How will Trump's win affect international students?

MYOS1634
Tue, 15 Nov 2016 15:40:21 +0000

Nothing may change in the process for F1/J1, but 1° attitudes in Embassies can change, especially tone during the interview 2° arbitrary refusals can go up depending on new embassy personel/nominees’ views 3°most importantly, attitudes toward the US may change and affect patterns of applications from the students themselves.
I don’t think it’ll affect top colleges but parents whose driving factors were not prestige, but potential upward mobility, tolerant society, and safety, remain concerned, and have a right to be. Some small colleges branded themselves as ’ rural = safe’ and may soon - if not right now- have a branding problem. There’s a lot of uncertainty. One of the US strength is soft power and there’s no telling where we go from here.
The “pitchfork” image may have been isolated, but it was picked up abroad. If an international student is harassed or attacked, it’ll be picked up in national news. If representative international students are interviewed for their country’s TV and say they’re nervous, it’ll be picked up and shared. If they say everything’s OK, that Americans are friendly and there’s been no racist incident in their area, same thing.
Again, laws aren’t the only issue - public image, symbols, statements have a powerful effect too.
‘Aggressive vetting’ of students was used in 2008-2010 in France for French speaking Africans. This came on the heels of “The African man has not entered history” speech delivered to the Senegalese elite by the then-president of the French Republic. These upper middle class/upper class families considered their kids were treated with disdain, visas were seemingly arbitrarily withheld, they were made to feel not as an asset but as potential cheaters/terrorists/problems, so they switched to other countries that seemed transparent, respectful, and open, in particular Canada. The fall in upper middle class students from Western Africa to France was precipitous and has not come back up, leading to concerns in French-speaking diplomatic circles about sphere of influence. Right now, international students are part of a worldwide market, with Australia, Canada - and the EU-, in competition with the US to attract the growing middle/upper middle class from emerging/BRICza countries. So, fallout is unpredictable right now, even if there are immediate moves, concerns, and fears from current applicants and their parents (not those aiming for Stanford/Harvard/MIT, but for those aiming for an American education, the concept of a liberal arts or advanced technical education, in “red states” and rural areas.)