Loren Locke interviewed by Spiceworks about the decline in international student applications due to Trump immigration policy changes
In the meantime, Loren Locke, an attorney at Locke Immigration Law, LLC in Atlanta, GA, says enrollment of foreign students at U.S. schools is already down – especially for IT students.
“After the Covid-19 pandemic dented international student numbers, enrollment rebounded in the 2023-24 school year to a new high of more than 1.1 million international students,” Locke explains. “For the most recent year, 2024-25, enrollment dipped by approximately 130,000 students. I expect the numbers to dip much further for 2025-26, because of the new F, M, and J visa policy that went into effect in late June.”
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“Although 221(g) reversible denials have long existed for sparing use on those handful of cases where the consular officer isn’t able to approve or deny the visa on the spot, shunting a huge volume of cases into Administrative Processing is a radical departure from standard practice,” Locke says. “A 221(g) refusal puts the visa applicant into an open-ended state of limbo with no clear timeline for resolution.”
The number of perspective technology students impacted by the change in policy is very significant, Locke says. More than half of international students in the U.S. are enrolled in STEM degree programs, and computer science and math are especially popular. While graduating with an associate’s, bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral degree in any subject is sufficient to qualify for a year of OPT work authorization, graduates with degrees in qualifying STEM fields can qualify for two extra years of work authorization. These extra two years are called STEM OPT.
“As long as STEM OPT continues to exist, I think foreign students will continue to have a powerful incentive to choose to study a STEM field like information technology,” Locke says. “But if STEM OPT gets eliminated, there would no longer be an immigration-related advantage to choosing a STEM field. President Trump’s nominee to lead USCIS, Joseph Edlow, told the Senate Judiciary Committee in May that he would like to get rid of both OPT and STEM OPT. Since the OPT program is codified in the Immigration and Nationality Act, abolishing it would undoubtedly trigger legal challenges under the Administrative Procedure Act.”
https://www.spiceworks.com/it-careers/visa-application-changes-impacting-how-foreign-it-students-view-u-s/