his administration (I hope), President Biden will certainly find allies among America’s college and university administrators. Fighting travel bans from Muslim-majority nations, standing up for the rights of DACA recipients, and suing to protect the educational environments of their international communities during the pandemic, they will surely welcome change to what has been a tumultuous four years. 

As we move beyond President Biden’s first hundred days in office, the tragic events in recent days in Brooklyn Center, Chicago and elsewhere remind us that the US needs to continue critically examining its treatment of and attitudes towards its black and other minority citizens. As foreigners who do not possess the same citizen status for which so many have struggled, international students must surely hope that the Biden administration will once again create an environment where his great country continues to welcome and appreciate their presence. 

This post only reflects the views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of the London Association of Phi Beta Kappa or Phi Beta Kappa.