Washington. Us President Donald Trump’s administration has decided to impose strict restrictions on how long foreign students and journalists can stay in the United States. According to the proposed changes, foreign nationals will not be able to stay in the US for more than four years on a student visa.

Foreign journalists will be restricted to a stay of only 240 days, although they can apply for an extension of another 240 days. However, Chinese journalists will only get a 90-day visa.

The United States has so far generally issued visas for a student’s educational program or journalist’s duration of work, although no non-immigrant visa is valid for more than 10 years.

The proposed changes were published in the Federal Register they made short-term starts for public comment before they came into force. Trump’s Department of Homeland Security accused an unspecified number of foreigners of indefinitely extending their study.

“Previous administrations have allowed foreign students and other visa holders to stay in the United States indefinitely, causing security risks, spending unspeakable taxpayer dollars, and causing inconvenience to U.S. citizens,” the department said in a statement on Wednesday.

The Department of Commerce said it did not say how international students who contributed more than $50 billion to the U.S. economy in 2023 have hurt U.S. citizens and taxpayers.

The United States welcomes more than 1.1 million international students in the 2023 and 2024 academic sessions, more than any other country. This provides an important source of revenue as foreigners usually pay full tuition fees.

A group representing the leadership of American colleges and universities denounced the latest move as an unnecessary bureaucratic obstruction that accused it of interfering with educational decision-making. This could further prevent potential students, otherwise hinder research and job creation.

“This proposed rule sends a message to talented people around the world that their contributions to the United States are not appreciated,” said Miriam Feldblum, president and ceo of the President’s Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration.

“This is not only harmful to international students, it also undermines the ability of American colleges and universities to attract high talent and undermines our global competitiveness,” he said. ’

Strong negative feedback

The announcement comes at a time when universities are starting their academic years following previous steps taken by the Trump administration and many are reporting low enrollment of international students. However, Trump praised his warm relationship with his counterpart Xi Jinping and said that he wants to double the number of Chinese students in the US to 600,000.

Us Secretary of State Marco Rubio has backtracked on his earlier commitment to “aggressively” cancel chinese students’ visas. The State Department said last week that Trump had revoked visas for 6,000 students since taking office.

Trump has also suspended billions of dollars of federal research funds to universities. His administration has claimed that they did not act against Jews, while the US Congress (Congress) has sharply increased taxes on grants from private universities.

In an address before he was elected, Vice President J.D. Vance said the Conservatives should attack universities. Trump proposed reducing the journalist visa at the end of his first term, but his successor Joe Biden rejected the proposal.