After the Donald Trump administration’s immigration crackdown last year, the to Indian students fell sharply by 69 per cent in June and July 2025 compared to the previous year, according to the newly released data from the US Department of State.
As many as 12,776 F-1 visas were issued to Indians in June and July last year, which is less than a third of the figure for the same months in 2024 at 41,336.
The Fall semester at American universities begins in August-September, and data from previous years show that the number of F-1 visas issued to Indians peaks in June or July. Last year, ahead of the academic session, the figure peaked in June 2025 – 10,695 – and then fell to 2,081 in July and 2,389 in August. In 2024, the highest monthly figure was 26,731 in June, and in June 2023, it was 40,224.
F-1 visa issuances surged in the post-COVID years, rising from 40,194 in June and July 2021 to 62,229 in those months in 2022 and 72,027 in 2023. From this peak in 2023, it plummeted to 41,336 in June and July 2024, even before the Trump administration took office, data on monthly visa issuances from the US Department of State shows.
Monthly visa issuance figures for June, July, and August were released this week.
The reported in July last year that the number of F-1 visas issued to Indian students from March to May (9,906) fell to the lowest level for those months since the pandemic, a 27 per cent drop compared to the corresponding period last year.
The drop in F-1 visa issuances in the crucial months of June and July 2025 followed measures introduced by the Trump administration. This included a pause on interviews for student visa applicants for a few weeks from the end of May, until they were resumed on June 18.
Announcing the pause, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in May 2025 that additional student or exchange visitor visa appointment capacity would not be added: “in preparation for an expansion of required social media screening and vetting”.
On June 23 last year, the US embassy in India asked visa applicants in the F, M, or J categories (student and exchange visitor visas) to set the privacy settings on their social media accounts to “public” to facilitate vetting. In the same month, the embassy asked visa applicants to list all social media usernames or handles for every platform they had used over the past five years on their application form.
The administration’s steps earlier in 2025 had also sparked anxiety among students. Research grants were frozen, affecting work across several universities, including Harvard and Stanford.
International students, some of whom were involved in pro-Palestine protests or law enforcement-related proceedings, found that their Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) records were abruptly terminated in April last year. These were later reinstated after lawsuits challenging the termination.
At 3.63 lakh, Indian students constituted the largest international student cohort in the US in 2024-25, accounting for around 31 per cent of total international student enrolment, according to Open Doors data.
Source: US State Department
