Joyce's Thought of the Day 11/13/25 - President Trump defends his plan to provide visas to International Students from China

President Trump on November 11th defended his plan to offer 600,000 visas to Chinese students. We do have a lot of people coming in from China. We always have. China and other countries, Trump told Fox News Laura Ingram during an interview on the Ingram angle. She pushed back. He said we also have a massive system of colleges and universities, and if we were to cut that in half, which perhaps make some people happy, you would have half the colleges in the United States go out of business. I think that's a big deal. Trump added that this would hit historically black colleges and universities especially hard, and they would all be out of business. He said the plan was aimed not at China, but at the international students from around the world more broadly. thinking comes from a business perspective. We take in trillions of dollars from students. You know, the students pay more than double when they come in from foreign countries. I want to see our school system thrive, he said. Colleges often charge international students higher tuition than U.S. students. He pushed back at the idea that this proposal is upsetting the Make America Great Again, the MAGA base of supporters. Don't forget, MAGA was my idea. Maga was no Nobody else's idea. I know what MAGA wants better than anybody else. And MAGA wants to see our country thrive, he said. Trump also defended plans to focus on H-1B visas and bring more foreign workers into the country. When you don't have certain talents, you have people to learn. You can't take people off like an unemployment line and say, I put you into a factory. We're going to make missiles, Trump said. He referenced the detention of hundreds of South Korean workers. at a battery plant in Georgia earlier this year and defended the company's decision to bring them to the United States. You know, making batteries is very complicated. It's not an easy thing and very dangerous. They had five or 600 people, early stages, to make batteries and to teach people how to do it. Atlanta immigration attorney Charles Cuck, who represents four of the detained South Korean nationals, told the AP in September that no company in the United States makes the machines used in the Georgia battery plant, so workers had to come from abroad to install or repair equipment on site. He said it would take about three to five years to train someone in the U.S. to do that work. This is not something new. We've been doing this forever, and we do it when we ship things abroad. We send our folks... there to take care of it. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Fox and Friends on November 12th that Trump's remarks addressed the reality of the U.S. manufacturing base. For years, 20, 30 years, we have offshoreed precision manufacturing jobs, he said. We can't snap our fingers and say, you're going to learn how to build ships overnight. He said foreign workers can be brought in to help train U.S. workers.