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So declared Donald Trump in 2015, kicking off a presidential campaign rooted in hatred, fear and xenophobic myth — though at least tempered by the “good people” afterthought.

But 10 years later, it turns out “good people” from around the world aren’t welcomed in Trump’s America, either. Even foreign college students here legally and on their own dime to study in America’s great universities — the very definition of the “best of the best” — are getting the signal loud and clear that this president doesn’t want them here.

In ӣ����Ƶ, as around the nation, colleges and universities have seen their enrollment of foreign students here on student visas plummet this year. Some of it’s due to stricter student visa requirements the administration is imposing for no good reason. Others are choosing not to come here out of concern about whether they will be allowed to stay and work after graduation — a concern exacerbated by the administration’s new on American employers who want to hire foreign workers in specialty occupations.

Still others, presumably, are repelled by the toxic and increasingly brazen anti-immigrant rhetoric from the MAGA movement and its expanding campaign to rid America of anyone not born here.

That campaign is especially self-destructive when it comes to supporting American higher education. Unlike most American-born college students, foreign students who study here generally are paying top tuition rates, a financial lifeline for institutions that have struggled with diminishing public funding and declining enrollment by American-born students.

As the Post-Dispatch’s Monica Obradovic reports, a survey of four ӣ����Ƶ-area universities found a drop in international enrollment of more than 2,700 students this year compared to last. ӣ����Ƶ University alone has dropped by more than 1,500 international students. Washington University in ӣ����Ƶ is down almost 1,000 foreign students. Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville is down 15%.

It’s part of a national trend that has dire implications for America’s economy. The NAFSA Association of International Educators estimates that foreign students contribute close to $44 billion to the economy annually, including supporting more than 378,000 jobs here. reported this month that nearly 20% fewer international students arrived in the U.S. for the start of the current school year in August compared to last year. That’s the largest one-year drop on record except for the 2020 pandemic year.

Some of the administration’s student visa revocations have been in response to foreign students engaging in peaceful protest against U.S. policy regarding Gaza and other controversies. That’s a shameful statement to the world about how little our current president values our own First Amendment.

But most of the decline in international students is due to stricter student visa restrictions, travel bans from specific countries — and students simply (and understandably) declining to come here because of the current xenophobic political climate fueled by this administration. A spokesperson for Webster University in ӣ����Ƶ County, for example, told the Post-Dispatch’s Obradovic that the private school has seen international enrollment fall at its three domestic campuses in favor of its seven foreign campuses.

The issue is bigger than money. International students tend to be the best and the brightest from their countries. A from the National Foundation for American Policy found that fully one in four billion-dollar American startups have founders or co-founders who initially came here as international students. George Mason University that almost one-third of Nobel laureates affiliated with American academic institutions were born somewhere else.

In terms of both economic and intellectual benefit to the U.S., these are exactly the “good people” Trump alluded to a decade ago. Yet under his current regime, they’re being expelled, barred or just convinced to stay away in record numbers. We’re all the poorer for it.