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Are US Universities Prioritizing International Students Over Citizens? 

Steve Cortes sits on the left as Stephen Kleinschmit is interviewed on the right during a segment from the documentary “The Foreign Student Crisis Destroying American College Admissions.” (Screenshot)

Reagan Campbell is an intern for The Daily Signal.

Who are America’s public universities really for? A growing backlash argues that domestic students—many with near-perfect test scores—are being edged out in favor of full-pay international enrollments. 

Steve Cortes’ new documentary, “The Foreign Student Crisis Destroying American College Admissions,” focuses on the University of Illinois where more than 6,000 Chinese nationals are enrolled at this publicly funded, land-grant school. 

Cortes emphasizes that his concern is not about race, but about citizenship. 

Stanley Zhong, an Asian American student, experienced the effects firsthand. “He had near-perfect SAT scores, 1,590 out of 1,600, and a 3.97 GPA at a highly prestigious Palo Alto High School,” Cortes said. He applied to UCLA, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Illinois, and was rejected by all three schools. Later, Zhong was hired as a Google engineer. 

Cortes poses the question, “What level of untapped talent exists in this country that a combination of DEI and immigration have basically cut out of the loop?” 

He is not only concerned about education for American citizens, but also about national security. 

He calls the influx of Chinese students “organized infiltration backed by a hostile regime masked as education,” and explained that there have been three students at the University of Michigan caught smuggling agricultural bioweapons and a Chinese engineering student at Illinois Tech convicted of espionage after being recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security. 

Marsha McClary is an Illinois native and a mother of five. She explained her frustration both as a taxpayer and as a mother. “A lot of our students cannot get into U of I … and then they have to go out of state and pay higher tuition.”  

She continued by saying, “We’re paying a lot of taxes into the university system in the state, and we should be able to take advantage of that as a priority for our students.” 

Stephen Kleinschmit, a professor at Northwestern University, explained how many foreign students come to the university with questionable credentials and are unable to speak English.  

Many of the applications are careless; applicants sometimes leave the wrong university name on their cover letters or indicate they don’t understand the program they’re applying to. 

Kleinschmit also warned of “institutionalized corruption” involving bribing test proctors and even the government itself. 

Cortes ended his documentary by giving his solution to the matter: “The total number of foreign students must be capped. One or 2% of total enrollment seems perfectly sensible. The total number of Chinese nationals should be zero, none. Not welcome here. United States schools for United States citizens.” 

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