Indian student visas drop 44% amid Trump immigration crackdown on U.S. university admissions

admin — Wed, 08 Oct 2025 05:26:00 +0000

Students waiting in queue for an interview for visa at the U.S. Consulate. Photo used for representational purpose only.
| Photo Credit: Paul Noronha

The United States issued nearly one-fifth fewer student visas in August following a crackdown by President Donald Trump, led by a steep drop for India, which was overtaken by China as the top country of origin, data showed on Monday (October 7, 2025).

The United States issued 3,13,138 student visas in August, the most common start month for U.S. universities, a drop of 19.1% from the same month in 2024, according to the International Trade Administration.

India, which last year was the top source of foreign students to the United States, saw the most dramatic drop with 44.5% fewer student visas issued than a year earlier.

Visa issuance also dropped for Chinese students but not nearly at the same rate. The United States issued 86,647 visas to students from mainland China in August, more than double the number issued to Indians.

The statistics do not reflect overall numbers of U.S.-based international students, many of whom remain on previously issued visas.

Trump administration crackdown

Mr. Trump has put a top priority since returning to the White House both on curbing immigration and on restructuring universities, which his administration sees as a key power base of the left.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio briefly suspended processing of student visas in June, a peak month, as he issued orders that U.S. embassies vet applicants’ social media.

Mr. Rubio has revoked thousands of student visas, often due to criticism of Israel, on the grounds that he can refuse entry to people who go against U.S. foreign policy interests.

In rules that affect Indians in particular, the Trump administration has made it more difficult for applicants to apply for visas outside jurisdictions of the U.S. consulates in their home countries, even if there are backlogs.

Mr. rump has taken a series of actions at odds with India, which for decades had been courted by U.S. policymakers of both parties who saw the billion-plus nation as a natural counterweight to China.

Mr. Trump has also imposed a hefty new fee on H-1B visas, which are used largely by Indian technology workers.

Mr. Trump, however, has voiced hope for ramping up the number of Chinese students to boost relations between the two powers, a sharp contrast to earlier messaging from Rubio who had vowed to “aggressively” revoke visas from Chinese students he accuses of exploiting US technical knowhow.

The latest figures also show a sharp drop in student visas from many Muslim-majority countries, with admissions from Iran dropping by 86%.

Published – October 08, 2025 10:56 am IST

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‘Clog the toilet’ trolls hit Indian visa holders rushing to U.S.

admin — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 02:48:00 +0000

Vacationing in India, engineer Amrutha Tamanam rushed to return to the United States after Donald Trump abruptly announced a $100,000 fee for the visa she holds.

As she scrambled to get back to the country she’s called home for a decade, racially motivated far-right trolls launched coordinated efforts to disrupt flight bookings from India, calling their campaign “clog the toilet.”

The White House would later clarify that the new H-1B fee was a one-time payment not applicable to current holders. But leading U.S. companies had already advised their employees abroad to swiftly return to avoid the fee or risk being stranded overseas.

Ms. Tamanam, an Austin-based software engineer, began searching for a flight from Vijayawada, as users on the far-right message board 4chan moved to overwhelm reservation systems, in a bid to block Indian visa holders from booking tickets.

Clogging flight booking systems

One 4chan thread encouraged users to find India-U.S. flights, “initiate the checkout process” but “don’t checkout,” thereby clogging the system and preventing the visa holders from reaching the United States before the announcement took effect.

The campaign may have had a direct impact on Ms. Tamanam, who encountered repeated crashes on airline websites. The checkout page, which typically allows users a window of a few minutes, timed out much faster.

After multiple attempts, she eventually managed to rebook a one-way ticket to Dallas on Qatar Airways, spending around $2,000 — more than double the cost of her original round-trip fare.

“It was hard for me to book a ticket and I paid a huge fare for the panic travel,” Ms. Tamanam told AFP.

‘Keep them in India’

The 4chan thread — which also circulated among far-right Trump supporters on Telegram and other fringe forums — read: “Indians are just waking up after the H1B news. Want to keep them in India? Clog the flight reservation system!”

Responding posts, many riddled with racist slurs, advised users to hold seats for popular India-U.S. routes on airline websites and booking platforms — without completing the purchase.

The stated goal was to block availability on high-demand flights, making it harder to find available seats and inflating prices.

Illustrating the scale of the operation, one 4chan user posted a screenshot of their browser and claimed: “I got 100 seats locked.”

“Currently clogging the last available seat on this Delhi to Newark flight,” another wrote.

Several 4chan users also posted about holding up seats on Air India and slowing the airline’s website. However, an Air India spokesperson told AFP the site experienced no disruptions, with systems operating normally.

‘Shared antipathy’

Though difficult to measure the campaign’s overall effectiveness, the trolling was an attempt to “cause panic among H-1B visa holders,” Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, told AFP.

“The real scary thing about 4chan is its ability to radicalise people into extremist beliefs,” Beirich said, adding that several U.S. mass shooters had published manifestos to the site.

H-1B visas allow companies to sponsor foreign workers with specialised skills — such as scientists and computer programmers — to work in the United States, initially for three years but extendable to six.

The United States awards 85,000 H-1B visas per year on a lottery system, with India accounting for around three-quarters of the recipients.

In an age of information warfare, the troll operation illustrates how bad actors can launch disruptive attacks “with the stroke of a keyboard,” said Brian Levin, founder of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism.

“As nationalistic politics takes hold across the world, an informal international association of opponents will use an array of aggressive tools, including the internet,” Mr. Levin told AFP.

“What I think is so relevant is how rapidly it spread, how diverse the nations represented were, and how shared antipathy across international borders can be mobilised online.”

Published – September 29, 2025 08:18 am IST