Immigration Policy and International Student Migration in the United States

Abstract

Prior research has noted several instances when immigration laws and policies might impact the migration patterns of international students; however, the effort to link international student research with the broader study of migration remains limited. One key limitation is the lack of data on international students that encompass multiple destinations or multiple time frames. As King and Raghuram (2013: 132) noted a recent review, “a more sophisticated quantitative analysis […] is also necessary if any kinds of causal relations are to be established.” Accordingly, I curated the best available data on international students in the United States, through a Freedom of Information Act request and two restricted data licenses, which would enable large-scale analyses of international student migration patterns. My overarching hypothesis is that international students are vulnerable to the negative impacts of U.S. anti-immigration policies, both at the federal and the state level, because of their unique status as “side-door immigrants,” an in-between status between “desirable” and “undesirable” immigrants. I examine empirical evidences of international students’ vulnerability with three analyses. First, I consider whether and how U.S. states’ anti-immigration policy may have spillover effects on the enrollment patterns of international students. Second, taking a historical view of changes in U.S. immigration policies since 1986, I consider how policy changes towards a crimmigration regime impact international students’ ways of staying, i.e., their transitions into subsequent migration statuses. Third, contributing to the understanding of localities as unique immigration destinations within the United States, I provide a baseline estimate—the first of its kind—of lifetime retention of international students in their first study location, relative to other U.S.-educated immigrants. My results suggest that international students are indeed vulnerable to anti-immigration policies. By destabilizing the discrete categorization of immigrants, the “side door” framework facilitates future efforts to theorize and analyze unintended, or spillover, policy effects. This is essential for understanding the experiences of all temporary immigrants at the side door relative to policy change.