Macro impact of expelling Chinese students

I have worked with several Chinese scientists, one of whom became a close friend. It’s well-known that Chinese culture has maintained a respect for learning for thousands of years.

Here is one example of the dire effect of expelling a Chinese-American scientist.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/opinion/visas-china-rockets-scientist-technology.html

The U.S. Deported This Chinese Scientist, in a Decision That Changed World History

By Kathleen Kingsbury, The New York Times, May 30, 2025

In 1950, though it didn’t know it yet, the American government held one of the keys to winning the Cold War: Qian Xuesen, a brilliant Chinese rocket scientist who had already transformed the fields of aerospace and weaponry. In the halls of the California Institute of Technology and M.I.T., he had helped solve the riddle of jet propulsion and developed America’s first guided ballistic missiles. He was made a colonel in the U.S. Air Force, worked on the top-secret Manhattan Project and was sent to Germany to interrogate enemy scientists. Dr. Qian wanted the first man in space to be American — and was designing a rocket to make it happen.

Then he was stopped short. At the height of his career, there came a knock at the door, and he was handcuffed in front of his wife and young son. Prosecutors would eventually clear Dr. Qian of charges of sedition and espionage, but the United States deported him anyway — traded back to Communist Beijing in a swap for about a dozen American prisoners of war in 1955.

The implications of that single deportation are staggering: Dr. Qian returned to China and immediately persuaded Mao Zedong to put him to work building a modern weapons program. By the decade’s end, China tested its first missile. By 1980, it could rain them down on California or Moscow with equal ease. Dr. Qian wasn’t just rightly christened the father of China’s missile and space programs; he set in motion the technological revolution that turned China into a superpower… [end quote]

Many of the top U.S. tech companies were founded by immigrants who trained in science in the U.S.

Foreign students who train in the U.S. are valuable human resources. We should provide them with inducements to become American citizens, like my friend.

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/targeting-chinese-students-threatens-the-bottom-line-at-american-universities-c64a89b5?mod=hp_lead_pos7

Targeting Chinese Students Threatens the Bottom Line at American Universities

Trump administration’s move to revoke visas could poke holes in university finances and U.S. talent pipeline

By Shen Lu, Liyan Qi and Ming Li, The Wall Street Journal

Key Points

  • The Trump administration’s plan to revoke visas for Chinese students could hurt U.S. universities’ finances and talent pool.

  • Chinese students, especially undergraduates who typically pay full tuition, are a key revenue source for U.S. universities.

  • The majority of Chinese students study in STEM fields, and they often stay in the U.S. after graduation.

A Trump administration announcement Wednesday that it would “aggressively” begin revoking visas for Chinese students confronts universities across the U.S. with the prospect of a hit to their finances and talent pool…

Typically, Chinese undergraduates pay full tuition, a critical source of revenue for universities.

One in every four international students comes from China, and Chinese students form a particularly large share of the student body at top U.S. schools. After they graduate, many assume key roles in U.S. science and engineering endeavors.

A big decline in Chinese enrollment could severely cut into schools’ bottom line and damage U.S. competitiveness, say U.S. experts…

In 2023, 83% of the Chinese STEM graduates who obtained their doctoral degrees between 2017 and 2019 were still in the U.S., well above the average rate… [end quote]

The article focuses on the hit to the income of top universities with large Chinese full-pay student populations.

But I think the biggest hit will be to the U.S. Macro economy in the long term. Does the Trump administration really think Chinese students have nowhere else to study? How about China? How about Europe?

We will lose these hard-working contributors to the U.S. economy.

Insane.
Wendy (holding head in hands)

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Just like we lose the hardworking Hispanics that come here to work and build a better life than the one they left behind.

There are several “shows” being put on to distract from the content of the BBB, which, unsurprisingly, has been found to benefit “JCs”, at the expense of the Proles. Anyone surprised? Purging the country of people who are not straight, white, and Christian, is one of the shows.

Steve

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While you are focusing on “Chinese” the same is true for “Indian” students too. Unfortunately, for “Indian” students it is not just US, UK, and Canada also joined together and revoking visa’s for them.

Here are the underlying concerns of M@G@

  1. These students come in for education but stay back, marry within their culture and change the character of the “anglo-saxon culture” in their communities.
  2. Their kids are crowding out schools, and taking opportunities from “our AKA White” kids, look at harvard, MIT, Asians dominate there…
  3. They take our jobs
  4. Lastly they are secrete communist agents

While canceling the visa’s don’t directly address the concerns, but it is very popular within M@G@ movement.

What we are not willing to talk is, rural America has fallen back in education, job opportunities. Rural and inner city schools are in pathetic condition. Yet we are forever spending more in education. Democrats are not addressing that, instead focused on making sure “transgender kids” rights to compete in sports are preserved.

Until democrats address these concerns and stop calling people “racists” for having these concerns, these kind of knee-jerk policies will continue. Only when the folks feel democrats are sincere about their concerns, then they will be willing to listen to other concerns regarding how immigration has enriched this country. Right now, what democrats have done with immigration makes it so hard, it is going to take at least a decade to change the conversation.

Schools are Generally run by the States and local administrations. So it’s hard to blame anything on any party for which is happening in the schools. How do you blame Democrats for what is happening in Missouri or Oklahoma or Texas or…

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Same was said of italians, and irish catholics at some point. Oh and those of the jewish faith

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What we are not willing to talk about is the reality of quality education: parents and teachers guiding sincere, hardworking students who are willing to spend many, many hours studying instead of watching screens.

My Chinese (one a chemist, the other a biomedical engineer) friends have a son who was born in Delaware. The family spent the first 6 years of their son’s life in China (job-related). They put their son into a public school when they returned to the U.S. While in the public school, an African-American classmate told Son that he shouldn’t read because that’s what white people do.

When my friend told me that, I told her to put her son into a private school. He has been in private schools ever since.

I mentored the son over Zoom twice a week from age 9 through age 12 through the Covid years.

The hardest task the parents had was to break the son’s addiction to video games. This caused immense stress in the family but finally they succeeded. Watching this titanic struggle made me aware that the average family (1) doesn’t understand how destructive video games are to a kid’s ability to concentrate on school work and (2) even if they did realize this they probably wouldn’t put the effort into breaking the addiction. (Like any addiction, Son would backslide into video games in a heartbeat if his parents let him.).

This is not a partisan problem. Democrat or Republican, city or rural, the focus is not on education. Highly educated parents (on average) do focus on their children’s education more than less-educated. Especially when they come from cultures with a deep history of respect for education, like the Chinese, Indians (Brahmans) and Jews.

The backlash from average Americans is because they are understandably resentful that their children aren’t keeping up educationally. But the resources (like Khan Academy) are free for all. It’s on the parents to discipline and encourage their children to be dedicated students. Many would rather put their kids on the football team than their nose to the academic grindstone.

There is such a thing as reality. Standardized tests reveal it, like it or not. Resent it or not, our competitors and adversaries will not care.
Wendy

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So, democrats are in charge of everything?

But, who holds all three legislative houses?

*Hint: it’s NOT democrats.

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I’ll add that this is not so much a partisan issue as it is an issue of severe income inequality.

Poor tend to stay poor when fewer resources are available for community support, infrastructure, and employment.

While we moved quickly into a nation of lower paying service jobs, neoliberalism reduced taxes on the very wealthy to further reduce government services.

“Pull yourself up by your bootstraps” is actually an impossible task.

“it used to be an insult. It was used to describe people who were basically delusional. It’s not something we think about much, but of course pulling yourself up by straps attached to your own feet is physically impossible.”
https://stateofopportunity.michiganradio.org/families-community/2015-04-07/where-does-the-phrase-pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps-actually-come-from

Oh, and to get back on topic about expelling smart foreign students, we’re idiots to do that, and it’s all for someone’s short term gain.

Today no one will say that the Chinese Exclusion Act was a wise policy. Nor will we say that of the Japanese internment during WWII.

We are doing the same stupid thing again. Are things really different from back then, Little Marco? We are going back. For whom is that Great, again?

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Noones pulling themselves up or working harder. Just kicking out the competition so the dumber lazier kids can get in.

Its DEI with a twist

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I can think of six people who may agree that was a great idea.

Supreme Court allows Trump to revoke temporary legal status of 500,000 immigrants from 4 countries

Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela

But, we are told, white South Africans are “victims of genocide”, therefore welcome in Shiny-land.

Steve

TIG saying how important it is to deport people quickly. Court hearings take too long.

Meanwhile, the State Department wants to create a new “office of remigration” to expedite running people out of the country.

State department ramps up Trump anti-immigration agenda with new ‘remigration’ office | US politics | The Guardian

Steve

Insane indeed. Lots of the same information, with a few more details -

Immigrant students are innovation drivers, job creators, and GDP boosters.

None of this makes sense, unless it’s a coordinated effort to weaken the US.

Manchurian Candidate? Yassss!

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That’s the only explanation. Greed and stupidity aren’t enough.

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