After a struggling year, the future of Chinese students studying in the United States remains uncertain
By: Hot Pot News
Tags: International Relations, Covid 19, USA, China, Students

Yuanyuan has been staying at home since she declined her enrollment offer for Fall 2020. To apply for the prestigious universities in America, she gave up her postgraduate recommendation opportunity. However, by the time she passed all the hard tests and was one step away from her dream of going abroad, everything fell apart due to Covid-19. The number of confirmed cases in America skyrocketed to the top of the world. The outbreak also led to riots in Minnesota, the state she was planning to go to.

“It was never easy. If it were not for some academic dreams, no one would want to go abroad so desperately. Only then, we discover the importance of world peace. I still hold the L.S.E. (London School of Economics and Political Science) offer letter to prevent anything unexpected.” Yuanyuan lamented.

Visa has Become the “Only Path in front of Thousands of Troops”

2020 has been an unexpected year. As Covid-19 raging around the world, economic downturn, facemask shortage, even tension in international relationships have become more severe than usual. As a result, the path to studying abroad has become more challenging than ever.

America was once the top choice of many international students for its state-of-the-art academic resources and its opportunities for students’ lives. However, the pathway was blocked due to rapidly changing visa policies.

As Covid-19 continues to spread, the U.S.-China tension persists. While both sides proceed with their strong statements, international students’ situation worsens, especially for students who study STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) as their major.

U.S. State Department Spokesperson Morgan Ortagus disclosed that America has canceled visas of more than a thousand Chinese researchers who they think may pose risks to the U.S. national security.

Data from the U.S. State Department on November 4 pointed out that from April to September this year, the United States issued 808 F-1 student visas to students from mainland China, a drop of 99% from the 90,410 in the same period last year. The Ministry of Education of China also issued a warning to students who plan to go abroad regarding their safety in America.

This situation began to appear on a large scale in spring 2020: many students have received offers but cannot embark on their academic journey due to visa application failure. Under the continued pressure of Covid-19 pandemic, tightening grips on U.S.-China policy, and the spiking number of confirmed cases in America, visa application conditions have become more unfavorable than ever.

It has become a regretful truth that this enormous wave of students who originally planned to go to the U.S.A. was blocked on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

Can I still plan to study in the U.S.?

H is a C.S. (Computer Science) master student of an Ivy School in America. His family is not very rich. Hence, he is very excited to find a job after graduation and repay his parents’ money for his tuition. The upper-year students told him that it would be easy to find a well-paid job in America with his C.S. degree. Before 2020, H was confident in himself and planned to work for Facebook or Amazon. However, all he worries about now in 2020 is whether he will be repatriated back to China. After all, he joined the Party many years ago and went to the university blacklisted by the U.S. H found it was hard to find jobs even when he was near graduation. Many students around him packed their packages and bought flight tickets back to China. H does not want to give up. He wants to try one more time.

H’s classmate Z thought that studying abroad is for immigration, not for anything else. Z wants to change to a more “diversified” environment.

H and Z see the 2020 U.S. election as a life-saving straw. When Biden announced his victory, they almost burst into tears and celebrated with each other. Trump seems to have to leave the presidency first before he can expel most of the international students. The students have found hope in despair, will they get their luck back?

In the winter of 2020, a piece of news spread widely among the international students: According to official sources, Biden said that he believes that foreign graduates studying for a doctorate in the United States should obtain a green card because “the well-trained talents are drained to foreign countries that will damage our American economic competitiveness.”

H sent the news to Z right away, saying that we should continue to apply for a Ph.D. Z was relatively calm, said this was just Biden’s personal thoughts, saying that it is better to listen to the prospects, and saying that pessimistic views are a big cake. It is too difficult to pass Senate legislation and put it into practice, and it may still be in vain before our Ph.D. graduates.

What is more realistic than the doctor’s green card is the S.386 bill hanging over skilled immigration applicants. Each year, 140,000 green cards are issued to professional and skilled immigrants in the United States. The immigrant quota for each country cannot exceed 7% of the total quota. So each country has a quota of about 9,800 green cards per year.

However, not every country has the same immigration needs. On the contrary, there are huge differences between countries. The greatest demand is Indians. The average green card period for Indians applying for skilled immigration is 8.5 years, and some people even have to wait 100 Years. They are followed by China, with an average waiting time of 5.4 years. The core of the S.386 bill proposed by the Democratic Party is to abolish the quota system. Green cards are first-come-first-served. The large backlog of Indians will directly benefit from it, and this may cause applicants from all other countries to wait. Many Chinese students are unwilling when it is against their interests.

But in any case, after the Democratic Party comes into power, its policy on skilled immigration will be looser, and students who hope to make a fortune by studying abroad will have more expectations.