Trump Puts Foot in Mouth on Chinese Student Visas

Even the most devoted MAGA supporters occasionally wish that President Trump talked less. The president is a veritable chatterbox.

If President Trump spoke less, he might be able to steer clear of the missteps his loquaciousness makes inevitable. White House stenographers, skilled at documenting the permanent record, cannot keep up. Since President Trump's inauguration, when he spoke 22,000 words, his verbal output has been consistently overwhelming. In just one week during his second term, the president clocked over 7 hours and 44 minutes of speaking—81,235 words.

As an example of how President Trump's chattiness gets him in trouble, consider his recent off-handed statement during an Oval Office meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae-myung. President Trump thoughtlessly said that the United States would allow 600,000 Chinese students to enter the country to study at American colleges and universities—a figure that represents more than twice the current Chinese student enrollment, which stood at about 277,000 last year. Most of the Chinese students will study science, technology, engineering, and math—the vital STEM fields.

President Trump made his statement in response to reporters' questions about U.S.-China relations amid ongoing trade negotiations. He emphasized the importance of maintaining a positive relationship with Beijing, stating: "I hear so many stories that we're not going to allow their students... We're going to allow their students to come in. It's very important, 600,000 students. It's very important. But we're going to get along with China." The president linked his call for expanded visas for Chinese students to broader economic ties, noting that the U.S. is "taking a lot of money in from China because of the tariffs and the different things" and describing the relationship as "much better economically than it was before with Biden."

Predictably, a few days later, the White House attempted to walk back the president's comments, saying that his remarks simply reflected "a continuation of existing policy." The MAGA faithful were unimpressed and, pointing to American university applicants' displacement, intellectual property theft, and national security concerns, they pushed for a dramatic cut—perhaps to zero—in Chinese student enrollment. If only 700 U.S. students are studying in China, allowing more than a quarter of a million admissions from the nation's avowed number one enemy is self-defeating.

More important are the national security concerns. Republican and Democratic administrations have consistently ignored the obvious threat that Chinese students represent. In early May, Stanford University discovered a CCP agent disguised as a student who was engaged in espionage. A Stanford Review investigative journalist concluded that the CCP is orchestrating a widespread intelligence-gathering campaign at Stanford that has enabled Chinese spies to infiltrate Palo Alto. Also consider that Chinese President Xi Jinping's only daughter, Xi Mingze, a 2014 Harvard graduate who enrolled under an assumed name, is believed to still be living in the U.S., possibly in Cambridge. No one knows who the unvetted Xi Mingze knew at Harvard, what secrets she may have uncovered—remember U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell's tawdry liaison with Fang-Fang—or what confidential information she may have shared with her powerful father. The dangerous truth: on national security, China is a serious and powerful country; the U.S. is frivolous and unconcerned about self-preservation.

Asked about President Trump's talkativeness, some shrug their shoulders—"Trump being Trump," they say. But a significant percentage of the president's base insist that his comments about increasing Chinese students prove how little he understands about immigration, and especially how limited his knowledge is about legal immigration's complexity. Dozens of employment-based visas like the H-1B, H-2B, the L, and the F-1 student visa should be dramatically reduced. President Trump can rely on deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to guide him. But when left to ramble on about immigration with a disturbing lack of discipline, he's likely to put his foot in his mouth. All President Trump truly knows about immigration is that taking a tough stance against the illegal variety helped get him elected.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org