Are immigration policies hindering university's diversity efforts?

According to a recent article published in the New York Times, the Trump administration’s immigration policies have impacted international students obtaining visas to study at American universities. The process for reviewing student visa applications has been extended from 60 days to 180 days under the current administration. The extension has caused cases of scholar delays, meaning the application reviewing process time interferes with the student's ability to enroll in classes before the semester starts, thus starting classes weeks, months and, in some cases, a semester later than originally planned.

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Social media and visa applications

Since 2014, visa applicants have been required to include their social media information on their applications. Due to this policy change, 17 year old Ismail Ajjawi was rejected access to the United States and was not able to attend Harvard University this fall. The social media content was stated to be critical of the United States, but it wasn’t Ajjawi who was producing the content -- his friends were. Ajjawi asserted that he did not share or like the content either. It merely populated his feed. Ajjiawi’s experience has brought free speech into question by free speech advocates.

Diversity in the classroom

Science tells us diversity enriches a classroom. It inspires deeper conversations because multiple perspectives are represented. How are the government’s immigration policies hindering university’s diversity initiatives? There are 160 scholar visa delays a year currently, which is a significant increase from recent years. Since there has been a spike in scholar visa delays, it’s possible that the number of international students seeking to attend American universities could decrease, limiting diversity on college campuses.

Free Speech being called into question

What about free speech? International students are being denied access based on critical posts about America that they might not even produce, yet, Americans can criticize America freely because of the first amendment. This lends itself to the question why is free speech defined differently for potential immigrants than for American citizens? Should free speech be defined differently for each of the groups?

In conclusion, university’s diversity efforts have been hindered due to the statistical evidence of the visa application review extension and the spike of scholarly visa delay cases in recent years. Free speech is also being called into question as social media is implemented into the visa review application.