What does it really take for an international student to study in the U.S.?

In this episode of Immigration Weekly, Rosanna Berardi breaks down the student visa process, busts common myths, and explains why international students are far from the problem in today’s immigration system. From high tuition costs to limited work options and political pressures, Rosanna offers a clear look at the real challenges these students face – and the crucial role they play in the U.S. economy.

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Transcript

Everyone’s talking about U.S. immigration law, but nobody really knows how it works. I’m Rosanna Berardi. I’m the daughter of an immigrant, a former immigration inspector at the border, university professor, and founder and managing partner of Berardi Immigration Law.

I’ve done nothing but U.S. immigration law for over 30 years, and it’s time to stop the misinformation on all sides. I’m going to tell you how it all works, the inside story. This is Immigration Weekly with Rosanna Berardi.

Understanding the International Student Visa Process

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Immigration Weekly. I’m Rosanna Berardi, and today we’re going to talk about all things international students. This administration has been all over the international student population, and like most things immigration, most people don’t understand how it works, and so we’re going to do some fact versus fiction today about international students.

How do they get here? What do they do? Are they stealing jobs from Americans?

Let’s go and break this one down. So, okay, let’s go back to the very basics. International students come in through the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act, 1952. There’s a couple provisions for them. The most common one is the F-1 student visa. That’s a student that comes to the United States, either that attends high school, college, universities.

They come here for a period of study. There’s also vocational workers called M, like Mary, ones. They’re in vocational or technical training programs.

All right, so how do you become an international student? It is hard. People just don’t come in here in the United States.

Remember, our law dates back from 1952. It’s inflexible. It’s old.

It’s antiquated. So, let’s say that you are an individual. You are Joe Smith from Spain.

It’s probably not a good name example, but anyway, you’re in Spain. You always wanted to attend the University of Buffalo. You just heard about what a great diverse and innovative program they have for chemical engineering.

So, you submit your application to the University of Buffalo, and lo and behold, you’re accepted. What happens then? Can you just come in?

No, not so fast. University of Buffalo has to issue you a document called an I-20. That’s a document that says we, the University of Buffalo, are inviting you, Joe Smith from Spain, to come to our program in Buffalo, New York to study chemical engineering.

Here’s your document. Can you come in then? Nope.

Joe Smith has to then go online and book a visa appointment at the U.S. Embassy in Madrid. That visa appointment makes sure that at a super high level, Mr. Smith is vetted politically, socially, and criminally. Does he have any criminal convictions?

Has he had any problems with the U.S. Immigration Service? A U.S. Embassy officer outside of the U.S. has to issue that student visa. So, now Mr. Smith has his I-20, his visa, and his passport. He’s going to hop on a plane, knock on the door, and Customs and Border Protection will admit him to attend school. Now, here’s some fun facts. This is where people get it wrong all the time.

Listen up. International students are not eligible for U.S.-based financial aid. That means they don’t get any Pell Grants.

They don’t get any federal funding. No financial aid is coming from the U.S. government. We know how expensive schools are nowadays.

In addition, here’s another fun fact that nobody realizes. Universities, colleges, high schools in the U.S., they have two prices. One for domestic students, two for international students.

Which do you think is more expensive? Ding, ding, ding. Number two.

International students tend to pay 25 to 30 percent more in tuition and do not get any financial aid to attend school. Can you imagine? I have a son that’s in college now.

I know how much that’s costing. I can’t imagine adding 25 percent on top of that and not getting any type of financial aid. So, how do they afford it?

They have to show, as part of their I-20 and visa process, that they have enough money in the bank to provide for their tuition. That’s a tall order. Think about the college admission process from the United States, if you’ve ever experienced it.

It’s a lot. It’s hard. Imagine doing it from, you know, four or five thousand miles away with a whole other set of circumstances.

Now, what about our Canadian friends to the north? We have lots and lots of Canadian students in the United States. Because they are Canadians and they are neighbors to our north, they are visa exempt from the F-1 international student process.

What does that mean? That means they still have to apply to a school like the University of Buffalo. They still have to get that I-20 form.

They do not have to go to the U.S. Embassy in Toronto and get that visa. Why? Because Canadians are mostly visa exempt.

So, they take that I-20 along with their bank statement showing they can pay for the international student tuition. They go to the border. U.S. Customs and Border Protection reviews it, stamps them in, says, go to school, have a nice day. I did a million students a year when I worked at the border as an immigration inspector. Can students come in just for a part-time class? No.

To be an international student in the U.S. and maintain your status, you must take 12 credit hours for undergraduate program. It does vary for graduates, but full-time credit hours, full-time study, you must be here in order to study as your main focus. Can students work?

Are they stealing jobs from Americans? Really difficult to work as an international student. So, for the first year that you’re in the United States, you can only work on campus up to 20 hours a week, and that can be done during the semester.

You can work at the library, or you can work, you know, at the gym, checking people in and out. You can do that full-time during breaks, but it’s got to be on campus. Why?

Well, think about it. International students are coming from all over the globe. It’s the government’s way of keeping them kind of insulated in the U.S., getting them used to the economy, the way of living and working in the U.S. Now, once they’re in the U.S. for over a year, there are some other additional options, and I’m not going to bore you with the nuances, but they are extremely limited. Generally, international students get one year of work permission called practical training, optional practical training, that gives them 12 months of work authorization. Can be used during the school year, post-graduation. We have a lot, a lot of students in the area that are here under practical training.

It’s its own nuanced area of work authorization, but I’m not going to bore you with those details, but can certainly provide that to you if you’re interested. So, students, they’re here, they’re admitted for duration of status, DS. What does that mean?

That means they can stay here for the duration of the program. Think about it. You can stay in the U.S. for a long time. You can come in for your bachelor’s degree, four years, master’s, another two, PhD, another five to seven years. We have lots of clients who can remain in the U.S., who have remained in the U.S. for a long, long time pursuing their education. They have to pay the enhanced tuition rates.

They have to show the government that they have the money to do it, and they have to show that ultimately, at the end of the day, they’re planning to return to their home.

Challenges and Misconceptions Facing International Students

So, this administration has been all over international students. The Trump administration, 2.0, boy, they’re picking a fight with international students. Why? What are they doing? Well, just remember, an international student, like any other person in the United States that is not born here, is subject to removal based on any type of criminality.

It is a privilege, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio has reminded us, not a right to be in the United States on a visa. What’s happening with international students? Well, we have an administration that is pretty aggressively going after Harvard, for a lot of reasons I’m not going to get into.

They have precluded Harvard from accepting international students, which is a huge financial and economic hit to a large university like Harvard. Now, a judge has come into play saying you can’t do that. It’s going to be bounced between the courts.

We’ll have to see where it lands. So, we also have the Trump administration aggressively going after students for really low-level criminal violations. We saw this middle of April of this year, and we saw that our clients were getting their international student status terminated for really low-level things like having a headlight out in their car, not having a proper fishing license, really low-level stuff.

So, we were seeing this time and time again. Lawyers got involved challenging this action. The government kept losing and ultimately said, okay, we’re not going to do this anymore.

So, everybody in the international student community took a big sigh of relief. Okay, we’re done with that. Well, guess what?

A couple weeks later, in late May, the administration announces they’re no longer going to schedule visa appointment interviews for international students. What? What does that mean?

Remember at the beginning of the podcast, if you’re an international student that’s been accepted for admission to a U.S. university, we are now in June. Most students are applying for their visas right now to attend school in August. Guess what?

If they’re not Canadians, they are in big trouble because there aren’t any visa appointments available. The government has shut them all down in a vague notice saying, we’re going to vet international students’ social media, and we’re not going to have these appointments available for a while. But it’s going to be brief, but we’re not sure when.

So, hundreds of thousands of students are in limbo right now, students that are paying a lot of money to attend United States universities. They work, they pay taxes, housing. What is a big misconception here?

Lots and lots of people say, we don’t need the merit country, we have enough students, blah, they’re taking all of our spots. You know, my kid can’t get into the local university, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. True, partially, maybe.

International students, I’ve been representing them for almost 30 years, are the crown jewels of the immigration system, in my humble opinion. They work hard, they stay out of trouble. When they’re done with their program, they want to live and work in the U.S. Incredibly difficult for them to do that. You might have heard this concept of the brain drain. We let all these students in, we don’t give them any financial aid, we charge them a small fortune, and then we have them go home. Doesn’t really make any sense.

But the ones that are able to stay here, that are fortunate enough to get a work visa or a green card, have made monumental contributions to the U.S. Look at any of the big tech companies. Who are they founded by and owned by? International students.

Hey, who’s doing top-level research at cancer institutes in the U.S.? International students. Who’s doing stuff in the tech industry? International students.

Are they stealing spots from Americans? I don’t have the raw data in front of me. I can tell you, they’re adding a different layer of skills that we don’t have in the U.S. Should we have them? Probably. We’re a huge country, 330 million people. We have gaps.

There are things Americans don’t want to do. In medicine, in technology, without international students, we are in trouble. We are up the creek without a paddle.

Why International Students Matter

I don’t care what you think about it. I can tell you differently. International students, once they get their work permits and they can remain in the U.S., are key to the U.S. economy. So is the tuition that they’re paying. If the Trump administration does not turn on these visa appointments quickly, there’s going to be many universities that are going to be in grave financial trouble. The administration knows this and they’re flexing here.

They’re trying to do something behind the scenes. They are hitting universities where it and that’s in their pocketbooks. So international students, not easy to get here.

When they’re here, they can stay. They can work in very limited capacities. They have to stay out of trouble.

They have to be studying full time. They can do all types of degree programs, bachelor’s, master’s, PhD. International students are not the problem in our immigration world.

One of my colleagues said, the immigration house is on fire and we’re worried about the curtains. The international students are the curtains of the immigration house. And trust me, I can tell you unequivocally, after doing this for 30 years, they are not the problem.

This administration is viciously attacking them. It is part and parcel of a bigger strategy play, I think, from the administration regarding students, antisemitism, big universities. End of the day, this is going to have a negative impact on the U.S. economy, on the U.S. labor force. International students are the crown jewels of the immigration service. I will go to my grave saying that. And I hope that after listening to this, you understand it a little bit more.

International students can’t just come here. It’s hard. It’s time consuming.

It’s expensive. It’s very limiting. Imagine when you send your child, little Johnny, to school out of state, how you feel.

Can you imagine living in Greece and sending your kid to Northern California or Boston? Imagine how difficult that is. This is Immigration Weekly with Rosanna Barardi.

I hope you’re a little bit smarter, a little bit more knowledgeable and the smartest person at your dinner table when it comes to international students. This was Immigration Weekly with Rosanna Barardi. Thanks for joining.

Be sure to connect with me, Rosanna Barardi, on LinkedIn or go to our law firm at BarardiImmigrationLaw.com. And if you don’t want to miss the latest and greatest, be sure to subscribe to the podcast and share this with your friends.