The last two years of our immigration debate has centered around the discussion of widely sympathetic illegal or legally dubious immigrants, such as “Dreamers” and asylum seekers. While President Trump has sparred with Democrats about our southern border, only to reach a seemingly insurmountable stalemate, there is one arena of immigration Republicans and Democrats alike could greatly gain from reforming: our student visa program.
Our F-1 visa program, which permits foreign nationals to study in the U.S. full time, comprises the overwhelming majority of our student visas. A few thousand dependents of F-1 visa holds gain entry to the country with F-2 visas, and a few hundred border commuters who live in their own countries full-time obtain F-3 visas. Our F-1 visa program is not just extremely lax, approving roughly 4 out of every 5 applicants, but it’s also extremely generous towards our foreign adversaries.
Of the 644,233 F-1 visas issued in 2015, mainland Chinese nationals received more than a quarter-million, an overwhelming plurality of all F-1 visas approved. Nearly 5,000 Russians obtained F-1 visas, and Iranians received more than 1,000. At 74,831, Indian nationals receive the second-highest number of student visas, and at 28,171, Saudi Arabia obtains the third.
All but the most hawkish of immigration proponents accept that the overwhelming majority of foreign nationals seeking permanent residence and citizenship in the United States want to assimilate, at some bare minimum level, to American culture. Student visas are different. Despite the fact that our H1-B work visa approval rate is as high as our student visa rate, students from nations that hate America tend to return to their home countries instead of attempting to work here. Eight in 10 Chinese nationals who study abroad return to China, and a jarring report by ProPublica has revealed that Saudi diplomats are smuggling home Saudi students in America charged with crimes as grievous as rape and manslaughter.
As a nation, we ought to welcome those who want to embody our values of self-reliance, individual liberty, and equality under the law. We ought to encourage those who bring human capital and respect for humanity to the American economy. We ought to allow those willing to assimilate to American culture to join the American experiment.
We cannot continue to spend millions of dollars teaching Russians how to hack our election systems and the Chinese how to commit intellectual property theft and then sending them back to countries that would be happy to bomb our democratic allies off the globe.
Even worse, we cannot have American students raped by students from countries that treat women like chattel or classrooms desecrated by students who cheated their way though their SAT and TOEFL exams.
This ought not be a partisan issue, but an American one. The current system allows people from our ugliest foreign adversaries to gain access to the greatest university system in the world with no skin in the game. If anything, our student visas ought to come with incentives or demands to keep those admitted in the country after graduation. But our current system is failing, and American taxpayers and students are paying the price.
