The White House issued a statement to clarify President Donald Trump’s statements on Chinese visas.
This week, Trump told reporters, “We’re going to get along good with China. 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.”
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick later told Laura Ingraham 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.
Amid backlash from the statement, the White House said, “President Trump isn’t proposing an increase in student visas for Chinese students. The 600K references two years’ worth of visas. It’s simply a continuation of existing policy.”
“It’s very insulting to say students can’t come here,” Trump later said during a Cabinet meeting. “I like that their students come here. I like that other countries’ students come here.”
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.
