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It’s no secret that the United States’ relationships with nations like China, Russia, and Iran are strained at best, yet thousands of students from those countries continue to enroll at top Texas universities.
For example, Texas A&M, the University of Houston, and UT Austin collectively have 3,344 Chinese nationals enrolled this fall. Given that Chinese law has required nationals abroad to conduct espionage on behalf of the state since 2017, this presents a clear national-security risk.
Jeff Addicott, director of the Warrior Defense Project at St. Mary’s University School of Law, highlighted the danger. “We’ve had scores of Chinese students arrested over the last decade for spying,” he said. “These individuals have infiltrated government, schools, and businesses.”
Addicott also noted that the issue has been largely ignored by politicians for years. “The only administration that has really tackled this is the Trump administration,” he said. “Prior administrations—both Republican and Democrat—have turned a blind eye.”
He acknowledged that the original intent behind these international-student programs was noble: expose foreign students to American freedoms and culture in the hope that those ideas would take root when they returned home. Unfortunately, Addicott says, the programs have largely devolved into failed experiments that have done more harm to the United States than good.