US student visas granted to Indian nationals plummeted to 22,149 in 2025, down from 58,694 in 2024, marking a 62 per cent decline, according to a new report by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a Washington-based think tank. The figures place India among the countries most severely affected by the tighter immigration approach adopted by President Donald Trump's administration towards F-1 student visa applicants.
China Also Sees Decline, But Less Severe
Chinese nationals also experienced a drop, though less severe. Visas issued to Chinese students fell 34 per cent, from 61,075 in 2024 to 40,034 in 2025, as reported by Indian Times.
Indian and Chinese students together account for the largest share of the foreign student population in the US. Data from the Institute of International Education (IIE) shows that in the 2024-25 academic year, 363,019 students from India and 265,919 from China together made up 53 per cent of all foreign students in the country. The total foreign student population at the post-secondary level stood at 1,177,766.
CIS Calls for End to OPT Programme
Beyond the visa numbers, the CIS report turned its attention to the Optional Practical Training (OPT) programme, which allows F-1 visa holders to work temporarily in the US in a field related to their degree after graduating.
Of the more than one million foreign students enrolled in the US during the 2024-25 academic year, about 294,253 had already completed their degrees and were working under OPT, according to IIE data cited in the report. Indian nationals made up 49 per cent of those participants, totalling 143,740 students. China accounted for a further 21 per cent, or 61,981 students.
Report Author Advocates Termination of OPT
The report was authored by George Fishman, a senior legal fellow at CIS and a long-standing critic of the OPT scheme. Fishman wrote: "I have advocated for the termination of OPT in order to protect the wages and employment opportunities of American students and workers."
He added that even if full termination is not immediately possible, reducing the number of OPT participants from India and China would still limit what he described as the programme's harmful effects. "But, short of that, reducing the OPT pipeline of foreign students from India and the PRC, who make up the majority of all OPT participants, will reduce the deleterious effects of OPT on American students and workers," Fishman said.
Impact on Indian Graduates
For Indian graduates, OPT is one of the most important routes to gaining US work experience and improving their prospects of securing long-term employment or transitioning to an H-1B work visa after completing their studies.
Legit.ng earlier reported that the number of F-1 student visas the United States issued to nationals of India and China fell sharply between May and August 2025, according to data from the State Department and analysis by the Centre for Immigration Studies. Visas issued to Indian nationals during that four-month window came to 22,149, a 60 per cent drop from the 2017–2024 average of 55,717 (excluding 2020, when Covid-19 disrupted processing).
