The United States Vice President, JD Vance, has made a statement regarding foreign students on student visas. According to Vance, these students may face deportation if their stay is perceived not to be in the best interest of the country.
Vance made this statement during an interview with Fox News on Thursday night. He emphasized that this move is part of a broader strategy under the Trump administration to increase deportation efforts. Vance noted that while some may see this as a matter of free speech, it is more about the nation’s security and deciding who is allowed to join the American community.
The Vice President stated, “This is not fundamentally about free speech, and to me, yes, it’s about national security, but it’s also more importantly about who do we as an American public decide gets to join our national community. “And if the secretary of state and the president decide this person shouldn’t be in America, and they have no legal right to stay here, it’s as simple as that.
“I think we’ll certainly see some people who get deported on student visas if we determine that it’s not in the best interest of the United States to have them in our country. “I don’t know how high that number is going to be, but you’re going to see more people.” Vance expressed concerns about the potential consequences of deporting foreign students.
The Vice President also highlighted some concerns about foreign students occupying slots at reputable universities as another reason for the deportation plans. He stated that some of these spots could have belonged to qualified American students. Vance suggested that wealthy foreign students, particularly from countries like China, often take spots at elite schools.
Vance stated that this trend reduces opportunities for native-born Americans, especially those from middle-class backgrounds. He noted that wealthy foreign students often pay full tuition, taking spots at elite schools like Columbia or Harvard.
“A lot of these foreign students, most of them, pay full freight. So sometimes what have you at elite universities like a Columbia or Harvard, you have a well-qualified middle-class American kid from the heartland who doesn’t get a spot in these universities because some Chinese oligarch, who is paying $100,000 a year, takes up that spot,” he said.
“So it’s not just bad for national security, it’s bad for the American dream for a lot of kids who want to go to a nice university and can’t because their spot was taken by a foreign student. It’s certainly something we are looking at,” the VP noted.
The debate on foreign students comes as the United States experienced an increase in foreign students enrollment. He stated that Nigeria is one of the countries with surge in application to US universities in international enrollments.
With 20,029 students as of the last academic session of 2023/2024, Nigerians accounted for the seventh-largest source of international students in the US.
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