Chinese Students Sore as Rubio's Axe Expected to Fall on Their Visa

CHINESE students studying in the US are scrambling to figure out their futures after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Wednesday that some students would have their visas revoked.

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The US will begin revoking the visas of some Chinese students, including those studying in "critical fields", and "those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party," according to the announcement.

China is the second-largest country of origin for international students in the United States, behind only India.

In the 2023-2024 school year, more than 270,000 international students were from China, making up roughly a quarter of all foreign students in the US.

This is a "new version of Chinese Exclusion Act," said Linqin, a Chinese student at Johns Hopkins University, who asked to be identified only by his first name out of fear of retaliation.

He was referring to a 19th-century law that prohibited Chinese from immigrating to the US and banned Chinese people already in the US from getting citizenship.

He said Wednesday was the first time he thought about leaving the U.S. after spending one third of his life here.