Is it ethical for America to send students back to China?
Many Chinese students arrive in the US on F-1 Visas, which came into effect under the Truman administration. It’s time for a rethink.
When it comes to our education system, the United States thrives on international students’ revenue. We allow these students into our country to achieve their desired education anywhere from middle school all the way up until college. If we accept these students at such a young age, and they build a life in the U.S., why are they forced to be sent back to their home country?
As students at all levels, we often find ourselves immersed in diverse environments with many international students attempting to build their life just as we are. Over 300,000 of these students are Chinese immigrants avoiding the rigorous 55-hour study weeks and the Gaokao college entrance exam, making the United States the largest acceptor of Chinese students studying outside of China. The Gaokao is a college entrance exam that happens only once a year and is known as one of the hardest tests in the world. Higher-class Chinese parents strive to avoid this exam by sending their students to the U.S. to take a less grueling standardized test known as the SAT. Although some of these students only fly overseas for a college education, many are sent by their wealthier or sometimes middle-class Chinese families to start their education in the United States from as early as middle school.
These students are sent to the U.S. on F-1 Visas — which came into effect under the Truman administration with the Immigation and Nationality Act of 1952 — to continue their education on a more flexible level. Chinese parents pay large sums of money to have their children attend private, middle, and high schools to ensure admission into a credible university. They also hire personal agents to seek out what school is best fit for their child, but what is unseen is that these agents also train the children on how to answer questions in their F-1 interview that is conducted in English.
When answering the interview questions, students are trained to check multiple boxes in English, two of the questions being:“Do you plan on returning back to your home country?” and “Are you sure you won’t stay in the U.S.?”
For many international students it’s easy and honest to answer “no,” but for the average pre-teen, do they even understand what this means? A child is sent to a foreign country to study for much of their early life, meaning their crucial developmental stages are spent building a life not in their country of origin. Chinese parents have latched on to the idea of sending their children earlier to guarantee their admission into a top university. When a child is sent to the U.S. prior to college, how is it fair to send them back when they’ve built a life, learned the language, and have little memory of life in their home country?
Of course, we can’t allow every F-1 student to stay in the country. Students seeking only a college degree justify the system because they aren’t planning on building a life here. Degree-seeking F-1 students come for only four years to receive an American education that is highly desired in China. These students remember life back home, fluently speak Mandarin or Cantonese, and are awaiting a job in their home country proceeding graduation. Most importantly, they are old enough to understand that they won’t be residing in the U.S. post-graduation.
The most frustrating part of the system is after the younger-sent international students finally reach college level education and complete a degree, they are hit with the “Five-month Rule,” a regulation attached to F-1 students essentially stating that after college they have five months left in the country. If these students want to stay in the U.S., they must find a job that is willing to fight for them in court, which is extremely difficult.
The students who have resided in the United States for education for over six years should be allowed to reside permanently. Over six years in another country at such a young age teaches children more about American life than what they’re due to return to. These students have immersed themselves into American culture, and returning to China would be more foreign to them than the U.S. was when they first arrived. We cannot allow our children to blindly return to a country they can hardly remember. It is unethical and most importantly unfair to allow our system to throw them out like secondhand items.
