University Migrants Lobby Against Trump’s Visa Reforms

University migrants are lobbying against President Donald Trump’s popular push to help ordinary Americans gain some of the college places reserved for foreign students.

“International students are natural dreamers,” the migrants claim in a Boston Globe June 3 op-ed, which argues that American college students must recognize that foreign graduates deserve career opportunities in a supposed “Nation of Immigrants”:

But we must remember why we were drawn to this country in the first place: because it is a nation for [worldwide] dreamers. That is an idea that, today, is at great risk — and it is our obligation, as those who embody the fundamental ideals on which this country was founded, to find the courage to help defend it. We must not stay silent.

In the past, international students have largely kept to themselves — but now the time has come for all students, international and American [emphasis added], to come together, collectively organize, and speak with a united voice.

The three foreigners are Jack Masliah, a Mexican student at Northeastern University,  Yelyzaveta Zablotska, a Ukrainian enrolled in Wellesley College, and Leo Gerdén, a Swedish student at Harvard University. None of the authors are Indian migrants, even though mixed-skill Indians are the largest group of university migrants.

The Boston Globe also pushed the theme in a May 25 article, which showcased opposition to Trump’s reforms from some of the 1.1 million university migrants in the United States:

“We [international students] are a big part of higher education in this country,’’ said Masliah, who is studying political science and philosophy. “And it’s time to show it.’’

….

Chris Ambriz, a Northeastern junior and engineering major from Haiti, said he came to the United States for his education with hopes of giving back to the community. “I’m here to get a better life …’’

…

[Valentina] Campos is from Costa Rica and is studying sonography at Rutgers University. “I don’t like [Trump’s reforms] at all,’’ she said. “It’s selfish of him to try to take that away from other [foreign] people.’’

Trump’s push comes as Wall Street is pressuring CEOs to move more white-collar jobs to low-wage India and to import more lower-wage Indians for middle-class jobs via the H-1B and other visa programs. That pressure has pushed up unemployment rates among skilled American professionals, even as Artificial Intelligence technology threatens to sweep away millions of U.S. white-collar jobs.

The Boston Globe op-ed hid the efforts by many foreign students to get careers in the United States, regardless of the damage to American graduates. But that theme was repeatedly echoed by the three foreign authors, who declared the United States to be their “second home”:

This [Trump policy] was made with little understanding of the love international students have for this country or the benefits we provide by being here in the first place. This country may not have been our birthplace, but we contribute to it — academically, economically, and culturally — because it is our second home.

The three foreigners are taking on some risk by launching a political campaign against Trump’s pro-American reforms of the nation’s immigration system.  For example, the three likely hold F-1 visas, which are only given to students who say they do not intend to create a career in the United States.

But the three are likely fronting for a network of pro-migration lawyers and lobbyists, similar to the astroturf advocates funded by FWD.us, a lobby group for West Coast investors.

The wealthy investors profit from the U.S. government’s post-1990 policy of extracting renters, consumers, and workers from poor countries. For example, the group helped promote the “Dreamer” euphemism for DACA migrants.

The group also helped to create the President’s Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, which now lobbies to preserve a massive work-permit giveaway that encourages many foreigners to pay tuition to U.S. universities.

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The giveaway, dubbed the Optional Practical Training program, was requested by industry lobbyists and quickly created by President George W. Bush’s deputies without congressional approval. Since then, the little-known program has served as a bridge for millions of foreign, tuition-paying graduates to take the career-starting jobs that would have been hugely valuable for the sons and daughters of the Americans who voted for Bush.

Democrats, business groups, and pro-migration advocates are aligning themselves with Harvard and other universities as they try to defend the OPT program from Trump’s visa cutbacks.

Foreign graduates “have been embedded in Silicon Valley …   This is what made this country,” Rep Ro Khanna (D-CA) told CNBC on May 28.  Khanna has long been a supporter of massive Indian migration into the white-collar jobs needed by ordinary Americans.

“This is unprecedented,” claimed Andrea Flores, who is a top lobbyist for the West Coast consumer-economy investors at FWD.us. The Department of Homeland Security “has never tried to reshape the student body of a university by revoking access to its vetting systems, and it is unique to target one institution over hundreds that it certifies every year,” she said.

“Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard,” Harvard declared in a May 23 lawsuit against Trump’s reforms:

With the stroke of a pen, the government has sought to erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body, international students who contribute significantly to the University and its mission … Effective immediately, most of Harvard’s thousands of enrolled [foreign] F-1 and J-1 visa students (and their more than 300 dependents) will have little choice but to secure transfer to another school or risk being rendered without lawful status in the United States.

The OPT program is a feeder for the controversial H-1B program, which annually delivers roughly 120,000 foreign white-collar workers into the Fortune 500 jobs needed by U.S. graduates. The various visa programs keep roughly 1.5 million foreign workers in U.S. white-collar jobs, often via ethnic hiring networks that discriminate against Americans.

The white-collar inflow has deeply damaged career prospects for many American graduates who are locked out of career-starting jobs by foreign graduates. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently reported:

The labor market for recent college graduates deteriorated noticeably in the first quarter of 2025. The unemployment rate jumped to 5.8 percent—the highest reading since 2021—and the underemployment rate rose sharply to 41.2 percent.

The unemployment rate for high-tech graduates was higher than average, according to the report. For example, the unemployment rate for “computer engineering” graduates was 7.5 percent, and for “computer science” graduates was 6.1 percent.

“Something strange, and potentially alarming, is happening to the job market for young, educated workers,” the Atlantic magazine reported in April. “Even newly minted M.B.A.s from elite programs are struggling to find work,”