Grad students graduating, Providence, RI. (Photo by Amanda Katz)
On July 16, the Trump administration issued a new rule via the Department of Homeland Security to cap US visas for foreign students at four years, regardless of whether they have completed their degrees, ostensibly to prevent “foreign student visa abuse.” According to Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, “This final rule ensures that foreign students remain focused on their primary purpose: completing their studies and returning home.” Students who need additional years to complete their degrees must now apply for an extension of stay through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, submitting to additional background checks and other screening.
I’m particularly interested in how this applies to PhD candidates, who rarely finish their degrees in four years—that’s generally not the expectation even within universities themselves, which are often fully or partially funding these students. STEM candidates typically finish in five or six years, while in the humanities doctoral degrees can take seven years or more. I used to coach and edit dissertations, and during two or three years doing so I worked with only one candidate—an uncannily efficient young Black mom in microbiology—who finished in four years. Literally everyone else would have had to apply for an extension. We don’t know yet what that application process will be like, but given the “scram, con artists” tone of the announcement and the Trump administration’s general hostility to both immigrants and academic expertise, it’s hard to imagine USCIS will make it too easy. In any case, the policy will mean prospective applicants can’t rely on being here through the end of their degree.
While most undergraduate student visa holders do return to their countries of origin, it’s not true that the “primary purpose” for PhDs is to finish their studies and leave. To the tune of 77 to 80 percent, according to various findings, they settle here—and lucky for us, because they typically go on to contribute significantly to American society as professors, startup founders, scientists, authors, researchers, and captains of industry. They also appear to raise an inordinate number of ambitious American kids. Kamala Harris? Pete Buttigieg? Those are children of people who came from abroad to do a PhD.
The new rule, which goes into effect 60 days from its instatement, stands to be a loss to our country, as well as to individual brilliant people from all over the world. I have friends and family who came to the US and ultimately settled here in just this way, but I would like to hear from even more folks with knowledge of this experience. So let’s try something: If you are a PhD holder who came to the United States for your graduate studies, please fill out this survey. And if you know someone else who fits this description, please forward this Porch Party post to them. I’ll collect responses at least until next Wednesday, and will report back with an unscientific but, I hope, illuminating set of responses about what our foreign-born PhDs have gone on to do and what they think this rule change means—for graduate students, for academia, and for us all.
In short
Cuts and restrictions to SNAP at the federal level are starting to yield fruit—or wait, starting to withhold fruit, from hungry children—at the state level. The New York Times reports on Arizona families struggling to survive after the food stamp rolls there shed 440,000 people, mostly ones who are eligible for the benefit but defeated by new paperwork: “Four months into an appeal, Ms. McDonald, a cancer survivor who weighs 69 pounds, bustles to food banks, stretches ground turkey with oatmeal, and skips meals to feed three teenage boys. But grocery bills have left her behind on the rent…The Republicans who passed last year’s law saw SNAP as a bloated program and cuts as a way to help finance the tax reductions, mostly for the wealthy, central to Mr. Trump’s agenda.” In DC, meanwhile, the Washington City Paper reports that 7500 people have been dropped so far, and offers a roundup of local resources for the food-insecure this summer.
Last week I was filling up my car with $4.40/gallon gas, having smartly rejected another gas station where it was $5.10/gallon, while wearing a N95 mask I had dug out of our Covid stash to deal with the hot, smoky air from the Canadian wildfires up north, and I thought: Wow, this sure is one heck of a political platform! Over at climate news site Heat Map, Robinson Meyer points out the really disturbing thing about the fact that we now have “smoke days” almost like snow days: “Wildfire smoke did not appear in our economic simulations of climate change. As recently as a few years ago, we did not really know that days like today…could occur. Then they happened. And happened again. And then we studied them and discovered that, in fact, they may be more expensive for the U.S. economy than we once thought climate change itself would be.”
Overheard at the National Cathedral: A guy saying diplomatically, “The Cathedral’s mission…sometimes butts up against the current administration.” That said, preparations are now underway for Senator Lindsey Graham’s funeral service there on Tuesday. Expect a starry political crowd and the attendant security measures. And yes, it will be televised—see the link for details.
It’s crape myrtle season in DC! I look forward to this all year. (Photo by Amanda Katz)
If you’ve read this far: thank you. And thanks for helping with our first experiment with a callout—please do pass this post on to anyone who might be a respondent. Meanwhile, if you haven’t done so already, consider upgrading to become a paid member, which keeps this project afloat and will let you weigh in in the comments even if you, like me, have not a single dissertation to show for yourself. See you next time.