Nationals of India and China Are Getting Dramatically Fewer Student Visas

George Fishman

By George Fishman on August 3, 2026

In the 2024/25 academic year, students from India (363,019) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) (265,919) made up 53 percent (India, 31 percent; PRC, 23 percent) of all foreign students (1,177,766) at the post-secondary level, according to the Institute of International Education’s (IIE) annual census. Yet, the number of F-1 student visas the U.S. State Department issued from May to August 2025 to Indian and PRC nationals fell dramatically from prior years’ levels.

Comparing the number of F-1 visas issued during the May-August period from 2017 to 2025 (excluding 2020, when visa issuance fell dramatically because of the Covid pandemic), in 2025:

The number of visas issued to nationals of India (22,149) declined by 60 percent from the average number issued during 2017-19/2021-24 (55,717), and by 62 percent from 2024 (58,694); and
The number issued to nationals of the PRC (40,034) declined by 46 percent from the 2017-19/2021-24 average (73,853), and by 34 percent from 2024 (61,075).

Data and source information is provided in the Appendix.

I chose the May-August period for purposes of comparison for two reasons. First, the bulk of each year’s F-1 visas are issued in this period in anticipation of the upcoming academic year. For instance, in 2024, 77 percent of all F-1 visas issued to Indian nationals and 76 percent issued to PRC nationals were issued during this period. Second, figures from September 2025 are the most recent available from the State Department.

These declines, if sustained, will greatly benefit American students and our national security. Let me explain why.

Optional Practical Training

Of the more than one million foreign students in the U.S. during the 2024/25 academic year, fully one-quarter (294,253) had already completed their degrees and were working in the U.S. pursuant to “Optional Practical Training” (OPT) according to IIE’s census. And of these, an astounding 70 percent came from India (49 percent, 143,740) or the PRC (21 percent, 61,981).

OPT allows aliens on student visas to work for employers in the U.S., generally after graduating or completing the coursework for their degrees. These non-student “students” can generally receive up to 12 months of work authorization, with those in STEM (science, technology, engineering, or math) fields eligible for an additional 24-month extension, for a total of up to 36 months of employment.

According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, of 165,524 foreign students authorized to participate in STEM-OPT in 2024, 68 percent (113,138) were Indian citizens (48 percent, 79,331) or PRC citizens (20 percent, 33,807).

In 2008, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) created STEM-OPT for the express and openly acknowledged purpose of circumventing the congressionally established numerical cap for H-1B temporary foreign workers in specialty occupations, stating that:

Congress ... has prohibited USCIS from granting H-1B status to more than 65,000 ... aliens during any fiscal year.
The inability of U.S. employers ... to obtain H-1B status for highly skilled foreign students ... has adversely affected the ability of U.S. employers to recruit and retain skilled workers and creates a competitive disadvantage for U.S. companies.
[T]he oversubscription of the H-1B program makes obtaining even temporary work authorization an uncertain prospect. ... This rule will help ease this difficulty.

DHS acted after Microsoft’s head lobbyist Jack Krumholtz attended a D.C. dinner party in 2007 at which DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff was a guest. Krumholtz later wrote to Secretary Chertoff (see here, pp. 747a-753a) that “I appreciated very much the chance to speak with you recently at the dinner” and “am writing to follow up in more detail on the suggestion we briefly discussed for action that [DHS] can take easily and immediately ... to help address the H-1B visa shortage ... [by] extend[ing] the period of [OPT] ... beyond its current maximum of one year”.

The number of aliens who may be issued H-1B visas is capped at 65,000 each fiscal year, though the cap is effectively 85,000 as it does not apply to aliens who have earned advanced degrees from U.S. schools “until the number … who are exempted … exceeds 20,000” (and it does not apply to aliens who will work for colleges or universities and certain research organizations).

Most every year, demand for H-1B visas far exceeds the available supply. In the past, Congress increased the H-1B cap — but only temporarily, because as the House Judiciary Committee explained:

There will be a bumper crop of American college graduates skilled in computer science beginning in the summer of 2001. These students have been enticed into the field ... by the brightening opportunities in this boom or bust profession. [T]he opportunities spawned by a tight labor market are bringing fresh entrants into the field ... . [Any] labor shortage ... should not last past the graduation dates of these students. Thus, Congress should not imperil the[ir] future careers ... by expanding the H–1B quota indefinitely.

DHS has estimated that (as of September 30, 2019) a total of 583,420 aliens were authorized to work in the U.S. under the H-1B program. This is because while the maximum period of authorized stay in H-1B status is generally up to six years, aliens can stay in H-1B status indefinitely in certain situations. By 2024, 340,066 aliens were participating in OPT (which has no numerical limits) and an additional 165,524 were participating in STEM-OPT, a total of 505,590. Thus, OPT (which is nowhere even mentioned in the INA) now rivals the H-1B program itself in the number of aliens working in the U.S.

As my colleague Elizabeth Jacobs has written, “OPT can disadvantage recent U.S. graduates by creating an uneven labor market in which foreign students can be hired more cheaply than their American graduate peers.” She elaborated that:

OPT … lacks many of the labor protections that Congress requires elsewhere in immigration law. Statute requires that employers pay H-1B workers the higher of the actual or prevailing wage of workers in their occupations. Employers must also attest to the Department of Labor that, among other things, the employment of the H-1B worker will not undermine the working conditions of similarly employed U.S. workers before they can petition for an H-1B worker. These systems are flawed, but … there are no reciprocal requirements for OPT employers.

And Jacobs explained that:

Because F-1 visa holders on OPT are classified by the IRS as “students” (even after graduation), their employers are exempt from paying federal payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare — saving roughly 7.65 percent in labor costs per worker — while American graduates generate these costs for employers. This tax subsidy makes OPT workers financially more attractive to companies, especially for entry-level positions in competitive industries.

I have advocated for the termination of OPT in order to 1) protect the wages and employment opportunities of American students and workers; and 2) end the George W. Bush and Obama administrations’ disgraceful use of the OPT program to subvert the will of Congress. But, short of that, reducing the OPT pipeline of foreign students from India and the PRC — who make up the majority of all OPT participants — will reduce the deleterious effects of OPT on American students and workers.

Science, Technology, Espionage, and Math

PRC officials openly proclaim that armed conflict with the United States is inevitable and have been assiduously pursuing the goal of military superiority over the U.S. to be able to prevail in a war. The Chinese Communist Party is intently focused on modernizing its military to close the gap between U.S. and Chinese military power, embracing critical and emerging technologies to serve as “assassin’s mace” or “silver bullet” technologies.

A RAND Corporation analyst has concluded that should the PRC succeed, this would “represent perhaps the most destabilizing geostrategic development of the 21st century. [S]teep advances in the PLA’s [People’s Liberation Army’s] conventional capabilities ... could, for the first time in modern history, pit the United States against a militarily superior adversary.”

In 2005, my then-boss U.S. Rep. John Hostettler (R-Ind.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims, concluded that “There is no nation that engages in surreptitious illegal technology acquisition for purposes of both commercial piracy and military advancement on a scale that approaches that of the People’s Republic of China.” This is even more true today. In 2022, Matthew Olsen, assistant attorney general for national security, warned that “[T]he threats from the PRC government are ‘more brazen [and] more damaging than ever before.’ [It] threatens our security through its concerted use of espionage, theft of trade secrets, malicious cyber activity, transnational repression, and other tactics.”

Much of the espionage and theft of trade secrets is carried out by students from the PRC. A staff report of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, established by Congress to review the national security implications of trade and economic ties between the U.S. and the PRC, concluded that PRC President “Xi Jinping, has ... [made] clear that overseas Chinese students and scholars are key to his plans to transform China into an innovative and militarily formidable world power.”

It is not necessarily that all students come here from the PRC intending to engage in espionage. Rather, many are inevitably pressured to do so by the PRC. Edward Ramotowski, the Trump administration’s deputy assistant secretary of State, testified in 2018 that “foreign students, often with no nefarious intent in their plan of study in the United States, are later co-opted to work for their government”. And former CIA officer Joe Augustyn stated that “We know without a doubt that anytime a graduate student from China comes to the US, they are briefed when they go, and briefed when they come back.”

And yet, the number of students from the PRC at U.S. universities has skyrocketed. As recently as 2008/09, they accounted for only 15 percent of all foreign students; in 1994/95 only 9 percent; and in 1984/85 only 3 percent.

I have written in bewilderment in the Washington Examiner that, “Believe it or not, we are engaging in a campaign of turbocharging the PRC’s war preparations. Crazy? Seemingly.” I concluded that, “It may be time to consider barring the entry of, or issuance of visas to, all students and exchange visitors from the PRC, or at least those who will be studying in STEM or other fields likely to give them access to information and research of value to the PLA.” But, short of that, reductions in the number of PRC students coming to U.S. colleges and universities will reduce the overall level of espionage and technology theft on campus and will be to the benefit of U.S. national security.