Chinese Students in Orange County Express Shock, Fear Over Veto Failure

Chinese college students in Orange County expressed alarm Thursday after learning that the Senate upheld President Bush’s veto of a bill that would have waived their mandatory return to China after studies in the United States.

“It’s kind of a little bit of a shock,” said Han Chen, 23, a visiting Chinese student at Golden West College. “I’m still kind of disappointed.”

Senators voted 62 to 37 against Bush, four short of the two-thirds majority needed to override a veto. On Wednesday, the House voted 390-25 to override.

The legislation applied to as many as 32,000 Chinese in the United States on “exchange visitor” visas, many of whom fear reprisals if they are sent home because they protested last June’s crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators.

The bill would have waived a legal requirement that, upon expiration of their visas, students go home for two years before returning to the United States.

Bush, through an executive order, has assured visiting students that he will grant them the same extensions as the bill offered, but some students at UC Irvine were wary of the promise.

“A lot of students here do not have a lot of confidence in how long Bush’s directive will last,” said Jeff Ge, president of UCI’s Assn. of Chinese Students and Scholars from the People’s Republic of China. “Bush said that a bill would be more offensive to the Chinese government. But how can a directive be less offensive without being less protective?”

Further, Ge said, the defeat of the bill shows that the United States is “caving in” to the Chinese government’s warnings that the measure’s passage would damage Chinese-U.S. relations and threaten further student exchanges.

“It certainly gives the message that the White House values good relations with the Chinese government more than Chinese students here. . . . The Chinese government can get their way in this country,” he said.

None of UCI’s 65 visiting Chinese students and 30 scholars will be immediately threatened, said Martha Morgan, director of international services. At least 30 have filed or will file forms to extend their visas, and the failure of the bill, she said, will not change anything.

But students said that passage of the bill would have sent a symbolic message to the Chinese government and other nations that the United States is committed to protecting human rights and democracy.

Henry Le, another visiting student at UCI, criticized Bush and senators for making this a political issue.

“I thought that they were going to vote for it,” he said. “This is a lot of partisan (politics), but we’re talking about democracy and human rights.”

Le said that he fears reprisals against his family if his comments get back to the Chinese government, and asked that his age and major not be published. His mother and father, who are in China, warned him against talking to the media, he said.

Chen said that such fears show the untrustworthiness of the Chinese government’s guarantee that returning students will not be punished.

“We never know,” Chen said. “They say that they won’t harm the students. But who knows? They change their policy every day, every year. Nobody’s going to depend on what they said.”

Chen said that he wished some sort of compromise could have been worked out whereby students could be protected but both countries could continue the cultural exchange.