At 6:00 a.m. on Wednesday, November 6, Kevin Hu, a sophomore from China attending New York University (NYU), jolted awake in his dorm room to a message from a friend back in Shanghai. “He sent me the Electoral College map, and asked me if Trump was getting re-elected,” Hu tells Teen Vogue. “I looked at the map, and I saw Pennsylvania had voted red.” Hu knew at that moment that Trump was going to win the election.
Hu, currently a senator at large representing the constituency of International Students Seeking Employment in NYU’s student assembly, recalls being immediately “very shocked and disappointed,” admitting that he had expected Vice President Kamala Harris to win, given Trump’s loss in the 2020 election. “Fear of the future didn’t come until much later," he says. "At the moment, I was really just shocked.”
Hu is among more than 1.1 million international students currently studying in the US on student visas — the highest number in history — who now face an uncertain future under the incoming Trump administration. In the weeks following the election, international college students have expressed concerns about their post-graduation prospects, citing fears rooted in Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and its potential policy implications.
Upon taking office in 2017, one of Trump’s first policy implementations was a travel ban that targeted several majority-Muslim countries, which resulted in some students being detained at airports or stranded in their home countries. Chinese students also faced longer document-processing times and even had their visas revoked under Proclamation 10043 as US-China tensions escalated. In 2020, Trump introduced regulations barring international students from staying in the US if their classes were online-only, a decision that was swiftly reversed after significant backlash.
Trump also has many ties to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which calls for US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to halt the acceptance of new applications and petitions in categories identified as having “excessive” backlogs, and to potentially eliminate 15 categories of immigration altogether.
“We were just watching each swing state turn red and the electoral vote rising for [Trump], and there was this atmosphere of disbelief,” recalls Reeti Malhotra, a freshman at Yale University who is from Singapore. Malhotra, who spent Election Day conducting exit poll interviews for the Yale Daily News, remembers shock and silence among her peers as the results rolled in. “Everything was just being communicated in what was unsaid," Malhotra says, "and the silence was heavy with this awareness that tomorrow was going to be an entirely different day.”
Parasan Acharya, a Nepalese student at McNeese State University in Louisiana, watched the election results unfold at home with fellow students. “While [my friends] seemed okay with the idea of a Trump presidency, I personally felt an overwhelming sense of doom and uncertainty,” Acharya tells Teen Vogue. With just one year left in his undergraduate studies, Acharya is counting on the 12-month Optional Practical Training (OPT) period to gain work experience post-graduation. “My gut reaction was that the next four years would be filled with unpredictability, where none of us could anticipate what might happen,” he says.
In response to Trump's anti-immigrant stances and past policies — including the Muslim ban, which was implemented a week after his inauguration — universities nationwide have issued cautionary statements urging students to return to the United States before January 20, Trump's first day in office.
“With the presidential inauguration happening on Monday, January 20, 2025, and uncertainties around President-elect Donald Trump’s plans for immigration-related policy, the safest way to avoid difficulty re-entering the country is to be physically present in the US on January 19th and the days thereafter of the spring semester,” a statement from Wesleyan University reads.
Institutions such as the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology released similar statements to international students and faculty. And Yale’s Office of International Students and Scholars recently hosted a webinar discussing potential changes to immigration policy.
“I think universities erring on the side of caution to ensure that students can return before January 20 seems reasonable, given the erratic nature of Trump,” Malhotra says. “It just seems like being cautious is the way to go for the next four years.”
Experts agree with Malhotra’s cautious outlook. While Karyna Kazhamiakina, the CEO of ed-tech organization Miles Away, believes that there will not be “significant changes” for international students, she tells Teen Vogue that “it’s always important to stay informed about any policy updates.” In light of Trump’s reelection, “our [organization’s] focus is on educating students about the importance of following US immigration laws,” she adds.
The journey for international students to apply to US universities and transition to life in the States is already fraught with challenges, including lengthy visa processing times and restricted post-graduation opportunities, but students anticipate that these hurdles will become even more daunting and unpredictable under the new administration.
“Staying in the United States after graduating is already difficult, but I think Trump coming into office will just make it harder,” says Hu, who holds a five-year F-1 student visa. After graduation, Hu will likely need an H-1B visa, a common pathway for highly skilled foreign nationals seeking long-term employment in the US. Under the Trump administration, H-1B visa denial rates peaked at 24% in 2018, the highest in a decade.
After the election, Malhotra says she decided to search for internship opportunities in Singapore, specifically. “I am just aware that accessing those domestic opportunities might now become more difficult from an immigration standpoint,” she explains. Malhotra is also wary about making firm plans for the summer: “It's just about adapting to the new set of circumstances that are going to come.”
Despite this unpredictability, examining the long-term effects of Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies during his previous term may offer insights into what could transpire over the next four years. From 2016 to 2020, John Wilson, a recruiter with more than 30 years experience helping universities attract international students, traveled to China, Germany, and Mexico for work. Wilson recalls a conversation in China wherein parents questioned why they should send their children to a country where they “weren’t appreciated,” particularly under a president who was “constantly demeaning them.” Students also shared concerns about anti-Asian discrimination and violence in the US — fears that, according to Wilson, deterred them from pursuing higher education in the country.
In fact, the number of new international students dropped for four consecutive years under Trump, beginning with a 3% decrease in the 2016-2017 school year — the first decline in nearly a decade. “The number of international students was declining all four years of the Trump administration,” Wilson tells Teen Vogue. “[Students] felt like they should receive more support and more protection — and they had other options.”
A second Trump presidency could also have long-term consequences for higher education more broadly. In a 2020 paper, researchers Nicole Hacker and Eric Bellmore explored the “Trump Effect” on international student enrollment, finding that reduced tuition revenue from foreign students and less diverse campus populations had widespread impacts on revenue for schools and relationships with international scholars.
Hacker, currently a fixed-term faculty member at Central Michigan University, tells Teen Vogue that “there's a distinct possibility this pattern could repeat itself” throughout Trump’s second term. “I think there is a real worry that all of the progress that has been made could be wiped away very quickly.”
Bellmore, the director of Academic Research Computing at Grand Valley State University and a co-author of the above study, adds that international students contributed over $32 billion to the US economy in 2017 and highlighted the academic strain that Trump’s policies placed on universities. Without international students coming in, Bellmore says, “a lot of departments across the country were having a hard time filling positions for graduate assistantships in specialized fields.”
With less than two months until Trump’s inauguration, the specific policies his administration will implement remain to be seen. In the meantime, international students, university administrators, and academics are left waiting anxiously.
“As an international student, I came to the US to pursue better opportunities and a chance at the American dream,” Acharya says. “Trump’s policies and rhetoric seem to oppose the very idea of people moving here to chase that dream.”
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