The Trump administration is considering plans to discontinue visas for Chinese graduate students with known links to the communist country’s military, unnamed sources told The New York Times.

Somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 Chinese students will have their visas canceled and will be expelled soon, possibly as early as this week, while graduate students who are not currently in the United States will be banned from returning, according to the sources, described as a current U.S. official and another who was briefed on “internal deliberations.”

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Reuters reports:

The main purpose of the action is to clamp down on spying and intellectual property theft that some Chinese nationals are suspected of engaging in on U.S. university and college campuses, the sources said, adding that the administration expected significant push back from those institutions because of their financial interests in Chinese student enrollment.

Some 360,000 Chinese nationals who attend U.S. schools annually generate economic activity of about $14 billion, largely from tuition and other fees.

The leaked plans surfaced a day after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Congress that China’s moves to erode autonomy in Hong Kong means he no longer supports the city’s special trading status. China’s lack of transparency about the coronavirus have also escalated tensions between the U.S. and China that have percolated throughout Trump’s tenure.

And the president isn’t the only one concerned about Chinese meddling.

On Wednesday, Senators Tom Cotton and Marsha Blackburn introduced legislation that would prohibit Chinese nationals from receiving student visas for graduate work in the U.S.

“We’ve fed China’s innovation drought with American ingenuity and taxpayer dollars for too long; it’s time to secure the U.S. research enterprise against the (Chinese Communist Party’s) economic espionage,” Blackburn said in a prepared statement.

According to Inside Higher Ed:

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The introduction of the bill represents an escalation in efforts by Republican lawmakers to restrict Chinese students, who accounted for about 13.5 percent of the 42,227 students earning doctorates in science and engineering fields at U.S. universities in 2018. Cotton suggested on Fox News last month that lawmakers need to take “a very hard look” at visas for Chinese students, especially those studying advanced science at the graduate level.

International Higher Education reported last month that a survey at Amherst College found that out of 54 school-based college counselors in China, 87 percent claimed Chinese students and parents are reconsidering plans for studying in the U.S.

Of those surveyed, 85 percent cited the Trump administration’s “unpredictable policies” for Chinese students, 78 percent pointed to safety concerns, and 65 percent were worried about visa denials and potential deportation.

Yet despite those issues, “the United States still remains a prime destination for many Chinese students, particularly at its top-tier institutions,” wrote Xiaofeng Wan, associate dean of admission at Amherst.