Even amid global tension, America—and its students—still haven't lost favorability
“Don’t forget, in this area, people are very grateful to the American people in general. They were the ones that liberated the area at the end of the war, and held back bombs.”
Crossing any border checkpoint is uncomfortable. It generates a flurry of questions for both the tourist and the national re-entering their homeland: Will the agent ask me questions? Do I look suspicious? Will my spouse get searched, but not me? What if they take the cheese I’ve packed and hauled so carefully from abroad?
It’s an awkward process that for every single law-abiding citizen still feels tense, because one doesn’t know what to expect.
The process of crossing borders has only gotten more contentious after the first months of President Trump’s administration due to the stringent rhetoric towards immigrants and valid foreign visa holders. In March, a French scientist was denied entry into the U.S. after border control agents searched his phone and found content that was critical of the President. That same month, a Lebanese doctor with a valid visa was denied entry due to content on her phone that was deemed sympathetic to Hezbollah, a designated terrorist organization by the U.S., U.K., and Israel.
Even U.S. citizens are getting detained for hours at a time at their own national border crossings, such as the April case of two returning Americans from Canada who were apprehended and questioned for hours as border patrol searched their phones.
But the situation is pressing for international students living in the U.S. on student visas, or seeking to. The U.S. currently has an all-time high of international students with approximately 1.1 million people as of 2024. If all of those students were in undergraduate programs, they would constitute 6 percent of the national higher education student population in 2024.
Since April, about 500 international students have had their visas revoked for a hodge-podge of reasons, from traffic violations to activism on campus to no reason at all.