The Minister of Higher Education of France, Philippe Baptiste, promised on Wednesday, May 28 “retirement solutions” for students who planned to study in the United States next year and would not get their visa after the measures announced by the Trump administration.
The decision of the US government to suspend the treatment of visas for foreign students, of which it wants to analyze social networks, “creates a strong uncertainty for all students who planned to spend the next academic year in US establishments,” says Philippe Baptiste in a statement.
“We will offer possible retirement solutions in France to all those, French and Europeans, who would have difficulty obtaining their visa or who would no longer want to go to the United States due to the particular context that the American university world knows,” he continues.
Revoked visas for one hundred students
In an internal document, the State Department now requests the embassies and consulates of the United States so as not to authorize “meetings for new visas of students or exchange programs”, waiting for the publication of “directives on the in -depth examination of social networks for all requests of this type.”
Since Donald Trump’s return to the White House, hundreds of foreign students have already seen their dismissed visas, while students in regular situations on American soil participated in the proportions have been arrested and threatened with expulsion.
“What worries me most is not so not to have my visa is that it is revoked during the year, because we have seen students, researchers who are arrested and expelled,” said Hadrien Coccoluto-Roussel, a second year student at Sciences Po Paris who must study at the George Washington University at the beginning of next school next year.
8,543 French students who went to study in the United States
“If I had planned that, I would not have absolutely asked to” go to the United States for this year of study abroad, specify the 19-year-old who participated in the Pro-Palestinian movement of the prestigious French Institute of Political Science.
In 2023, 8,543 French students went to study in the United States, a 24% number compared to 1999, according to the open doors report of the American Institute of International Education (IIE).
Paris has already positioned itself as possible reception lands for researchers in the United States that would see their research programs questioned, in a context of offensive of the Trump administration against the university world.
Source: BFM TV
