On June 3, China's Education Ministry issued a warning for Chinese students and academics seeking to study in the US.  

The warning said, "for a period of time now, some Chinese students in the US have been facing situations where their visas were restricted, the visa review period extended, the period of validity shortened, or their applications rejected." The Ministry urged students and scholars to fully evaluate the risks themselves and make plans accordingly.

It is unclear if China hoped to pressure the U.S. amid the intensified frictions between the two countries by discouraging students from studying there. China was the single largest source of international students in the U.S. During 2017/18 academic year, 363,300 Chinese students were studying in the U.S., representing 33.2% of all international students in the U.S., according to the Ministry citing a report by the Institution of International Education, an NGO headquartered in New York.

Besides increased visa scrutiny, Chinese scholars have also become targets of purging in the American academia. Both Stanford University and University of California, Berkeley issued campus-wide statements reaffirming school management and faculty members’ support to international communities. Some comments have been found within the campuses of the two schools alienating personnel from certain ethnicity backgrounds. In April, MD Anderson, a top cancer research facility within the University of Texas fired three scientists with Chinese ethnicity background.

However, Chinese students and scholars still believe that coming to the U.S. will be a choice they will never regret.

Since May 2018, the United States has begun to tighten visa applications from Chinese students. “Almost every visa of students in STEM majors (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) went through the administrative processing,” Kim, a consultant in an overseas-study service agency in Beijing told PingWest, "Although the process may take a month or even longer, last year all of my clients got their F-1 visa fortunately."

As long as the visa materials are delicately prepared and interviewer's questions are honestly answered, students can get their visa approvals, according to Kim, “the only difference is that previously STEM students can get the five-year F-1 visa; however, they have only been granted one year since 2018.”

Since June 11th, 2018, the U.S. State Department has been restricting the visa validity period of Chinese graduate students studying in sensitive research fields to one year, allowing them to reapply every year.  The move overturned an Obama Administration policy that allowed Chinese citizens to hold a five-year student visa.

According to the Chinese Ministry of Education, more than half of the 662,100 students studying abroad went to the U.S. in 2018.

When describing the experience of visa administrative processing in last year, Alex Chen, a master student of Electrical Engineering in the New York University, was visibly upset.

"It was burning hot on that day, after waiting in line for two or three hours, I saw my interviewer. She reviewed my form I-20 (editor’s note: the Certificate of Eligibility for Nonimmigrant Student Status-For Academic and Language Students), asked some basic questions such as the previous learning experience and my family members. Things went pretty well until she handed me a note saying that my application would go through the administrative processing, which made me upset," Chen told PingWest he came to Beijing from his hometown thousands of kilometers away to get the F-1 visa.

Concerns about the tightening of STEM student visa spill into the online world. WeChat groups were set up by students to share updates of application status with each other. "One day, an aviation major student told group members that his visa was rejected, which led to us panicking, making us to take plan B into consideration," Alex said, "that student eventually gave up the U.S. and turned to Canada."

Meanwhile, according to the South China Morning Post citing a 2018 survey by the Institute of International Education, nearly half of the 540 U.S. higher education institutions responded to the survey reported that Chinese student enrollment is in decline. Reasons cited were visa delays, denials as well as the current social and political climate. Almost 80% of the institutions surveyed expressed growing concerns over hardships recruiting Chinese students.

For Chinese students and their parents, studying in the U.S. is a very attractive option. Many Chinese parents believe that China's education system is not as good as those in other countries. Meanwhile, it is widely recognized that the United States offers better educational resources as well as superior job opportunities.

Before coming to the U.S., Terry worked in a state-owned commercial bank for 3 years in China. The bureaucratic working atmosphere and the high housing prices in Shanghai made him feel depressed.

Friends who worked in the financial industry described life in the U.S. to him, which led to his determination. he added. After careful consideration with his family, he decided to go there and get a degree.

Looking back at the work of the past three years, Terry felt that his life has been wasted. “I can not afford an apartment in Shanghai without my family's support, although my salary is above the average level. Talk about work-life-balance? It's impossible to achieve that for me. Compared with Beijing and Shanghai, infinite opportunities can be spotted all around NYC, the magical city.”

Located in Midtown Manhattan, Baruch College is one of the many branches of City University of New York (CUNY). A lot of its graduates have gotten positions from Goldman Sachs, etc. with this in mind, Terry applied to the school and was admitted.

Terry told PingWest that it is almost impossible for him to join financial giants like JP Morgan in China, but things can be a lot easier in the U.S. “Although I’m not in a top college, lots of my alumni have entered the most influential investment banks,”  the business school student said, “This country grants many possibilities for talents, and I like the diversity and open culture. This is definitely the most attractive parts of America."

The US is still the most competitive countries in the world, both technologically and culturally. With an inclusive environment, the immigrant-built country was historically easier for new immigrants to fit into. In addition, the U.S. also offered friendly study/work visas, permanent resident and immigration policy for talents. In the era of information technology, skilled people are increasingly having a global perspective when making choices; therefore, the US is still the destination that most international students and scholars would want to visit.

But now, even STEM students, those who were needed the most in the country not too long ago, now find it challenging to find an internship in the US, which is much more complicated than before

Terry said his visa has also been affected since his major was classified as a STEM major in 2018. International students who enrolled before 2018 have obtained five-year visas while he only got a one-year. This means that he would need to reapply for a new visa every year and be required by law to leave the country when he’s in between valid visas. This made it extremely difficult to build up his internship experience in American financial institutions.

Terry blames it on the slowdown in American economy as well as President Trump’s “Hire American” policy.

Instead of permanent residency and naturalization, Johnny Zhang, a master student in computer science at a university on the East Coast, said that he is more interested in gaining overseas work experience, “Regardless of whether I return to China or seek development in Southeast Asia in the future, companies in these countries still value US work experience,”

According to Forbes, 2017 data shows 62% of all international students in US colleges and universities were in science and engineering fields, and almost 70% of those were from India and China.

Furthermore, according to the Pew Research Center, 313,500 Chinese graduates got the Optional Practical Training program (OPT) approval from the federal government from 2004 to 2016, accounting for 21% of the total. Meanwhile, more than half  of foreign graduates are allowed to work in the STEM field through their OPT.

“I never intend to count on H-1B visa,” Zhang said about the much sought-after U.S. specialty working visa, the issuing of which also being scrutinized like the F-1 visa, “with the permission of OPT, I can work in the U.S. for almost three years, and that's enough for me.”

With more students like Zhang, the U.S. is poised to lose a significant portion of highly educated and diversified workforce. But that may just be what the federal government is intending to do.

Recently, Republican Congressman Paul Gosar (R-Ariz) has proposed to end the 20-year-old OPT program. He wrote a letter to President Trump asking him to end the program by executive order, explaining how OPT is harming job prospects for Americans in STEM fields.

Zhang also told PingWest that it's quite strenuous to get an intern position this summer, more than half of his alumni did not find an internship in the US. “I sought jobs on a career fair in December last year, very few intern positions accepted international students, most small and middle sized businesses required US citizenship-only,” he added, “Trump's 'Buy American, Hire American' policy is working.”

In the end, Zhang was the lucky one to win a summer intern position in a prominent American internet company, but his classmate Ethan Yang is quite frustrated since he hasn't got any internship offers yet. Yang has worked as an engineer for a Chinese internet company in Shanghai for 5 years. In order to create a better environment for his daughter, Yang took his family with him to the U.S. last year to pursue a master’s degree in Computer Science.

“I would like to stay in the U.S. since good life here will be more guaranteed," he said, "Even if I am not a citizen, my daughter can go to a public kindergarten here. However, in Shanghai, my daughter was rejected by the public school due to the fact that we don’t have Shanghai Hukou.” (Editor’s note: China's Hukou is a household registration system for social and geographic control. Much like a passport, but for individual provinces, a non-native Hukou holder cannot enjoy the same rights and benefits of a native holder, such as education, car registration, etc.)

Both Terry and Yang agreed that tier-1 cities like Shanghai and Beijing exert much pressure on young people. The skyrocketing housing prices and strict Hukou policy make them feel hopeless. Meantime, lower-tier cities don’t provide suitable jobs and good-enough platforms for them to grow, so they pushed their limits and moved to the U.S. for a more promising life.

While U.S. is narrowing opportunities for international students, British politicians are pushing to loosen restrictions on them.

“With a one-year F-1 visa, I dare not return to China during the summer vacation, for fear that I will never be able to come to the U.S. again,” Yang said, “In the future, if other countries offer excellent opportunities and a more relaxed visa policy, I would like to move there.”

Many countries are doing just that, including Canada and the UK.

Forbes reported that Canada has also been stepping up its openness, offering work permits and permanent residency opportunities to regular post graduates, compared to the extreme standards required by H-1B holders. The Guardian reported that British home secretary Sajid Javid is seeking to lift work restrictions on international students and promote a more “flexible, sensible attitude” towards immigration.

“It’s high time we recognized the value international students bring to the country and abandoned the welter of harmful policies that are designed to manage numbers down to meet a net migration target,” said Jo Johnson, former UK universities minister.

New Oriental, a top English education and overseas study service provider in China, said the proportion of its students wanting to study in the U.S. reached lowest level in five years in 2019, down to 43%.

“Once the restriction on international students is removed by the British government, the number of students who choose to study in the UK may increase significantly in the coming years.” Kim said.

(Reported by Rebbeca Ren. Edited by Chen Du. Top Image Credit: Xinhua)