by Daisy Roser
Student visa fraud will be reduced under a new Trump policy limiting how long foreigners can attend college, an expert told The College Fix.
Set to go into effect on September 15, the “duration of status” rule will now set a fixed, four-year limit on student visas or shorter, depending on the normal length of the program. Prior to this change, students could stay here as long as they were enrolled in school.
The program ensures temporary visas remain “just that: temporary, with a fixed end date,” according to Ira Mehlman.
The spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform praised the move in emailed comments to The Fix.
“The new policy makes it clear to everyone up front — the applicant, the university and the government — that the terms of entry are for a specific purpose, for a specific duration, and that when those have been fulfilled the student must depart the country,” he said.
The policy “will also end the practice of endlessly enrolling in classes beyond completion solely for the purpose of extending a student visa.”
Under this rule, the American government, and not “universities which often have a financial interest in having a foreign student remain,” will have the say in case-by-case visa extensions for students, Mehlman said.
Duration of status for certain classes of visa was first implemented in 1978 and has roughly remained consistent since then. However, a 2020 rule proposed by the Department of Homeland Security during the first Trump Administration to end indefinite stays was withdrawn in 2021, under the Biden administration.
The Center for Immigration Studies submitted a comment in support of the rule, highlighting “pay-to-stay fraud” where school officials say students are still enrolled “in return for cash payments.”
The group also noted that during the Carter administration, from 1973 to 1979, foreign students were allowed to stay “just one year and could be granted an extension of stay (EOS) in increments of up to 12 months if they adequately demonstrated that they were maintaining their status.”
At least 2,100 foreign students also allegedly used the Duration of Status rule to become “lifelong students,” who entered the student visa program between 2000 and 2010 and remained until 2026 by continuously enrolling in or transferring between schools.
Several organizations criticized the change.
The American Council on Education said that the new rule would “hurt [the] global talent pipeline,” “ignore academic realities,” and create “unnecessary bureaucracy.”
The group declined to offer new comments in response to a College Fix question about what limits it would support on student visas. A spokesman directed The Fix to its statement and a report from the National Association of Foreign Student Advisers.
The adviser group likewise did not respond to multiple emailed responses for comment in the past several weeks asking about any limits it would support. The Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education similarly did not respond to requests for comment.
The American Immigration Council wrote in a blog that the new rule will create “additional red tape and costs,” and “serve to drive even more students away,” while the end to duration of status for foreign journalists and media “will send the message that the United States is not the country it once was.” It did not respond to emails and phone messages from The Fix in the past several weeks.
Meanwhile a policy analyst for the Manhattan Institute said he supports cracking down on fraud but called the new rule a “blunt instrument.”
“DHS should rigorously enforce rules governing immigration fraud and overstays,” Santiago Calvo wrote in City Journal. “But requiring hundreds of thousands of compliant students to prove repeatedly that they deserve to finish legitimate degrees is bad not just for them, but for America.”
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College Fix contributor Daisy Roser is a student at Illinois Eastern Community Colleges. Christina Botteri is the Executive Editor of The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow her on X at @christinakb.
