4 December 5 - 11, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Month XX–Month XX, 2014 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER | CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | MOVIES | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | FEATURE | SCHUTZE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS | A Cooling Melting Pot Will Anti-Immigrant Sentiment Stunt Growth of Dallas’ International Student Population? BY EMMA RUBY S urjaditya Sarkar hasn’t fully decided whether he likes North Texas yet. A sophomore at the University of Texas at Dallas, Sarkar is a biomedical engineering student from India. He moved to North Texas last year, one of thousands of students who landed on a Dallas-area university when weighing their higher education options. As a senior in high school, Sarkar debated between attending an Indian university or a school in the United States; he considered the University of Oklahoma and the University of Illinois Chicago before settling on UT Dallas. In the end, the Richardson university emerged as a leading option because of its established international student community — and because Sarkar’s father had recently moved to Dallas for work. “The thing about college is that it’s already a new experience, irrespective of whether you’re going to a [school in a] city you grew up in, or the state you grew up in, or even a different country,” Sarkar told the Observer. “College is already such a new thing, and on top of that just starting college in a new country just makes it even more intimidating.” Intimidation aside, more foreign students are attending universities in the U.S. than ever before, the 2024 Open Doors report on international educational exchange found last week. With 89,546 international students enrolled in a Texas college, the Lone Star State is the third- largest hosting state in the country. Dallas- area universities welcomed 22% more international students in the 2023–24 school year than the year prior, doubling Texas’ statewide growth of 10.9%. The University of North Texas, the University of Texas at Dallas and the University of Texas at Arlington, respectively, are Texas’ most international universities, drawing over 39,000 students. The vast majority of Dallas’ international student population hails from India, but Nepal, China, Vietnam and Bangladesh are also well represented. The demographics follow the national trend of students from countries with emerging market economies increasingly looking to the U.S. for schooling, Julie Baer, a research and learning lead with the Institute of International Education, said. “What we have seen is that international students are really drawn to [the United States’] quality of education and our interdisciplinary curriculum,” Baer told the Observer. “Another factor is the practical work experience that international students have the opportunity to undertake here in the United States. … international students are contributing to the workforce through optional practical training (OPT), where they are staying in the United States to gain work experience after graduation.” In Texas alone, international students are contributing over $2.4 billion annually to the state economy, Baer said. Tuition payments, food and housing costs and travel all contribute to a growing economic impact. Could International Interest in U.S. Schools Slow for Political Reasons? Open Doors predicts continued growth of the international student population in the 2024–25 school year — already, a survey of several hundred institutions showed that the Fall 2024 semester has seen a 3% increase in enrollment. But as international enrollment continues to grow, some universities are wary of Trump Administration policies that could harm foreign students. The University of Massachusetts recently issued a travel advisory urging international students to “strongly consider” returning to the U.S. prior to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration “given that a new presidential administration can enact new policies on their first day in office. The school pointed to Trump’s “Muslim Ban”, which was issued one week after his inauguration in 2017 and barred individuals from seven Muslim- majority countries from entering the U.S., as a prior example of Trump’s international policies. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology issued a similar travel advisory following Trump’s reelection. Still, Baer believes that “it’s really too soon to speculate” as to whether or not Trump’s reelection could negatively impact foreign student growth. “Students are typically affected only by actual shifts in policy or due to other intangible factors. They’re largely unaffected by shifting perceptions or rhetoric,” Baer said. “If we look over the past 25 years, the largest drops [in international student populations] have been following the September 11 attacks and then more recently, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic.” Trump has engaged in policy discussions that would impact foreign students, though. In his first term, Trump proposed new visa rules that would tighten requirements for student visas and adjust most from four to two years. The measure was dismantled by the Biden Administration. Then the pandemic introduced its own wave of anti- foreign policies; at the end of Trump’s first term, the U.S. State Department announced it would not grant visas to international students whose classes had been moved online, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) threatened to deport students before a lawsuit by Harvard and MIT granted a temporary restraining order against ICE. The department rescinded the policy a week later. Trump’s reelection has meant Sarkar is paying closer attention to national policy conversations than he used to; he is concerned that changing visa restrictions could complicate his education. Sarkar is currently studying under the L2 Visa — meaning that he is in the U.S. as a dependent of his father — but it expires next year when he turns 21. After that, he will need to obtain an F Visa to continue his schooling at UTD. “Who’s to say that by the time [I turn 21] laws around it haven’t changed,” Sarkar said. “It’s easy to say that, ‘Oh, Trump only hates these kinds of immigrants from these places,’ but it’s really not that simple. It just creates an air of uncertainty.” Even though his future seems precarious, Sarkar doesn’t know whether he will head straight back to India after graduating from UTD. The changing political landscapes in both the U.S. and India leave him feeling unsure of where he’d like to stay — even if he has decided that Dallas is “a bit of a boring city.” Sarkar feels “lucky” to be part of the growing number of students who can call the United States home, even if he doesn’t necessarily take pride in the country he’s chosen to study in. “I remember when I was in the visa office in Chennai in India applying for a visa for the U.S. I was in the queue and the man in front of me got rejected, straight up. He was right in front of me and we heard the person say to him ‘Yeah, we can’t accept your thing, try again next time.’ Then I went there and I got accepted,” Sarkar said. “So, I’m also just lucky. And it’s — I don’t know. It’s complicated to take pride in that.” ▼ ABORTION UNDER LOCK & KEY NEW TEXAS BILL WOULD CLASSIFY ABORTION PILLS AS SCHEDULE IV DRUGS. BY ALYSSA FIELDS A new bill targeting abortion- inducing drugs would reclassify them as controlled substances, further diminishing accessibility to reproductive healthcare in Texas. The latest attack in the Republican-waged war against abortion access comes from Rep. Pat Curry of Waco. House Bill 1339 aims to categorize carisoprodol, mifepristone and misoprostol as Schedule IV drugs. The latter two are key components in medical abortions, one of the few remaining early- termination avenues available. “Mifepristone and misoprostol are safe, effective medications that have been used for decades for a wide variety of reasons,” said Stella Dantas, president of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists, in a press release, following passage of a similar law in Louisiana earlier this year. The prescription for a medical abortion is a hormone-blocking agent followed by a drug that expels the fetus. The first pill, mifepristone, blocks progesterone and terminates an early-stage pregnancy. The second pill, misoprostol, taken 24 hours later, clears the uterine cavity, preventing risk of associated infections. The treatment is available only in the first seven weeks of pregnancy, by law, and requires a prescription. This is just the latest in a string of legislative moves that have targeted women’s healthcare. The first monumental restriction was the Texas Heartbeat Act, SB 8, in 2021, which banned abortion after detection of a fetal heartbeat. Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which put abortion care in the hands of state governments in 2022, Texas lawmakers have continued to home in on reproductive health care. “We promised that if Roe v. Wade was overturned, abortions would be banned in Texas,” said Gov. Greg Abbott in a speech at the 2023 Rally for Life. “It was | UNFAIR PARK | Jordan Maddox The University of North Texas has the 10th- largest international student population in the U.S. >> p6
