An AI doctoral student in California had his Sevis file – digital proof of their valid – licensed student visa, putting their immigration status in danger.
Addressing Techcrunch, the student, who asked for anonymity for fear of reprisals, said that they had been informed via the international student center of their college that they had been identified in a checking of the judicial lockers. The student said that they have been studying in the United States for almost a decade from the first cycle and that they have no criminal record.
“The most likely cause can be an interaction with the police many years ago, even before entering higher education,” said the student. “I was carrying out research in the field of AI and I had planned to continue my research after obtaining the diploma.”
In the past few months, More than a thousand international students in the United States had their visa statutes disputed by the State Department and immigration and the application of customs as part of an aggressive repression orchestrated by the Trump administration. In many cases, the colleges have not been directly informed by the federal agencies concerned, leaving students for few notice – or appeal.
Yisong YUE, a professor of automatic learning at Caltech, told Techcrunch that the hard position of the US government on student visas “harmed talent pipeline”.
“The cumulative effect makes the United States a much less attractive destination for many talented researchers,” said Yue. “Because research is highly specialized, when a doctoral student is withdrawn from a project, he can hand over the project per month or years. Beyond students and specific affected projects, many visa students are worried.
Few institutions have been spared by repression. Depending on reportsStudents attending the universities of Ivy League, large public colleges and small schools of liberal arts have seen their visa suspended. While the government accused some Among these students to support Palestinian militant groups or to engage in “anti -emoty” activities, others have been targeted for minor legal offensesas speeding or other traffic offenses.
Some revocations seem to be administrative errors. Would haveA student, Suguru Onda, a doctoral candidate in computer science at Brigham Young University, reintegrated his student visa revoked without explanation shortly after their immigration lawyer filed a complaint. Lawyer, Adam Crayk, said The government uses AI to filter visa holders without human verification, leading to errors.
Last week, a judge in Georgia made a temporary ban prescription In the case of a hundred international students whose visas have been dismissed and ordered the government to restore the legal status of students. However, the decision only applies to a fraction of students at risk of expulsion and could be questioned.
Yue noted that international students have contributed to many recent technical breakthroughs in AI. Ashish Vaswani, who moved to the United States to study IT in the early 2000s, is one of the co-creators of the transformer, the architecture of the seminal AI model that underlies chatbots like Chatgpt. One of the co-founders of Openai, Wojciech Zaremba, obtained his doctorate in NYU AI on a student visa.
A recent analysis By NAFSA, NAFSA, for non-profit, noted that international students in American colleges and universities contributed $ 43.8 billion to the domestic economy during the 2023-2024 academic year and supported more than 378,000 jobs.
Yue says that he had “multiple conversations” with superior IA researchers who fear staying in the United States.
“This includes professors in the best universities and societies researchers such as Openai, Google, etc.”, he added. “The cumulative effect of government actions makes the United States a much less attractive destination for many talented researchers.”
