Trump’s Student Visa Revocations Jeopardize H-1B Talent Pipeline

A spree of visa cancellations by the Trump administration imperils enrollment of foreign students across the country and threatens the long-term international recruitment that is critical to colleges and employers in the US.

The State Department in recent weeks began quietly revoking hundreds of F-1 student visas. Many of those terminations were linked to students’ participation in campus protests or pro-Palestinian activism, but others may be based on a variety of infractions—even if they were never convicted of a crime. That’s been followed by Homeland Security officials deleting records in the Student Exchange Visitor Program, attorneys and college officials say, effectively ending their F-1 status.

Colleges and foreign students, who may not even be directly notified of the terminations, are scrambling to figure out their options. Higher education associations are pressing the Trump administration for clarity on its student visa policies. The uncertainty students suddenly face could stymie growth in international enrollment that had slowed even before Trump’s election, threatening the bottom line of schools that rely on their tuition money.

“They want certainty that they’ll be able to stay here and finish their degree,” said Sarah Spreitzer, vice president and chief of staff for government relations at the American Council on Education.

Termination of students’ status—already subject to litigation—will have implications for businesses, making students working in the US now immediately ineligible for employment. It will also complicate efforts by others to secure H-1B visas used to meet hiring needs in science, tech, and engineering fields just after employers sponsored them in the annual lottery for the visas. Many foreign workers in STEM fields start careers in the US on a student status while pursuing an H-1B visa.

Those students are key to the country’s scientific infrastructure, said Chris Glass, a professor at Boston College’s School of Education and Human Development.

“This is about way more than tuition dollars,” he said. “This is about the capacity of the US to continue being a leader in science and for universities to be able to serve industries.”

Novel Approach

Secretary of State Marco Rubio made headlines by invoking a rarely used provision of immigration law to designate individual students—including former Columbia University protest leader Mahmoud Khalil—for deportation.

But his agency has targeted a much broader swathe of students on F-1 visas, the program that most H-1B workers use to pursue degrees in the US. In a press conference last month, he said more than 300 visas had been revoked so far. That number appears to have grown based on reports from universities although the State Department declined to share new numbers.

Discussions among attorneys suggest the number of students with a terminated status is well north of 1,000 already, said Jonathan Wasden, managing attorney at Wasden Law.

“We’re seeing them for traffic violations, speeding tickets—some people have no idea because they haven’t had any interaction with the criminal justice system,” he said. “The common theme with all the people I’ve talked to is there is no conviction.”

A spokesperson for the agency said in an email that it revokes visas “every day in order to secure America’s borders and keep our communities safe – and will continue to do so. “

A visa revocation on its own doesn’t mean a student has to leave the US. But Homeland Security officials have also removed records from the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement database, known as SEVIS, that tracks compliance with the F-1 program. That record is a student’s “lifeline in the United States,” said Ksenia Maiorova, a partner at immigration law firm Green and Spiegel.

The termination of students’ status by Homeland Security officials unilaterally without a conviction or the involvement of school officials marks a sharp departure from previous practices and raises due process concerns, immigration attorneys say.

“Terminating records is pretty much unheard of,” said Adam Cohen, a partner at Siskind Susser PC.

Immigration attorneys say revocation of a visa on its own shouldn’t lead to removal without notice to the student and an opportunity for judicial review. Multiple lawsuits have been filed in the past week challenging the basis of an F-1 visa termination, including suits from students in California, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire. Another lawsuit filed Monday by a software engineer in the Northern District of California said the termination of their SEVIS record jeopardized their employment.

Colleges in many cases are having to identify those terminations themselves. The American Council on Education and other higher ed groups requested a briefing on visa policies in an April 4 letter to Rubio and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.

“Right now we have more questions than we have answers,” ACE’s Spreitzer said. “Number one, is how many international students is this impacting.”

Talent Pipeline

A terminated status means students lose eligibility for the Optional Practical Training program that more than 276,000 students and recent graduates used in fiscal 2023. The program offers a window of up to three years of post-graduation work eligibility for international students hoping to win the H-1B lottery.

If their employer sponsors them for one of the specialty occupation visas, they might be rejected for failing to maintain status in the US after removal of their F-1 record. That could potentially affect winners of this year’s just completed lottery, Wasden said.

“Some have already spent money on visa petitions,” he said.

After rebounding from a Covid-19 fueled swoon, Boston College’s Glass found international enrollment fell by 130,000 students overall this spring. That dropoff was driven primarily by declines among new enrollment from India and enrollment in master’s programs.

International students still account for a majority of PhDs in critical technology fields like computer science, mathematics, and engineering, Glass said. But chaos from visa cancellations on many campuses will add to headwinds colleges were already facing, he said.

“This has a really powerful signaling effect for other international students,” he said.