Student Visa Denials in America Makes Everyone Involved Worse Off

Got into a top American university? Congrats, you may have just finished the easy part. For aspiring international high schoolers aiming for the best that global higher education can offer, an acceptance letter may no longer be enough to start the journey. Those who secure interviews at their nearest US embassies and consulates now face the meeting with anxiety. What used to be a formality, a stamp of approval preordained by acknowledgement of intellectual excellence from elite universities, has now become a brand-new, entirely separate hurdle to go through.

It is as if the students are required to go through another round of applications. This time, what is asked is not their top grades, impactful extracurricular activities, and unique contribution to campus and professional life, but their ideologies, online presence, and social leanings, anything that can be conceived as a vague threat to an even vaguer definition of "national security." Sometimes, variables beyond the very control of the students themselves, such as race, nationality, and religion, are becoming enough of a factor to derail promising academic careers. 

Worse yet, the politicization of the student visa granting process means that the goalpost continues to shift, with no objective criteria to determine what ought to be "correct" in the eyes of the bureaucrats who may themselves be bewildered by the political decisions that came from above. Students are told to keep their social media accounts public for full examinations. But no one can tell for sure what exactly red flags are significant enough for visa rejections. After all, highly polarizing social media landscapes where left-wing pro-Palestinian messages exist side by side with rightwing masculinity, how do you truly stay above it?

Neither is complete silence the solution. Universities look for students who are willing to take a stand, not just to voice their opinions on controversial issues to change society for the better, but more importantly, share those views with a global audience to persuade them to join the fight for more fairness, justice, and peace. Who is the US government to say what sort of methodology, opinions, or voices are the right ones to have, deserving of an entry ticket to the country? By being a more scrutinizing gatekeeper, the government risks undermining the freedom of speech that the universities and their students embody.

All the more ironic that it comes from a government that has made freedom of speech a pillar of its ideology, using it as justification to bludgeon social media platforms to cut back on content moderation, causing conspiracy theories to flourish as if they are real, evidence-based news items. If it is willing to take such a lenient attitude toward unsubstantiated opinions, why not give the same benefit to high schoolers, who during their four-year stay in the US as both students and residents, are perfectly capable of changing whatever malignant views they may have?

If anything, there is nowhere better for opinions to be shaped and reshaped than the intellectually flexible and stimulating world that is university campuses. By so casually rejecting student visa applications and killing off international students' dreams of a global education in America, the American government may end up putting together a self-fulfilling prophecy: those they deem to be too anti-American to be let into the country to study, they will find years later, end up really becoming the anti-American intellectuals they fear out of pure spite.

It is sad to say that rather than exposing American visa policies for the ridiculousness it espouses, other Western governments are, in their own, less radical ways, following suit to make it difficult for foreign students to come study. British and Australian efforts to reduce immigration quotas, for instance, will only drive away the brightest of the bright looking for safer shores than the contemporary United States can offer. As the student misses out on the best opportunities to learn, the countries that reject them miss out on opportunities to grow on the backs of their talents and intellect.

Global education remains unequal, and that inequality is easily seen just by all the wealthy families paying top dollars to give their children a leg up in the admissions process. But without relatively open borders that allow educational exchange, the inequality will only become worse. Economic privilege cannot be easily shared or transferred. But knowledge and values can, as long as we can support those who are passionate enough to do so. Universities are in much better positions to evaluate such passion and talent, not the governments issuing or denying visas.