Chinese students say U.S. resembles the country they left

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Chinese students say they’re questioning their decision to study in the U.S. after Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the federal government will attempt to “aggressively” revoke their visas.

Rubio said Wednesday that Chinese students “with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields” would be targeted.

Chinese students who spoke to NBC News on Thursday said that they came to the U.S. for freedoms that they felt they did not have back in China but that now the Trump administration is starting to resemble the strict regime they left behind.

“USA stands for freedom. It stands for democracy. … That’s why we come here to chase our dreams,” said one Chinese Ph.D. student at a New Jersey university, who requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation. “In China, the government can control education, high schools, colleges, universities. We thought that the USA could be different.”

The State Department referred NBC News to comments by spokesperson Tammy Bruce during a press briefing Thursday in which Bruce said that the department does not discuss the details of its visa process due to privacy concerns.

“We use every tool that we have to vet and to make sure we know who’s coming in,” Bruce said. “In this particular case, the United States is putting America first by beginning to revoke visas of Chinese students as warranted.”

The Chinese Embassy referred NBC News to comments made by Mao Ning, a spokesperson for the Foreign Affairs Ministry. Mao harshly criticized Rubio’s announcement Thursday at a regular briefing in Beijing.

“This politically discriminatory move exposes the hypocrisy of America’s long-proclaimed values of freedom and openness, and will only further damage the United States’ international image and credibility,” Mao said.

Questions swirl around the new directive, including what “critical fields” the administration will be looking into and what types of connections to the CCP are under scrutiny. But it’s already prompted panic among many Chinese scholars, who make up the second-largest international student group in the U.S.

While a temporary nationwide injunction issued last week blocks the Trump administration from revoking international students’ legal statuses amid its mass termination of records, attorneys say that it may not protect Chinese international students. Jath Shao, a Cleveland-based immigration attorney, said that while the restraining order keeps international students from being arrested or detained, or from losing their legal status, they can still have their visas revoked. Without a visa, Shao said, students can’t return to the U.S. once they’ve left, among a host of other issues.

“If you’re trying to get a job or a study ... that means you’re pretty much out of luck,” Shao said. “You’re stuck here. They’re basically trying to take away all your options.”

Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst with the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, also mentioned that the Trump administration could argue that Chinese students fall under a completely different circumstance compared to those protected by the injunction.

“We’re seeing in various cases that the administration is saying that it’s doing individualized determinations,” Bush-Joseph said. “Even if they’re focusing on a particular nationality, in any given case, they might say this is based on an individual person’s circumstances.”

“USA stands for freedom. It stands for democracy. …