Shoe, Dropped: Trump ‘Pauses’ Student Visas Across the Board

Universities and colleges across the country can thank Harvard for this latest development. If federal courts won’t allow the Department of Homeland Security to deal directly with Harvard on compliance for the Student Education Visa Program (SEVP), the administration can simply make it more difficult for everyone instead.

That seems to be the case today, although this may have accelerated a project that would have started soon anyway. After a federal court issued a stay that allows Harvard to continue enrolling foreign students, the Trump administration paused the entire program. Embassies and consulates have been ordered to stop conducting necessary interviews to process those applications until new vetting standards are put into place:

The Trump administration is weighing requiring all foreign students applying to study in the United States to undergo social media vetting — a significant expansion of previous such efforts, according to a cable obtained by POLITICO.

In preparation for such required vetting, the administration is ordering U.S. embassies and consular sections to pause scheduling new interviews for such student visa applicants, according to the cable, dated Tuesday and signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

If the administration carries out the plan, it could severely slow down student visa processing. It also could hurt many universities who rely heavily on foreign students to boost their financial coffers.

“Effective immediately, in preparation for an expansion of required social media screening and vetting, consular sections should not add any additional student or exchange visitor (F, M, and J) visa appointment capacity until further guidance is issued septel, which we anticipate in the coming days,” the cable states. (“Septel” is State Department shorthand for “separate telegram.”)

Trump did this more broadly in his first term with all entry visas from specific countries, although the effort got tangled up in legal challenges — at first, anyway. His first effort intended to stop granting visas from countries where terrorism and oppression were major concerns, but it took several attempts and a switch to “extreme vetting” to get the courts to allow it. Even then, the Supreme Court only gave Trump’s first administration 90 days to promulgate the new vetting standards and to restart visa applications in the majority-Muslim nations on his list. Even after that, though, district courts continued to block Trump’s efforts to target specific countries of concern. 

Looks like Trump learned a lesson from that experience: Just go after the whole system the first time. This plan doesn’t discriminate at all, not even in ways that might be beneficial by allowing students from low-risk allies to apply. This time, Trump will just halt all student visa applications until the Departments of State and Homeland Security can create and implement a more stringent process — one that will take a close look at social-media output to determine suitability. 

How long will that take? “Coming days” can mean a wide variety of timeframes. If it takes until, say, September, universities and colleges that rely on foreign students for their business model will face a very bleak year. Rather than just make an example of Harvard and allow the rest of the higher-ed industry to learn a lesson, they will all suffer for Harvard’s defiance. That will undoubtedly make Alan Garber a popular figure around the Academia campfire, yes?

But the question of how long it will take has another significance, too. If embassies and consulates now need to vet applicants for their social-media posts, that will lengthen the review process significantly. Add that up thousands and thousands of times over, and pretty soon the stream will slow down to a trickle, and so will the revenues of the schools recruiting foreigners for their programs. That could get ugly very quickly not just for Harvard, but for a lot of schools that do discipline their students for violating the rules and the laws. And it’s not as if the process moved quickly before now either:

International students who want to study in the U.S. are typically required to schedule interviews at an American embassy or consulate, usually in their home country, as part of the visa application process. Wait times vary widely: At most embassies, appointments for student visa interviews can be scheduled less than two months in advance, though some diplomatic posts have longer waits.

In other words, don’t call us … we’ll call you. 

As I wrote above, this was likely to happen at some point anyway. Harvard is far from alone in allowing foreign students to amplify Hamas propaganda and turn their campuses into gauntlets for Jewish students and faculty. The timing on this initiative seems pretty coincidentally juxtaposed with Harvard’s fight and the ramp-up to the enrollment for the 2025-26 academic year, however. And I don’t tend to believe in coincidences.