President Donald Trump said on Monday that he would allow 600,000 Chinese students to study in the United States.
“It’s a very important relationship. We’re going to get along good with China,” Trump told reporters. “I hear so many stories about, ‘We’re not going to allow their students.’ We’re going to allow their students to come in. We’re going to allow it. It’s very important — 600,000 students. It’s very important.”
Fox News host Laura Ingraham discussed the matter with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick that evening, asking, “Mr. Secretary, with all due respect, how is allowing 600,000 students from the communist country of China putting America first?”
Lutnick said that without the Chinese students, the “bottom 15 percent of universities and colleges would go out of business in America” because fewer U.S. students would attend.
In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the State Department was working to remove Chinese students’ visas.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, the U.S. State Department will work with the Department of Homeland Security to aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields. We will also revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement.
Earlier this year, two Chinese citizens were charged after allegedly smuggling a pathogen involved in an agroterrorism scheme into the United States. One of the Chinese nationals was linked to the University of Michigan.
