The State Department issued sharply fewer F-1 student visas to nationals of India and China during the key May-through-August period in 2025, according to an analysis published Aug. 3 by George Fishman.
The decline is significant because students from the two countries account for more than half of all foreign students at American colleges and universities.
During the 2024-25 academic year, 363,019 students from India and 265,919 from China were enrolled at the post-secondary level in the United States, according to the Institute of International Education. Together, they represented 53 percent of the nation’s nearly 1.18 million foreign students.
Yet visa issuance to both groups fell substantially in 2025, according to a study by the Center for Immigration Studies.
The State Department issued 22,149 F-1 visas to Indian nationals from May through August 2025. That was 60 percent below the average of 55,717 issued during the comparable periods from 2017 through 2019 and 2021 through 2024, excluding the pandemic-disrupted year of 2020. It was also 62 percent below the 58,694 issued during the same period in 2024.
Chinese nationals received 40,034 F-1 visas during the 2025 period, down 46 percent from the comparable-period average of 73,853 and 34 percent from the 61,075 issued in 2024.
Fishman focused on May through August because those months account for most student visa issuance ahead of the academic year. In 2024, the period represented 77 percent of Indian F-1 visas and 76 percent of Chinese F-1 visas.
Fishman argued that a sustained decline could affect both the U.S. labor market and national security, pointing in particular to the Optional Practical Training program.
OPT allows eligible foreign students to work in the United States after completing their degrees. Of more than 1 million foreign students during the 2024-25 academic year, 294,253 were working under OPT. About 70 percent were from India or China, including 143,740 Indians and 61,981 Chinese nationals.
Standard OPT generally provides up to 12 months of work authorization, while graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields can qualify for an additional 24 months. In 2024, 165,524 foreign students were authorized for STEM-OPT, with Indian and Chinese citizens accounting for 68 percent.
Unlike the H-1B program, OPT has no numerical limit. Fishman and other critics have also argued that OPT lacks some labor protections associated with H-1B employment, including prevailing-wage requirements. Some foreign students working under OPT are also exempt from Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes, reducing employer costs.
Fishman has advocated ending OPT, arguing that the program disadvantages American workers and has been used to circumvent congressional limits on employment visas. Short of eliminating it, he argued, reducing the number of Indian and Chinese students would shrink the pool of workers entering the program.
He also cited longstanding national-security concerns surrounding Chinese students studying sensitive technologies in the United States.
Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen warned in 2022 that threats from the Chinese government were “more brazen [and] more damaging than ever before,” including espionage and trade-secret theft.
Former State Department official Edward Ramotowski testified in 2018 that “foreign students, often with no nefarious intent in their plan of study in the United States, are later co-opted to work for their government.”
Former CIA officer Joe Augustyn similarly stated that “We know without a doubt that anytime a graduate student from China comes to the US, they are briefed when they go, and briefed when they come back.”
Chinese students accounted for just 3 percent of foreign students in the United States in 1984-85. By 2024-25, they represented 23 percent.
Fishman has previously argued for tighter restrictions on Chinese student visas, particularly in STEM fields, writing that current policy amounts to “engaging in a campaign of turbocharging the PRC’s war preparations.”
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