Indians hard hit as US student visas decline by a fifth from last year | Education News

Indian nationals see lower of 45 % in comparison with identical interval final yr as US clamps down on international college students.

The variety of student visas issued by the US has dropped by about one-fifth in comparison with the identical one-month interval final yr, with India seeing a dramatic decline amid restrictive insurance policies pursued by United States President Donald Trump.

Information from the Worldwide Commerce Fee discovered that the US issued about 313,138 scholar visas in August, when research usually start at US universities, a 19.1 % drop in comparison with August 2024.

For Indian college students, the biggest supply of international college students finding out within the US, the drop was 44.5 % throughout that interval. Visa issuances additionally dropped for students from China, albeit at a decrease price.

A number of Muslim-majority nations additionally noticed large declines, with scholar visas for Iranians dropping by 86 %. The figures don’t symbolize general numbers of international college students attending US universities, lots of whom stay on beforehand issued visas.

The drop comes because the Trump administration has pursued a restrictive strategy to immigration, whereas utilizing funding to exert rising political strain on US universities.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has revoked 1000’s of scholar visas, citing violations of US regulation, participation in protests, or in some instances, criticism of Israel. The focusing on has been in parallel with pro-Israel teams that monitor and surveil college college students concerned in pro-Palestine activism.

In June, Rubio additionally ordered the non permanent suspension of all scholar visa processing in an effort to enact higher oversight over scholar social media profiles.

These vetting purposes have been instructed to search for “any indications of hostility towards the residents, tradition, authorities, establishments, or founding ideas of the US”.

Nonetheless, the administration’s messaging in direction of sure nations has not all the time been constant.

After initially vowing to limit a big portion of Chinese language college students searching for to review within the US, Trump instructed reporters in August that he planned to confess 600,000 Chinese language college students into the nation to review.

The determine was double the variety of Chinese language college students at present finding out within the US.

“We’re going to permit, it’s crucial, 600,000 college students. It’s crucial,” Trump mentioned on the time.