It’s hard to feel much sympathy for Harvard University. It has historically absorbed billions of dollars in federal subsidies and research grants, while discriminating against some applicants based on their race prior to the 2022 Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.
But now, President Donald Trump is ending all remaining federal grants to Harvard. And beyond cutting off federal money, the administration has gone further by threatening to block Harvard’s access to all foreign students in 30 days. Worse, it is pausing all interviews for new foreign students, as well as the so-called exchange visas, while the administration considers whether and how to vet applicants’ social media accounts.
The administration is completely off-base in its attacks on universities and international students.
This goes way too far. There’s not a single terrorist attack in the last 50 years that would have been prevented by such a thorough and subjective search, but the administration would likely use it to exclude students with unpopular opinions. (On Thursday, a federal judge extended a temporary order blocking the administration’s attempt to bar Harvard from enrolling international students.)
Moreover, the administration is completely off-base in its attacks on universities and international students.
There are more than 1.1 million foreign students enrolled in American colleges and universities, amounting to just under 6% of the 19.1 million students enrolled in higher education. According to the Open Doors 2024 Report on International Educational Exchange, 56% of foreign students studied STEM, about 25% studied math and computer science, and nearly one-fifth studied engineering.
Skilled immigrants often start as foreign students and end up staying. Elon Musk started as a student at the University of Pennsylvania before getting an H-1B visa. Usually, after the H-1B (or another temporary visa called OPT), the migrants are sponsored for a green card, and then they can eventually become American citizens, just as Musk did. Another South African immigrant, Patrick Soon-Shiong, completed his surgical training at UCLA before inventing the drug Abraxane for lung, breast and pancreatic cancer.
“The innovation this country spawns is the only way I think that America continues to be the leader of the world,” Soon-Shiong, now a billionaire and the owner of the Los Angeles Times, said in 2017. “We still have the best universities, and I think it’s crazy that (foreigners) come here and we train them as masters and PhDs and then we kick them out. That’s ridiculous.”
The data bears out Soon-Shiong’s observations in innovation and entrepreneurship. From 1950-2000, a 1 percentage point increase in immigrants results in 15% more patents on a per capita basis. But entrepreneurship is even more important for innovation, and that’s where immigrants really shine. According to research by economist Pierre Azoulay and his co-authors, immigrants are 80% more likely to start a business, their businesses created about 50% more jobs, they start more businesses at every size, and they pay about 1% higher wages than firms started by native-born Americans.
Abandoning student visas doesn’t mean kicking high-skilled immigrants out today, but it does mean that many fewer will be here in the future because they’re kicked off the bottom rung of the ladder. Canceling student visas will actually counteract the intent of the administration’s trade war. The administration started its trade war on the false notion that countries with trade surpluses have taken advantage of Americans. “We’re just not going to get ripped off anymore,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said. But even if the trade surplus were an economically meaningful number, ending student visas is counterproductive because, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, they amount to a $50.2 billion export. The effect of canceling student visas is to increase the trade deficit. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently announced that the administration will more aggressively review visas for Chinese students with ties to the Communist Party and who study “critical fields.” Canceling student visas will actually counteract the intent of the administration’s trade war. Espionage is a legitimate concern, although an overblown one, but sending a signal to intelligent and hard-working Chinese students that the U.S. doesn’t want them will do more harm. If the administration is truly worried about China, it makes little sense to lock their smartest students in a communist dictatorship during a trade war in which one of the main goals is to reduce the trade deficit with China (even though the latter point isn’t important). Beyond just the myopic assaults on immigration, policing international students’ speech isn’t a worthy task for America’s border bureaucrats. And even if it were, they should be able to do it without pausing all student visas. The Trump administration should abandon this endeavor before it starts.
Alex Nowrasteh
Alex Nowrasteh is the vice president for economic and social policy studies at the Cato Institute. 
