US student purge will hurt economy

Overseas students are the latest target of President Donald Trump’s efforts against immigration into the US. They will no longer be allowed to stay in the US if their university moves classes fully online this autumn, his administration announced this week.

The decision is reckless, ill-advised and impractical. US colleges will stick with remote learning only because they wish to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Trump’s directive will force students to either transfer to a school that still offers in-person classes (and risk catching or spreading the virus) or leave the US. No surprise, then, that Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are suing to block it.

The policy will end up hurting one of the few sectors in which the US runs a big trade surplus. About 1.1-million foreign students study at US colleges and universities, according to the Institute of International Education. Including spending on housing and other goods, foreign students contributed nearly $45bn to the US economy in 2018. That puts it on par with some of the US’s traditional export industries.

The importance of foreign students is particularly pronounced in the US rust belt. Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Pennsylvania are among the 10 US states that receive the most international students. These are the same states that Trump counts on carrying him to another election victory. In these regions, universities have been credited with reviving the local economy.

Longer term, the US’s future as a hub of scientific and technological innovation is at stake. About 40% of foreign students enrolled for the 2019/2020 school year studied either engineering or maths and computer science. This makes them an important source of talent for Big Tech.

Knee-jerk responses are often flawed, and this latest crackdown looks no different. /London, July 9