【By Observer Net Columnist Di Weiwei】
Although the U.S. federal government has not yet closed, it seems that Trump is determined for his officials to work on their own expenses during the shutdown, and to continue escalating tensions with China... It's said that "the emperor doesn't give food to his servants," but instead gives it to friendly countries (Argentina), while issuing new regulations to his servants, making them hungry and uncertain about their future in the trade war, and at the same time building gardens; there are few "tyrants" in history and abroad who can rival this.
The image was not taken by me—although it is already October, the news heat has long passed, but Washington D.C. still deploys approximately half a brigade (2000 people) of the Army National Guard, and soldiers with guns can be seen patrolling landmark buildings, Union Station, and Farragut Metro Station.
I originally thought that other issues would keep the Trump administration from causing trouble on international student issues, especially Chinese students, for a while, but I found that my article had to be updated locally again—due to the escalation of the Sino-U.S. trade war, on October 13th, U.S. Treasury Secretary Bensons not only imagined that previous restrictions had a big impact on China, but also subtly threatened more than 300,000 Chinese students studying in the United States. In other words, the Trump administration may have considered using our students as leverage... They really are out of ideas?!
Benson used Chinese students as leverage, but made a slip of the tongue: “There are 300,000 to 400,000 Chinese students studying in the United States, but only 800,000 American students... Oh, sorry, I mean only 800 American students studying in China. This is a serious imbalance.” Screenshot
“D/S” Residency Permit and Its Significance
Trump's attitude towards China has always been fluctuating. Just like the recent sudden proposal of "100% tariff", almost one and a half months ago (during the U.S. school season), he suddenly proposed an "welcome 600,000 Chinese students to come to the U.S." theory. Considering the economic changes between China and the U.S., exchange rate trends, and non-U.S. study growth, I believed at the time that China had no such large "potential interest pool" for studying in the U.S., so what he said was meaningless.
Indeed, it didn't take long after that, on August 27th, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) publicized the "cancellation of D/S residency permit reform plan" for student visas, which slapped Trump in the face.
So, what is the "D/S" residency permit?
In 1802, the U.S. federal legislation stipulated that foreigners arriving in the U.S. (at that time limited to "free whites") who wished to become citizens in the future needed to go to court and pay 50 cents to "register" their personal information, including name, birthplace, age, race, original allegiance, and nationality, and buy a notebook themselves to save, and when applying for citizenship, it would serve as proof of arrival in the U.S.—at that time, white men could only apply for citizenship after living in the U.S. for five years. As for women, they were the property of their husbands, automatically becoming citizens along with their husbands; however, at that time, American women had no political rights, so whether they became citizens or not was of little use.
It's funny that minors or soldiers could have their applications registered by "employers" (master) or "mistresses" (mistress).
As the U.S. federal power centralized and budget increased, this "payable option," limited to males, and only for citizenship purposes, gradually evolved into today's free and mandatory general refresh of the foreigner's entry form I-94 upon arrival. With the implementation of the visa system in the U.S. in 1917, its content also added passport numbers, visa types (Class), and allowed entry stay periods (Until). For other U.S. visas, this period is usually a fixed date. However, according to the current rules since 1978, F-visa students and their families are normally marked as "duration of status" ("D/S"), separating the validity of their "residence permit" from the "visa validity":
On one hand, even if "the visa is still valid," if they are expelled, drop out, fail too many credits, or fail to transfer smoothly, leading to loss or disruption of their academic status, they will immediately lose the right to remain in the U.S.;
On the other hand, "visa expiration" only means that if they want to re-enter the U.S., they need to re-apply for a visa. As long as they stay in the U.S. and maintain their "student status," they don't need government approval to extend their stay, and the risk of becoming illegal immigrants due to uncontrollable reasons such as missing administrative queues, immigration officers' discretionary power, or differences in legal understanding is zero.
A sample of the I-94 form for an Indian B2 tourist/business visitor (left) and myself as an F1 student (right) when entering the U.S. It can be noted that the "expiration time of entry permit" (Admit Until Date) for the Indian tourist is a specific date, while mine is "D/S" meaning Duration of Status.
What value does this characteristic of "D/S" have?
In the article about H-1B, I mentioned that the U.S. initially implemented an open border, defaulting to permanent residence, and until 1917, there was no visa required for entry, and registration was only needed for those planning to become citizens, naturally there was no concept of "status". Once a foreigner entered the country, he gained freedom — disappearing from the view of the federal government. The first concept of "Chinese student status" in U.S. law came about due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, forcing the government to classify "Chinese" based on purpose.
The most famous Chinese student in history, Qian Xuesen, was sent to the U.S. in 1935 by Tsinghua University to study for a master's degree. At that time, the Chinese Exclusion Act was still in effect, and Chinese people were not allowed to enter, but the "Chinese student status" could be exempted. Qian Xuesen obtained a 4E student visa from the U.S. Consulate in Tianjin to enter the U.S. for study. Then he entered a "chaotic" state: theoretically, this 4E student visa expired after his Ph.D. in 1939, but it was recognized by at least some U.S. federal military departments until 1940, then extended for another year because of his 1939 work contract with Caltech.
However, although the Chinese Exclusion Act was abolished in 1943, and Qian Xuesen had another special "visiting scientist visa" granted by the U.S. in 1941, he still encountered problems: because he worked in a cutting-edge field in the U.S., he refused to become a U.S. citizen. At that time, U.S. law was vague regarding "foreign talents who became scientists after graduation." In late 1944, when the Pentagon was preparing to send Qian Xuesen to Europe to examine Nazi technology,冯·卡门 suddenly discovered that the U.S. Immigration Bureau, which was under the Department of Justice (not in the same system as the State Department responsible for visa affairs), considered Qian Xuesen's only available status to be the 4E student visa that had long expired in 1935.
In 1945, Colonel Qian Xuesen (middle), his doctoral advisor – Colonel冯·卡门 (right), and his advisor’s advisor – Nazi prisoner Prandtl (left), all three masters and disciples together
In other words, these bureaucrats saw Qian Xuesen as a "illegal immigrant" in terms of technology — although at that time, the U.S. was quite arbitrary, they wouldn't do something as foolish as expelling the Pentagon's treasure. But if Qian Xuesen himself left the U.S. to go to Europe for inspection, they might very well do something as foolish as refusing him re-entry when he returned to the U.S. To temporarily prevent such a foolish act,冯·卡门 personally intervened through high-level connections to force the immigration bureau to issue Qian Xuesen a one-time "entry exemption."
Meanwhile, the Chinese passports issued by the Kuomintang authorities and the U.S. renewals at that time had very short validity periods. This situation continued for many years. Even after the reform of the F-1 student visa, from 1952 until the late 1970s, it was renewed annually. Although no one dared to deny Qian Xuesen's renewal, the extremely frequent passport updates (existing records show that from 1938 to 1947, over 9 years, Qian Xuesen updated his passport at the various Chinese consulates in the U.S. at least 11 times), visa extensions, and the above identity disputes (making him afraid to return to China, as it was impossible to get a new exemption certificate every time he left the U.S.) caused him great inconvenience. Eventually, Qian Xuesen applied for a quota-free (special approval) U.S. green card before returning to China for exchange, solving the "renewal" issue once and for all.
The permanent residency permit (now known as a green card, not yet green at that time), photo from Lv, C. (2022). Return to China One Day: The Learning Life of Qian Xuesen (p. 110). Springer Nature
From then on, until Qian Xuesen returned to the People's Republic of China in 1955, since he no longer needed to renew his visa, there were no records of him updating his passport under the Kuomintang regime. From the perspective of the Kuomintang regime in Taiwan, whether Qian Xuesen still had "Chinese nationality" entered an unknown state. This legal system of the U.S. and Kuomintang that created "identity ambiguity" reduced the time Qian Xuesen wasted in the U.S. for the last eight years, and objectively reduced the possibility of him being deported to Taiwan, but in the negotiations to rescue him, it increased the difficulty for us. Fortunately, Qian Xuesen managed to send a letter seeking help to the central government, allowing the U.S. to no longer lie and finally allowing him to return.
It can be seen that from the first 4E student visa expiring in 1936 until 1947, due to long-term refusal to become a U.S. citizen, the "residence status," "work status," and legal rights of the student Qian Xuesen in the U.S. gradually turned into a mess. The U.S. legal system entered a situation where regulations contradicted each other, different departments had mismatched granularity, semi-literate enforcement randomly caused chaos, and "final interpretation rights" were decided by high-level connections. The requirement for identity maintenance with annual renewals, sometimes even multiple times a year, and the discretionary power of the visa officer each time, was a "illegal immigrant manufacturing machine" — if Qian Xuesen wasn't as great and indispensable as Qian Xuesen, even just a slightly less important scientist in the U.S. at that time, he wouldn't have had to wait until the McCarthy era, and would have been legally expelled by the immigration bureau.
Abuse of D/S Permits and the Cost of Trump's Abuse
Although the rule of abolishing the "D/S residency permit" actually covers J-visas for visiting scholars (Zhang Yingying's entry status to the U.S.) and I-visas for foreign media personnel (the well-known UN journalist Xu Dezhi probably holds this status), the number of驻美 journalists is very small, and Chinese journalists have been restricted for a long time. And J-visas themselves have a return requirement from the U.S. Therefore, the effect of the new regulation "destroying the experience of specific groups" mainly affects F-visas.
Like the restrictions on H-1B, the Trump administration introduced such restrictions with public opinion background:
Because the D/S transfer and extension approval authority lies with the universities themselves (not under the federal government), as long as there is financial proof, the approval rate is 100%. Students continuing to pay fees for education are beneficial to schools, resulting in the formation of an interest chain: as long as they have money to register in a "academic program" (usually completing a bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degree), they can indefinitely delay or continuously transfer to the same level degree using excuses such as "academic difficulties" or medical reasons, thus remaining legally in the U.S. indefinitely, becoming "non-official population" of the U.S.
According to some conservative data, there are currently 70,000 foreigners holding student visas for more than 10 years in the U.S.; the author has watched some "Chinese student scandal events" on the internet, and there are several cases where the main characters were exposed or rumored to have left their original schools, not found jobs or OPT expired, and at the time were hanging onto "language classes" to maintain legal F-1 status.
So what is the cost of restricting these phenomena?
People who have lived legally in the U.S. for a relatively long time can understand that unlike China, Europe, and most countries around the world, the U.S. visa and immigration management has extremely distinctive characteristics, which is the combination of "dangerous pre-entry" and "free post-entry" experiences:
On one hand, today's U.S. immigration law assumes that foreign applicants wish to stay illegally in the U.S., so U.S. visas are regarded as privileges, and visa officers are extremely authoritarian, knowing only the Department of State, not the U.S., and the Secretary of State is the law (see Rubio's various operations this year), and they are the current administrators, without any applicant's right to reason. Not only is the visa application difficult and unpredictable, but obtaining a visa cannot guarantee successful entry: the U.S. law considers the immigration checkpoint and the small black room not to be part of the U.S., so it does not apply to the U.S. Constitution, and the immigration officers have the power of arbitrary pickiness, unlimited searches, and free discretion, and are not supervised (explicitly prohibited from taking photos or videos).
Because of misunderstanding the heavy Minnesota accent of the immigration officer, using technical terms that the immigration officer does not understand in self-description, truthfully answering any subjective questions related to China or politics, going to the bathroom after landing, or girls carrying several skirts, or even "beautiful unmarried women passing through alone" for various absurd reasons, random rejection of留学生 entry has become a regular performance of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (USCBP).
"No man" but appearing on the immigration officer's aesthetic, may be considered wanting to marry and stay in the U.S.; wearing conservative clothes or bringing many beautiful clothes may be considered working girl. The funniest thing is that Chinese employees who support the U.S. AI companies (whether OPT students, H-1B or green card holders) may be denied entry back to the U.S. after returning home for a visit due to "professional sensitivity."
On the other hand, since the late 1970s, once successfully entered and arrived at the school, selected enough credits, submitted to the "designated school official" (DSO, a teacher in the school's international cooperation office) to activate the "F-1 status," international students have become part of the "U.S. society" that is difficult to identify, enjoying nearly identical experiences to domestic students: no need to actually go to any government agency to register (in European countries, when settling in a new city, you usually have to immediately go to the local town hall to register), no need to queue up at a certain "initial date" to apply for extension or change of residence, and no need to extend a new visa before the visa deadline arrives.
Practically, this "freedom" is even more relaxed than what the law stipulates. Elon Musk became the richest person, flirting everywhere, investing heavily in Trump's second term to combat illegal immigration, all thanks to his student visa entry into the U.S. in the 1990s, never went to enroll, but instead used his parents' money to start a company with his brothers, acting like a native American and negotiating business deals with old money, and even when the old money told him "you need to get a legal status, otherwise we can't sign an effective contract," no one came to arrest the two of them.
Until the deadline of this article in 2025, it can still be highly confident that:
1. (Unless located in a red state and county, ICE has signed outsourcing agreements with local police) state and local governments usually do not care about your federal legal status;
2. (Due to the vast territory, citizens have no ID cards, and stopping cars involves other legal issues) "Non-Latino faces students encountering ICE or their outsourcing agents randomly checking identity" is still a low probability event.
This is determined by the current U.S. situation, which is a mix of fascist regime and traditional federal capitalist democratic country.
The cost of Trump's new policy is threefold:
First, in terms of small reality (economic), this is another blow to the U.S. education industry.
Every day that students abuse D/S to maintain their status in the U.S., they generate a day of tuition and living expenses. In any learning circle, the majority are poor students, and the "right to repeat grades" is an important backup for school quality, while "using poor students to raise good students" is a common choice of private schools worldwide. After implementing the four-year limit, schools will dare not let poor international students repeat grades, and the attraction for good students will decrease. Considering the current financial condition of U.S. universities...
In August 2025, the Monterey Institute of International Studies, known as the "Harvard of translation," announced its closure. Many people attribute this to AI development, but in fact, the Monterey Institute was the university with the most Fulbright scholarships in the U.S. government, and such a highly "diplomatic specialization" school focused on serving U.S. federal government interests closing down is mainly due to the reduction of financial support since Trump took office.
Second, this destroys the U.S. "traditional culture" — "if not prohibited, it can be done."
Early on, Asian (including Taiwan region) public intellectuals advocated a Western concept often had a misconception, that "this concept should only apply to the situations I want," and for the situations I don't want, they naturally should maintain traditional moral logic.
However, in the real West, especially the U.S., it's not played that way. If not prohibited, it can be done, which means it's completely "doable" everywhere — this is why Americans can tolerate the "reasonable tax avoidance" behind the scenes of the two parties' big capitalists: society also tolerates them themselves boldly abusing rules that benefit them. If you want to fill these loopholes, you must go through a long and difficult legislative process to form consensus. Trump's presidential order destroying these abuses without consensus is a typical tyranny in American culture.
Most importantly, from a large reality (academic) point of view, the U.S. doctorate education is completely ruined.
The political science doctorate program at my school requires 36 credit hours to complete in two years (9 credit hours per semester), and the thesis defense is completed by the end of the third year. After the graduation ceremony, the review of the degree and the printing of the diploma takes more than two months (what you receive at the graduation ceremony is just the shell of the diploma), and to ensure that you receive the diploma and bring it back to China within four years, you must graduate within 3.5 years, i.e., defend the thesis within three months — as long as the paper does not propose any truly new views (which may lead to revision), this is barely possible.
This is just for liberal arts; STEM majors rarely finish in less than 3.5 years. For example, the biostatistics doctorate at Georgetown University requires 40 credit hours, and even just attending classes takes 2.5 years, let alone research. The U.S. also has straight PhDs, and it's not unusual for them to take 7-8 years to complete — I even know of a school that gave a political science doctorate a 10-year maximum.
Doctoral students are the link between the U.S. education and research system, the supporting force for the technological prosperity of the U.S. despite its poor basic education. However, once the new rules are implemented, how many faces does a U.S. school need to have to make outstanding STEM doctoral students accept applying for a "extension of stay permission" (EOS) once a year to the U.S. government after the four-year limit is reached, risking the chance of being rejected and losing their degrees, ruining their years of hard work and career?
When the national trend is bad, any attempt at "patriotism" by politicians becomes "a traitor to the country"
If the "D/S regulation" in mid-August was more of a test by the Trump administration to destroy U.S. rule of law and internal affairs (bullying students who are not citizens and have no "peanuts" to feed them, with no resistance in policy), then the "expanded version of 10043" introduced by the U.S. House of Representatives in September is pure great power competition.
The expanded version of 10043 includes the list of 58 universities, covering from Tsinghua and Peking Universities to Heilongjiang Institute of Technology, even my alma mater was included. When I was scrolling through domestic social media circles, I saw many over-interpreted explanations, such as "XX College is certified/quality guaranteed by the U.S.", or "being included in XX University is adding sand" ... Actually, this is just another way that Americans easily pull the strings, essentially a residual of mindless admiration for the U.S. in the new era. The original report of the U.S. "Special Committee on U.S.-China Strategic Competition" clearly states that the newly added 58 Chinese universities are all local universities that have signed joint construction agreements with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the State Council (main successor of the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense), and the title is clear.
I graduated from such a school and was lucky enough to receive a "three-good" commendation, and had interactions with top students in science and engineering, of course, I know that in Chinese universities, the "teacher" and "student" experience is highly separated, and among the "students," graduate students and undergraduates are "inner door" and "outer door" differences. For someone like me, a small undergraduate, my alma mater didn't even have "from doctoral students to the PLA," let alone "military"! Some sister schools on the list don't even have a doctoral program!
Trump's 2020 "old version" 10043 executive order eventually became a written crime, effectively preventing any "defense seven sons" graduates, including their children's kindergarten and nursery attendance, from further studying in the U.S. This not only almost eliminated the possibility of these schools' staff exposing their addresses and being "linked to subversion" due to their children studying in the U.S., but also significantly increased the loyalty of Shaanxi's Tsinghua and Peking University alumni to the motherland: according to what I know, the No. 1 Super High School in Shaanxi, Xi'an Polytechnic University Affiliated Middle School, is the source of 30%-35% of Tsinghua and Peking University's students in the province each year.
Long before Vance's "Hillbilly Elegy" became a hit, there was a person named Thomas Frank who wrote a bestseller "What's the Matter with Kansas?" (What's the matter with Kansas?), analyzing why Kansans' votes have consistently destroyed socially beneficial economic policies.
Frank's explanation is that politicians through vigorously promoting religious and "patriotic" issues — the former like abortion, the latter like immigration (note that this was in 2004) — divert the anxiety of the base to grand narratives, ensuring they can win. Once in power, the pressure to conceal their lack of achievements forces them to create a straw man — "everything the conservative ideology opposes" — accusing the latter of not loving America enough, causing all the problems for everyone now; to maintain the rationality of this "completely ruling forced victim" narrative, they further resort to "loving America - anti-American" / "believing in God - not believing in God" contradictions, enacting new policies to create the tension needed for these issues, even if it harms the entire state's real potential. The more the state's socioeconomic situation deteriorates, the more they are willing to sacrifice socioeconomic destruction to develop new populist sticking points.
The final result is that the "patriotic, pious story writers"公认的 in Kansas put forward solutions that are objectively destructive; and thanks to these solutions providing emotional value, they can continue to be elected, then maintain this cycle.
Actually, Trump's 2018 directive for the FBI to launch the notorious "China Initiative" and Rubio's public call in May this year to "aggressively revoke visas of students associated with the Chinese Communist Party or studying in key fields" follow the same logic and have the same negative effects:
For the former, the most loyal, diligent, and productive, the ones who have the strongest resentment, fear, or suspicion of Chinese society that raised them, the ones who are most grateful and devoted to the U.S. system, and the ones who have made the greatest contributions to the U.S. Department of Energy and the military, were sanctioned, searched, illegally detained, publicly humiliated, and deprived of their jobs. While the majority of meticulous, lazy, indifferent, profit-seeking, cautious, and genuinely happy about China's development and progress, and who use their professional knowledge to help Chinese universities and research institutions, ended up safe and sound because of these characteristics.
For the latter, did Rubio achieve his goal? Anyway, his so-called "key fields"... probably drove a batch of STEM top students who were already willing to work for the U.S. back to China, sowing a deep hatred in their hearts for the U.S. government, thus increasing the strength of the Chinese socialist cause.
As for me, because of their various "Make America Great Again" policies, I have already suffered real psychological trauma: when I first came to the U.S., the most worrying thing was English speaking, safety, and sexual harassment. After half a year, my view of daily life in the U.S. has greatly improved, but the thing I fear most is the U.S. government — hearing the sound of a siren, I worry it's coming to arrest me; I don't dare to drive into the city, fearing speeding tickets will result in license revocation and being thrown into an alligator pond; I don't dare to publish English articles in the school newspaper, fearing that the next time I go shopping, I'll be surrounded by a group of masked men and stuffed into an unmarked bread truck and disappear...
On June 14th, I attended the parade. Seeing the old tanks with creaking turrets with white stars appear in front of my eyes, floating in the evening haze, I felt a strong, conflicting emotion: "The tanks with white stars in our Korean War movies were really true" — the differences between us and them, although we ourselves once tried to move forward together, trying to minimize them, but on the other side of the ocean, their shadows have never faded, continuing to this day.
I don't know how much the report with the "list of 58 schools" and the recommendations being implemented can enhance the U.S. national defense security. I only know that a graduate of a second-rate Chinese school, a female文科 student studying in the U.S., has been unfairly targeted and given a potential label similar to Qian Xuesen — "sensitive defense science and technology identity." I am a Libra, naturally empathetic, with such a big label stuck on me, although I have no talent, it's hard not to feel some of the feelings that Qian Xuesen had 70 years ago on the Cleveland, a passenger ship, "returning to the motherland to contribute to national defense."
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Original: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7561974924186665507/
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