New Indian student arrivals decline 44%
Only time will tell how recent U.S. policy might change the long-term trajectory of America’s population makeup and strength in attracting talent.
Issue #99
Hi all —
With federal changes in visa processing, increased vetting, threats on free speech at universities and a general chilling effect around immigration, new data is showing the impact in one key area: The number of international students that arrived in the U.S. this fall declined 19% since last year, according to a New York Times analysis.
The Times reports how the decline of students from India is especially noteworthy:
Nearly one in three U.S. international students are Indian. The number of international students arriving from India already started to decline last year. But this August, it dropped by an additional 44%, following prolonged delays in processing student visas.
Pew Research Center data indicates there are currently 5.2 million Indian Americans. For the last several years, South Asian Americans were the fastest-growing group within the larger umbrella of Asian Americans — the fastest-growing racial or ethnic population in the United States.
With a decline in the new flow of international students — coupled with stricter H-1B guidelines for some types of workers to contribute here — it’ll be interesting to see how these trends might shape the population trajectory of Indians — and South Asians at large — in the United States in the coming years.
Couple those inbound changes with new questions about America’s outbound soft power. A Canadian author, Stephen Marche, recently questioned whether the U.S. is losing dominance with cultural power abroad, in an Times op-ed:
To many foreign onlookers, it’s increasingly true that America is no longer attractive — either as a cultural ideal or as an aspiration. The country’s narrative has become incoherent, its brand toxic.
“If you have to say you’re hot, you’re not,” Marche writes.
All these immigration changes are increasingly less popular among Asian Americans polled: AAPI Data’s latest AP-NORC Survey finds “more AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) adults disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration now than six months ago (71% vs. 58%).”
Might there be hints of some backpedaling?
In a TV interview that aired last week, Trump debated with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham about foreign talent. Part of the exchange, via Roll Call:
Ingraham: Does that mean the H-1B visa thing will not be a big priority for your administration? Because if you want to raise wages for American workers, you can’t flood the country with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of foreign workers.
Trump: Look, I agree, but you also do have to bring in talent.
Ingraham: Well, we have plenty of talented people here.
Trump: No, no you don’t. No, you don’t.
Ingraham: We don’t have talented people here?
Trump: No, you don’t have, you don’t have certain talents. And you have to…people have to learn. You can’t take people off like an unemployment line and say, “I’m going to put you into a factory. We’re going to make missiles.”
Thanks for joining the conversation,
Vignesh
RWB column wins journalism award
A big thank you to India Currents for republishing an essay earlier this year about the perils of championing Indian American success, while ignoring the costs of the model minority myth.
For its annual awards, American Community Media recognized the piece with second place in the education category.
A judge wrote: “In an editorial in India Currents, Vignesh Ramachandran critiques how Indian American ‘success stories’ held up as evidence of model minority achievement can obscure emotional, cultural, and psychological costs within the community.”
It feels sort of ironic to tout an award about an essay that questioned exceptionalism, but this topic struck a nerve with many of you. I appreciate everyone who reached out about this article, and it’s clearly something we should all keep chatting about…
As I wrote in January, I truly still hope we consider this:
As our second-generation continues to take new roles of influence in the U.S. and we raise the third-generation, I hope we evolve to understand — and champion — new definitions of what success means to each individual, instead of depending on exceptionalism.
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