Overseas students are not immigrants. They are on student visas (and most likely from very wealthy families... at least most of the ones I knew at Purdue were).

It is in the United States best interest to retain the best students as they graduate and create a system to promote student visa to green card to naturalization, but only a very few do.

Mostly, foreign students are price gouged by our universities to prop up a failing business model and make it more difficult for citizens to afford higher education.

Sure, it's in the United States' interest to retain the best foreign students (and in many students' interest to study in a country which will permit them to live and work there after their study). That doesn't mean the current administration is necessarily inclined to act this way

International student enrolment is down 17% this year, because the administration chose to take a broadly similar approach to student visas as they did to immigration, with a "pause" on interviews and lots of revocations, plus of course the concern their lawful student visa status isn't a guarantee they won't get taken off to processing centres by ICE thugs with quotas to hit. Other bright ideas the administration proposed with include a four year student visa limit to rule out the possibility of completing a PhD in a normal time frame. That's gonna hurt universities using the foreign students to prop their business up, and citizens who'll have to pick up their tab instead if they want their courses to continue...

  >  United States best interest

The US is a resource to be stripped, the interest in mind is self-interest. "Make us great again!" Back to the gilded age, whatever it takes.

> Overseas students are not immigrants.

> It is in the United States best interest to retain the best students

Yeah? Tell that to the US government.

As it stands, foreign student enrollment has dropped precipitously year-on-year. The international students are scared, and with good reason.

If ICE happens to roll up to campus, do you really think they'll be checking each student's visa status? Not on your life. They'll just round up everyone who doesn't look white enough, and if they're very, very lucky, they might just get sent back home in a speedy manner. If they're not, they'll get put in camps for indeterminate amounts of time, denied any access to the legal system, and treated worse than animals.