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This week, the Trump administration proposed a new rule to cap the amount of time that foreign-born reporters, academics, students, physicians, and others can stay in the United States.
Comments on the proposed rule must be received on or before September 29, 2025.
The proposed rule caps international students and exchange visitors’ visas at four years.
Currently, these visitors are permitted to stay for what’s called “duration of status,” which typically means the time they are enrolled in their educational institution or program. Exchange visitors include, among others, physicians, professors, research scholars, and teachers.
Fanta Aw, executive director and CEO of NAFSA: Association of International Educators, said the rule, if adopted, will harm students and scholars.
“These changes will only serve to force aspiring students and scholars into a sea of administrative delays at best, and at worst, into unlawful presence status — leaving them vulnerable to punitive actions through no fault of their own,” she said in a statement.
The proposed rule prohibits graduate students from changing their “educational objectives,” which Aw called “a dangerous overreach by government into academia.”
If adopted, media representatives would also be impacted. The rule caps the time media representatives can stay in the country — up to 90 days for Chinese nationals and up to 240 days for everyone else. Currently, they are allowed to stay for the duration of their employment.
Those who wish to stay longer than the fixed time periods would have to apply to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), “therefore requiring regular assessments by DHS [Department of Homeland Security],” according to DHS’s press release on the proposed rule.
The rule, DHS said, “will limit the amount of time that foreign students, professors, physicians, and other visa holders are allowed to remain in the United States without additional screening and vetting.”
The “regular assessments” by DHS may have a particularly deleterious impact on academics, students, journalists, and others who engage in advocacy, research, or reporting that challenges the Trump administration’s policies, potentially further formalizing a process to deny authorization to live in the United States based on a person’s views.
Earlier this month, USCIS announced that when reviewing noncitizens’ applications to live and work in the United States, it would consider “any involvement in anti-American or terrorist organizations, as well as the use of discretion in adjudication of certain benefit requests where evidence of antisemitic activity is present.” The applicant “bears the burden of proof to demonstrate that a favorable exercise of discretion is warranted,” the announcement states.
The Trump administration has accused pro-Palestine activists of antisemitism simply because of their work to stop Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Earlier this year, the Trump administration falsely accused pro-Palestine student activist Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder, of antisemitism, and attempted to use that false accusation as a basis to deport him.
In March, the national American Association of University Professors (AAUP), along with chapters at Harvard, Rutgers, and NYU, and the Middle East Studies Association, filed a lawsuit “to block the Trump administration from carrying out large-scale arrests, detentions, and deportations of noncitizen students and faculty members who participate in pro-Palestinian protests and other protected First Amendment activities.”
“The Trump administration is going after international scholars and students who speak their minds about Palestine, but make no mistake: they won’t stop there,” said AAUP President Todd Wolfson in a statement. “They’ll come next for those who teach the history of slavery or who provide gender-affirming health care or who research climate change or who counsel students about their reproductive choices. We all have to draw a line together — as the old labor movement slogan says: an injury to one is an injury to all.”
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