The United States Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, said that more than 300 visas were revoked by the State Department last month under his direction, the majority of which were student visas.
A recent report from CCN says that since the beginning of this year, more than 340 student visas have been revoked from dozens of universities and colleges in the US, VisaGuide.World reports.
Since taking office, the United States President, Donald Trump’s administration has tightened immigration rules, expanding the reasons for deportation.
The rising number of student visa revocations in the US has sparked concerns among students and attorneys among others.
The president-elect of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, Jeff Joseph, told CNN that the US State Department is using immigration tools “in a way that causes mass hysteria.”
All of these tools that exist in the (immigration) statute have been used before, but they use them in a way that causes mass hysteria, chaos and panic with the hope that students won’t get proper legal advice and they’ll just, through attrition, leave the country.
In this regard, the Minneapolis-based immigration attorney David Wilson told CNN that it is not unusual that authorities in the US decide to revoke student visas for various reasons, however, he said that forcing people in the US to immediately leave the country is completely a different thing, in particular in the middle of an academic term.
A visa is like the key to starting a car. It’s quite different, though, to stop the car in the middle of the street and tell the person they have to get out.
Over 1.5 Million International Students in 2023
The US offers several visa types for foreigners interested in pursuing their studies in the US or participating in an educational exchange program.
Among them:
- F-1 Visa– for foreign students from elementary to graduate school.
- M-1 Visa– for foreign students enrolling in vocational studies including cooking, mechanical classes, cosmetology and flight school.
- J-1 Visa– two-year visa allowing a temporary stay in a US exchange program.
- Q-1 Visa– a cultural exchange visa
According to a US government report, over 1.5 million people were in the United States under student visas issued by the US Department of Homeland Security in 2023.
At the same time, the State Department says that the Exchange Visitor Program offers opportunities to about 300,000 foreign visitors from a total of 200 countries and territories each year.
While the cases of revocation of student visas in the US become more frequent, immigration attorneys told CNN that in many cases, the Trump administration failed to provide any details related to these decisions, unless obliged to do so in court.