The coronavirus crisis has caused widespread economic disruption and despair, but one of the virus’s under-the-radar effects is a drastic drop in international enrollment at American colleges and universities. Some conservative tough-on-immigration hawks are lauding this development, but they’ve actually got it entirely backward.
The Center for Immigration Studies’s Mark Krikorian remarked on this development, writing in a tweet that “more Americans are getting admitted off college waiting lists partly because fewer foreign students are coming. Faster, please.” In doing so, the executive director of the prominent immigration restriction advocacy organization took a position that is widely shared in populist conservative circles: International students enter our university system to the detriment of young Americans. They “take a spot” away from a U.S. citizen.
