By Daniel Greenfield
@ Sultan Knish Blog
There are over 1 million foreign students in the United States. The largest group by far are Chinese students whose numbers have fluctuated between a third and a quarter of a million. These students are in America to gain training in this country, not only at top universities like Harvard, but at tech companies, before taking their knowledge and skills back to China.
Saudi Arabia, the tenth largest source of foreign students, had the single most famous foreign students of any country who didn’t win any Nobel prizes, but did successfully fly passenger planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, but didn’t quite make it to the White House.
Despite that, the Saudis continue to send tens of thousands of their students to America.
With Bangladesh in 13th place, Iran in 14th, Pakistan in 16th, Turkey in 19th and Indonesia in 22nd, a lot of foreign students come from the Muslim world and were involved in the pro-terrorist riots calling for the destruction of America, Israel and all of Western civilization.
Notably, few of America’s foreign students are westerners. No European nation even shows up in the top 10 countries for foreign students. The UK is in 15th place and France is only in the 20th. Only Canada, right across the border, is in the top 5, but accounts for only 2.6% of foreign students. Nigeria accounts for three times as many foreign students as France, Iran sends more foreign students than the UK and Pakistan far more than Spain. While most American students who study abroad go to Europe, European students are not going to America.
International students are mostly non-westerners and that’s by design. The Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, after extensive lobbying by Ivy League colleges, began bringing third world students to America to counter Communist influence. Beneficiaries included Barack Obama Sr and Shyamala Gopalan, the mother of Kamala Harris, along with other radicals, who found positions in the United States and left behind radical children who undermined America.
Whatever benefits we may gain from foreign students are more than outweighed by 8 years of Obama and by the destruction wreaked by the wayward children of other ‘international students’. And those benefits are at the heart of the debate taking place right now.
Outrage and protests followed the Trump administration’s crackdown on foreign students. America, we were told, would be absolutely lost without those 1 million foreign students.
According to NAFSA, the Association of International Educators which promotes foreign students, foreign students contributed $43.8 billion to the U.S. economy. NAFSA did not mention its support for nearly $1 billion in federal subsidies for “international education” appropriations.
We are told that “international students” pay their way, but that’s not actually true.
In 2023, around 20% (or 207,788) of foreign students benefited from university subsidies, 1,684 foreign students were funded by the U.S. government and 2,351 by other domestic sponsors.
Only 56.8% of foreign students were mostly using their or family money to pay their way.
(Federal student aid is also extended to ‘refugees’, Afghans, Ukrainians, Haitians and any number of other groups seen as distressed, also victims of human trafficking, children of foreign domestic abuse victims, and anyone who spends enough time complaining about their life.)
It’s hard to track exactly how much student aid is going to foreign nationals, but it very likely outweighs the very limited impact of foreign student spending on the broader economy outside of a few college towns in Boston, D.C. and a handful of big cities in California and New York.
What is painfully clear is that the costs of foreign students, whether it’s 9/11, the Hamas campus riots, Obama administration, a hypothetical Kamala administration or Chinese intellectual property theft far outweighs whatever limited benefits they provide to anyone outside Harvard, Yale, Columbia or Georgetown. America doesn’t need international students, colleges do.
And as has been obvious for a long time: what’s good for colleges, isn’t good for America.
American taxpayers subsidized wealthy nonprofit institutions. These institutions demand an unlimited flow of foreign students to further enhance their revenues. And these foreign students, whatever tuition they pay or don’t pay, are benefiting from taxpayer-subsidized institutions.
It’s a good deal for Harvard, but it’s not a very good deal for America.
The original idea of bringing foreign students to America was that they would learn about ‘democracy’ and our way of doing things, then go back to their countries imbued with the American spirit. This hasn’t worked very often because foreign students are usually members of foreign elites, like the Obamas or Kamala’s family, who despise America. Rather than teaching the rest of the world about America, we import foreign and domestic enemies into our country.
Foreign students haven’t Americanized the world, they’ve radicalized, Islamized and terrorized America. Many of those third world students who moved here undermined America and even those who went back home, returned with an insider’s understanding of our weaknesses.
And American campuses, in their current state, are hardly likely to do anything other than radicalize foreign students and teach them to hate America. The original purpose of the foreign students programs introduced under Eisenhower and Kennedy failed even as the number of foreign students shot up from 400,000 in the 1990s to over 1 million.
Instead of making America or the world, foreign students set up Muslim Brotherhood operations, Chinese spy organizations and radical groups calling for the destruction of America.
There’s a place for foreign students in America, but the Trump administration is right to closely scrutinize Chinese students and the social media of students from Islamic terrorist states like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan, while trying to cut back on the number of foreign students.
The truth is that America doesn’t need foreign students, foreign students need America.
Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading.
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