The community of international students in America is barely 0.3 per cent of America’s population of 337 million. Together, they contribute about $43 billion to the economy, around one- fourth as much as the contribution from international tourism. They also support about 380,000 jobs
The Trump administration in the United States appears to be fascinated with early 20th century American policies like trade protection and social repression in the name of national security. First came the import tariffs and next an attempt to arm-twist private universities like Columbia and Harvard to dampen the spread of anti-Semitism (defined broadly as criticising Israeli excesses in Gaza and propagating anti-Jewish sentiment) and to further reduce the influx of Chinese students.
It opted on May 27 to wield “excessive force” by “temporarily” halting all student visa interviews till it implements systems to digitally scrutinise all visa applicants’ social media accounts to ferret out Hamas sympathisers or Israel baiters.
America has been there earlier, during the post-Second World War McCarthy era when Communism was, plausibly, perceived as a threat. Senator Joseph McCarthy, a Republican, caught the public eye with his inquisitorial investigations of alleged Communists in high places, including the US Army, between 1947 to 1957. Some instances of Communist infiltration were identified but disproportionate in numbers and scale to the wide-ranging investigations ginning up anti-Communist phobia and unsubstantiated allegations which ruined careers and lives. McCarthy was censured by the US Senate in 1954, leading to his political decline.
There is a method to the excessive action by the Trump administration. International students, particularly undergraduate students for whom financial assistance is scarce, contribute handsomely to the coffers of private universities. Muzzling university administrations by denying government grants becomes more compelling if their income from tuition fees also gets curtailed by denying visas to foreign students.
The community of international students in America is barely 0.3 per cent of America’s population of 337 million. Together, they contribute about $43 billion to the economy, around one- fourth as much as the contribution from international tourism. They also support about 380,000 jobs. The number of international students has increased over the past decade by 2.4 per cent per year, which is more than double the rate of the increase in America’s population. The real problem is that the category of qualified international graduate students working to gain practical experience has grown much faster. Willing to work at minimal pay for longer hours, they pose a threat to native job seekers though they comprise only 0.14 per cent of the 161 million jobs on offer. Compared to their contributions to the STEM-fed sectors, it is hard to imagine a home-grown substitute.
Nevertheless, going by the insular standards of most countries, the disquiet is perfectly understandable. The US economy has, till now, defied the constraints of demography and higher income-led loss of global competitiveness to continue growing on the back of immigration and a welcoming ecosystem for innovation, including a deep financial market. A Hobson’s choice now faces the United States. Either accept slowing domestic demographics, shun immigration and adjust to slowing economic growth, with the attendant loss of pole position in global finance and security. Alternatively, an activist state policy can alleviate the employment and income concerns of the MAGA crowd, which is President Trump’s vote bank. Simply raging against Diversity, Equity and Inclusion as the sole reason mid-America lags is unlikely to make people there more productive. Squeezing legal immigration and catering to cultural homogeneity has the downside of making America economically weaker and globally less relevant.
Indian immigrants to America seek opportunity -- the chance of studying in globally rated universities, gaining access to a vetted network of excellence and the option to pack in some work experience there to widen their own professional networks. But just as surely, only one-third of the top one hundred universities are in the US. The difference is that financial support might not be as generous outside America, the potential networks shallower and business links less embedded into the university system.
It is telling that students from India, Bangladesh and China are overrepresented at the post-graduate and subsequent phase of professional training. Without counting students from these countries, the ratio of students in post-graduate study to those in undergraduate study is 0.79, or simply put, fewer of these students come to the US for post-graduate studies than for undergraduate study. In the case of India, the number of post- graduate students in America is five times the number of Indians studying for undergraduate degrees. For Bangladesh, it is three times and 1.4 times for China.
What could be the reason Indians, Bangladeshis and Chinese students prefer to pursue undergraduate studies in their own countries, though Chinese students have a higher preference for undergraduate study in America relative to India or Bangladesh? One plausible reason is that undergraduate studies in all three countries are of excellent quality, at least for the fewer numbers who also manage to go overseas. In India, the share of undergraduate and graduate students abroad is less than one per cent of the forty million students studying at home. The affordability of education in the US is a problem. Studying at home, in India, costs around one-fifth of the average American cost. In China, where per capita income is much higher than India, the affordability issue is less relevant. This could be one reason more Chinese than Indians prefer to study in America at the undergraduate level. Hoping to improve facility with English might be another factor incentivising a longer study period in the US to ease into the system gradually.
India itself is a target of persistent terror attacks and long-standing illegal occupation of about four per cent of its land mass by Pakistan and China on the western and northern borders. America has the sovereign right to bar those who do not buy into the American ethos from entry. But using blunt tools like scanning social media usage is unlikely to identify substantive threats, who already remain under the social media radar. It is normal for the young to have a benevolent view of the world and are thereby susceptible to both the extreme left and obscurantist ideologies, which sell dreams -- unrealisable in the real world. The international student community is a vibrant symbol of the freedom of thought and political space which has defined America.
Whilst the welcoming lamp held aloft by the Statue of Liberty might need to be dimmed in these fractious times, where global connectivity itself becomes a risk, the use of blunt tools under the pressure to do something, anything, risks harming America itself.
The writer is Distinguished Fellow, Chintan Research Foundation, and was earlier with the IAS and the World Bank
