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A prominent Indian journalist was notified by the Trump administration this week that his student visa to pursue a master’s program in the U.S. had been denied. The prospective student, Kaushik Raj, a journalist who has reported for international and Indian publications alike, was told in his rejection letter that the U.S. government felt he did not have enough ties to his home country.
Set to study data journalism at Columbia University’s graduate journalism school, Raj was incredulous. His entire family is in India, his reporting has been on India, and he had told the American consular officer during his interview that he intended to use the skills he learned at Columbia to report data-driven stories about rural India.
“I am being punished for my journalism, for my views,” he told The Intercept.
As the fall semester kicks off at universities across the U.S., students around the world are facing similar rejections, with many more stuck in visa application purgatory. The slow-rolling of applications and denials are leaving universities bracing for an unprecedented downturn in their international student intake.
Incoming students from diverse backgrounds, with plans for pursuing varied scholarship, spoke to The Intercept about a litany of problems under the Trump administration’s new student visa processes.
Many have had their applications rejected on grounds they can’t fathom; others have been waiting weeks for a decision on their applications. Foreign students granted admission by universities can’t get slots for visa interviews even as their academic programs get underway. Wait times for “administrative processing” of visa applications have stretched from days to weeks to more than a month.
For incoming students and their families, the situation is riddled with anxieties and uncertainties.
“The Trump administration has taken myriad actions since January that make it far more difficult for international students to come to the United States, and even if they’re here, for them to complete their studies,” said Elora Mukherjee, an expert on immigration law and director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School.
She cited the revocation of student visa statuses of more than 1,000 individuals in March and April, the social media vetting policy for visa applicants, and a travel ban imposed on citizens from several countries in June. For instance, she pointed out that due to Trump’s travel ban, Afghan women would find it virtually impossible to come to the U.S. for their higher education even if they were offered a full scholarship.
As a result, the U.S. could see 150,000 fewer international student arrivals this fall, according to an analysis published by NAFSA: Association of International Educators, a U.S.-based nonprofit that tracks international education. The study said that the drastic reduction in international students in the U.S. could result in nearly $7 billion in lost revenue.
While Raj believes his case was political, his story is among many examples of the Trump administration denying foreigners’ student visas as part of a wider crackdown on immigration.
“This administration has declared war on international students in a variety of ways: ranging from arresting people who’ve spoken out on behalf of Palestinians, to cracking down on universities by claiming that they bring in too many international students,” said Stephen Yale-Loehr, a retired immigration law professor at Cornell University. “Slowing down the visa process or issuing more visa denials are administrative ways of accomplishing that goal.”
Arbitrary Rejections
In early July, an international student admitted to a graduate engineering program at a highly ranked U.S. university flew 700 miles across India to attend an F-1 student visa interview. It was the second time they had made the trip, after the Trump administration postponed their earlier appointment in May at the last minute amid a global halt on U.S. visa interviews. At the end of the interview, the student was handed a slip, asking them to make all their social media accounts public within the next 24 hours. (The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.)
In the weeks that followed, the student’s visa status remained unchanged on the application portal. Then, in early August, two weeks before they were supposed to begin their program, a response came in saying the visa application had been denied.
Like Raj, the Indian journalist, the visa was rejected on the grounds that the student didn’t have enough ties to their home country, India.
“I can’t understand how they reached that conclusion,” said the student in an interview to The Intercept, requesting anonymity to avoid jeopardizing any of their future U.S. visa applications.
The Trump administration’s increased scrutiny on student visas is part of its broader immigration enforcement crackdown.
The Immigration and Nationality Act, under which Raj and the engineering student have been denied visas, mandates that nonimmigrant visa applicants prove their intent to return to their home country. The statute gives consular officers lots of discretion, said Yale-Loehr.
“This particular section of the immigration law has always been there, but, effectively, this administration is putting its thumb on the scale,” he said. “More toward ‘no’ rather than ‘yes’ in determining someone’s intent to return home after they finish their studies.”
There’s no means for applicants to contest or appeal a visa denial under the section about students’ intent to return home. One student who had been admitted to a renowned private university on the East Coast to study computer science said they were rejected on the spot at their visa interview, despite going out of their way to mention their goal of using their studies in the U.S. to secure better work opportunities at home.
They had already booked a flight to the U.S.
“It was devastating,” the computer science student said. “I couldn’t understand what had happened.”
Pretexts for Ideological Attacks
Two students whose visa applications were rejected under the return-home provision, Section 214(b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, told The Intercept that their programs included studies of artificial intelligence, and wondered whether that had been the real reason for their applications being rejected.
In May, during the pause on visa processing, Secretary of State Marco Rubio had issued a statement declaring that the U.S. would “aggressively revoke visas” for Chinese students, including those with ties to the Chinese Communist Party or “studying in critical fields.”
Rubio did not specify what these “critical fields” were, and experts said anything from semiconductor engineering to artificial intelligence or aerospace engineering could fit the bill, since China and the U.S. are competing for supremacy across a wide range of sectors.
“Maybe they don’t like the person for studying machine learning, but that’s not a ground of ineligibility,” said Yale-Loehr. “Whereas intent is, and so you can deny them on 214(b) even if the real reason they don’t want them to come to the United States is what they’re studying.”
Likewise, the attack on Raj and other journalists could be seen as part of a larger Trump administration war against the press.
“His visa denial more likely reflects that journalism is a disfavored profession in Trump’s America.”
“The claim that Kaushik Raj does not have strong ties to India seems like an obvious pretext, particularly given his publicly available reporting for Indian outlets and coverage of India,” Seth Stern, director of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation, told The Intercept. “His visa denial more likely reflects that journalism is a disfavored profession in Trump’s America.”
“An intrepid reporter who wants to use his time in America to become an even more effective watchdog against government corruption,” Stern said, “is an undesirable in the eyes of a corrupt government like ours.”
Earlier this month, the State Department said that it had revoked around 6,000 student visas for overstays and violations of the law. The State Department has also said between 200 and 300 of the revoked visas were over accusations that they engaged in “support for terrorism.” The Trump administration has used similar arguments in going after pro-Palestine students like Mahmoud Khalil, Mohsen Mahdawi, and others.
On August 19, the Trump administration released updated guidelines stating that immigration screenings for adjustment of visa status would seek to ensure that applicants aren’t associated with any “anti-American ideologies or activities, antisemitic terrorism and antisemitic terrorist organizations, or promote antisemitic ideologies” — all guises under which the university has cracked down on pro-Palestine activism on campuses.
Disruptions and Delays
Incoming students have struggled with the many twists, turns, and updates in the Trump administration’s visa application and approval process. Groups have sprung up on WhatsApp and Telegram where students seek to keep one another abreast of the latest developments and strategies. Some of the groups, including several reviewed by The Intercept, have more than 500 members looking for informal guidance.
In the chats, students share what questions they were asked in interviews, debate ideal answers, discuss which U.S. consulates have higher visa rejection rates, and alert one another as soon as new interview slots open up.
Sometimes, the celebration of someone having received their visa is quickly dampened by the news of someone else’s rejection, fueling the despondency of those left, for the meantime, in limbo.
In May, the Trump administration had announced a worldwide suspension of U.S. student visa interviews. The impact of the nearly monthlong suspension, coupled with a significant slowdown of the visa approval process, continues to be felt sharply in countries such as India and China, which send the largest number of international students to American universities.
After paying nonrefundable deposits to their universities and securing finances to be able to afford their programs, several students have been unable to find a visa interview slot.
A student admitted to a prestigious graduate program at a top U.S. university said they haven’t been able to find a single visa appointment in their home country, India. The euphoria of receiving an acceptance letter from the university has been replaced by the frustration of missing out on the opportunity to pursue their studies.
“It’s a very tough time to be an international student because none of the roads seem to be leading anywhere,” they told The Intercept.
Another Indian student who was set to begin a graduate program in journalism at a leading U.S. university in mid-August told The Intercept that, after two-and-a-half months of daily searches for interview slots, they had finally given up.
“I would be on the website which showed interview slots for a cumulative six to eight hours every day, sometimes even longer,” they said. In recent days, the prospective student’s family members also took turns in checking the site every day — to no avail.
“It’s a very tough time to be an international student because none of the roads seem to be leading anywhere.”The crush for interview slots has created incredibly tight deadlines for would-be students. On one occasion, the would-be journalism student missed a fresh round of interview slots by a whisker: In early July, they sat down to have lunch and saw a message on one of the many WhatsApp and Telegram visa-related groups they were on saying that new interview slots had opened up.
“I stopped my lunch the minute I saw the update,” they said. “It had been one or two minutes since the message.”
Within seconds, they were on the portal, but the slots were already gone.
Pressure Campaign
The crackdown on international student visas is of a piece with the Trump administration’s attacks on universities — part of the right-wing assault on perceived liberal redoubts.
Along with revoking federal grant funding and launching investigations against several universities, the Trump administration also threatened to make it more difficult for them to take in international students. International students often pay full tuition and can therefore serve as valuable revenue streams for higher educational institutions across the country. As part of its war on Harvard, for instance, the Trump administration made explicit mention of the revenue garnered for the school by foreign students.
The administration also suspended Harvard’s access to a student visa registration system in June. Harvard had to seek a stay from the courts to continue to admit international students.
At Columbia, as part of a deal to restore federal funding to the school — viewed widely by critics as a capitulation to Trump administration demands — the university administration agreed to a clause that said it would “examine its business model and take steps to decrease financial dependence on international student enrollment.”
By making the process of obtaining a student visa significantly more difficult, the federal government seems to have found another trump card in its negotiations with the universities. Many prospective students themselves, too, are turning away.
Since being a teenager, the unnamed Indian journalism student said they had dreamed of studying at a top U.S. university. Now, with all the uncertainty around immigration and student visas, they said, they were somewhat relieved to avoid the headaches and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s crackdown.
“I feel like I dodged a bullet,” they said. “I had never thought I’d be scared about ICE.”
“I feel like I dodged a bullet. I had never thought I’d be scared about ICE.”Though they have sought a deferral from their studies at the American university, the incoming journalism student said they were no longer interested in coming to the U.S. for their education and are now looking toward European universities instead.
They said they would advise others to stay away from the U.S. too.
“It’s not worth the risk,” they said. “Wait this out, for the next three to four years, till the next administration.”
Dismayed at his own treatment during the visa process, Raj, the prominent Indian journalist seeking to study at Columbia, was also questioning his desire to study in the U.S.
“If they are rejecting me by watching my social media, then they don’t like me as a person,” he told The Intercept a day before receiving his formal rejection. “They will want to erase my voice. Then why should I go there? It’s very frustrating to try to go to a country that doesn’t want you.”
The post Accepted at Universities, Unable to Get Visas: Inside Trump’s War on International Students appeared first on The Intercept.
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