When Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a pause to all new student visa interviews in May, university officials worried the move could jeopardize the numbers of international students in Minnesota and throughout the country.
Now, enrollment data from the University of Minnesota show that changes to the visa process resulted in a significant drop in new students from India — one of the top home countries for U of M international students. New Indian international student enrollment at the U declined by more than a quarter this fall compared to last year, Sahan Journal’s data analysis shows.
Overall, international student enrollment at the University of Minnesota is relatively stable this year compared to last year, with a decrease of 1%. But new international student enrollments dropped by 9% overall — and new international students from India declined by 27%.
The sharp decline in new students from India is an outlier, data show. Enrollment from many other top home countries for U international students, including South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam, fell at lesser rates and affected fewer students. New student enrollment from China — which sends by far more international students than any other country to the University of Minnesota — increased marginally this year.
But in India — the No. 2 source of international students at the U — visa delays, political turbulence, and uncertainty about economic prospects left many students unable to obtain a visa and unsure whether studying in the United States was worthwhile.
University officials and alumni say that if the trend continues, it could mean not only fewer Indian international students in Minnesota, but less innovation and economic growth.
Ashish, a Carlson School of Management alumnus who asked to be identified by his first name only, arrived at the University of Minnesota from India in 1995, excited to be in the “land of opportunity” in the United States.
But if he were making the same decision now, he said, “I would be hesitant.”
The decline in new students from India is a “leading indicator” of changes to come, he said.
“A decade from now, two decades from now, I think we will see a measurable social, but for sure, economic impact of not having the best and brightest of the world come to America,” he said.
According to an economic analysis by NAFSA: Association of International Educators, Minnesota’s 15,000 international students contribute nearly $500 million to the local economy, supporting more than 3,000 jobs.
“International students bring a lot of richness to the classroom,” said Kathryn Gaylord-Miles, associate director of student advising and counseling for the U’s International Student and Scholar Services. For example, she said, they help Minnesota students understand global context and share unique perspectives — and support the local economy.
“If we’re losing some of the best and brightest to opportunities elsewhere outside the United States, that means that we have less of that innovation and those growth opportunities that are coming from Minnesota,” she said.
Down to the wire
Obtaining a visa has always been a hurdle for international students hopeful to study in the United States. Dane Rowley, director of international recruitment for the U’s admissions office, said he’d noticed student visa appointment wait times increasing at consulates in India and other South Asian countries over the last several years, as high demand strained the consulates’ capacity.
But changes to the visa process this year resulted in roadblocks that some students couldn’t surmount before the fall semester started.
“There’s always a few last-minute visas,” said Gaylord-Miles. “But it was down to the wire for many students this summer.”
In May, Rubio announced a temporary halt for all new student visa interviews. The pause came “right at the start of peak season for international students who are interviewing for visas to come to the U.S. for the fall,” Gaylord-Miles said.
After a three-week pause, interviews resumed — but with heightened scrutiny. Now, applicants for student visas would have to submit their social media profiles for vetting.
Rubio said this change was intended to exclude applicants who pose a threat to national security, but advocates raised concerns about free speech. The change came after immigration authorities revoked the legal status for some international students — even arresting some — following pro-Palestine social media posts.
Adding social media vetting to the visa application process meant longer delays for processing and approval. In India, where the process already faced backlogs, the added time from both the three-week pause and the social media vetting ran out the clock for some students.
“For a student trying to apply in June or July, we saw students just couldn’t get a visa appointment in time to be able to make it here,” Rowley said. “We definitely saw a pretty large number of students who had confirmed for the fall, but through a variety of reasons, weren’t able to make it happen.”
Rowley is still working with these international students, in hopes they can come in January when the spring semester begins. But he knows they may not all make it.
“It’s become kind of an all-campus effort to get as many students here as we possibly can, knowing that the likelihood of them coming, if they have to defer, is much lower as they look for other opportunities,” he said.
To respond to the challenges, the U is shifting how it supports international students navigating the visa process, helping them prepare earlier in the spring and offering mindfulness and meditation techniques for the visa wait line — an approach Rowley said came from his experience visiting consulates in India.
“Imagine standing out in 95-degree weather, 100-degree weather, waiting in line with guards and all these layers of security while expected to be their best and brightest for 120 seconds for a visa interview,” he said.
T.P., a robotics master’s student at the U who asked to be identified by her initials only, said she scheduled her visa interview as soon as she received her paperwork from the university in May. Days later, the consulate stopped taking new appointments for interviews due to the State Department’s pause.
Even after getting the visa, she wasn’t sure she would come to the United States. She didn’t fully believe she would be admitted into the country until she cleared immigration at the airport.
“I was so panicked about the situation,” said T.P., who has now been in Minnesota for two months. “I am still suffering from the anxiety.”
Two graduate students at the Carlson School of Management who asked not to be identified told Sahan Journal they’d also been uncertain about whether they would make it to Minnesota.
“I had to go all the way to Vietnam to get my visa because I couldn’t secure an appointment,” said one of the students, who asked to be identified as Riya. Then her passport didn’t arrive until early September — right before she needed to leave for Minnesota. “Up until the last minute we didn’t know whether we were coming or not.”
A narrowing path to economic mobility
The University of Minnesota’s lower tuition compared with institutions on the east and west coasts and affordable cost of living have made it an attractive option for international students. But affordability isn’t the only draw. Many are also looking to build career paths in high-demand fields such as information technology, business, data analytics and STEM.
“It’s not just about earning a degree,” said Rowley. “It’s about using that degree as a vehicle for future opportunity and economic mobility.”
With a shrinking job market, many students are less likely to make the move.
“The job market has tightened up quite a bit, and so that feedback loop has hit Indian media and social media quite a bit that the jobs are not as plentiful as they once were,” Rowley added.
Rowley said that the Indian graduate market has been in a state of flux since the pandemic, and employment has always been a concern, but the uncertainties have compounded this year. The U has been stressing its own strong employment outcomes in its recruitment efforts, he said.
S.M., a fourth-year math Ph.D. student, said some of his Ph.D. program colleagues were having difficulty scheduling newly required student visa renewal interviews to complete their program. He didn’t yet need his visa renewed, but would in the near future. But in addition to visa uncertainties, he said, it is difficult to find employment as a professor.
“It’s not just a government issue,” he said. “Academia is saturated as well.”
For those who did make it past the visa hurdles in time to start the fall semester, the September announcement of a new $100,000 fee for the H1-B visa, one that many Indian students in finance and STEM fields rely on for employment after graduation, added to the anxiety.
After a month of confusion, the Trump administration clarified that international students seeking employment would be exempt from the new fee. But the uncertainty left a strong impression.
Gaylord-Miles, in International Student and Scholar Services, said she had been fielding a lot of questions about the H1-B visa fee. In addition to the recent clarification, several lawsuits have been filed challenging the legality of the fee hike. She has been encouraging students to wait and see what happens.
The financial pinch is felt elsewhere, too. Most of the U’s international Indian students are in graduate programs, where many work as paid research assistants while they gain experience in their field of study. This year, the U lost more than $20 million in research funding for nearly 100 federal grants in the wave of recent cuts to education by the Trump administration, something that Gaylord-Miles says may have played a role in the enrollment drop this year: with less money for research, there is less funding available for assistantships.
A change in political climate
After facing visa hurdles and assessing the temperament towards international students, Riya’s parents “pestered” her not to leave for the United States.
“A lot of my friends actually dropped their plans because there’s so much uncertainty around how people are treating international students,” she said.
When the Trump administration cracked down on pro-Palestine speech by international students in the country’s elite universities, two of the earliest scholars targeted were those of Indian origin: Badar Khan Suri, a Ph.D. candidate at Georgetown University and Ranjini Srinivasan, a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University.
In mid-March, their visas were revoked. In an interview with Al Jazeera, Srinivasan said that when Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder, was arrested by federal officers, “That’s when I realized I have no rights in this system at all. It was only a matter of time before they caught hold of me.”
Suri was arrested by ICE officers and detained for nearly two months. Srinivasan eventually left the country for Canada.
The targeting of international students on grounds of speech revealed the vulnerability of visa holders under Trump and sent shock waves across India. The Trump administration has revoked at least 6,000 student visas this year, including several hundred for “support for terrorism,” language the administration has previously invoked to describe pro-Palestine speech.
A mainstream Indian newspaper recently reported that many Indian students no longer find the United States an appealing option. The Guardian reported that Indian students hoping to pursue studies abroad were shifting their focus to Germany and other European countries. This August, 44% fewer Indian students traveled to the United States compared to the previous year.
Despite the growing unease, some students continued to take the leap — hopeful that education in the U.S. would still be worth the risk. To Indian students, an education in the United States isn’t simply about jobs and education. Anjuli Mishra Cameron, CEO of SEWA-AIFW (Asian Indian Family Wellness) said it’s also about cultural values.
“When we think about students coming over, oftentimes it’s a whole collective family that has their hopes and dreams tied to that student and the opportunities afforded to them,” she said. “It’s students with incredible promise who see opportunities and the promise that America holds of this land of opportunity and innovation, and that intelligence and hard work is rewarded, and those are really deeply rooted traditional Indian values.”
This year, some students — including T.P. — second-guessed whether they should come to the United States after all.
But T.P. came. So did many of her peers.
“I came so far, I can’t go back now,” T.P. recalled thinking in the queue at the visa office in Kolkata, India.
Shifting demographics?
For Mishra Cameron, whose grandfather immigrated to the United States as a faculty member at the U, the value international scholars bring to Minnesota is immeasurable.
Academic competition in India has attracted top-tier students to the United States, who then “add such a depth of intellectual curiosity to our academic institutions,” she said. “I think it will be felt in terms of the long-term viability of our competitiveness with other states and with other academic institutions globally.”
Mishra Cameron added that Indian students are often choosing U.S. institutions amid a range of opportunities in other countries in Europe and the U.K.
Rowley said the U has recently seen prospective Indian students show increased interest in opportunities in Germany. “A big part of that is that there is a perception that there’s maybe more job opportunities there and maybe more favorable visa policies,” he said.
Despite support from the University and his department, S.M. said the broader atmosphere has shifted. “The environment is no longer as welcoming as it was before,” he said. “My intention of leaving the U.S. has suddenly increased.”
The Twin Cities has a robust Indian community, many of whom came to the state seeking education or employment at the U. As an Indian in the diaspora, Mishra Cameron thinks if this trend continues, it will alter the Indian community and Minnesota’s diversity at large.
“These types of demographic shifts, they don’t happen overnight,” she said. “And also, their reversal cannot happen overnight.”
