WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The Trump administration announced Thursday it will drastically shorten visas for foreign journalists in the U.S. to 240 days, down from years, and cut those for Chinese journalists to only 90 days, raising concerns over press freedom in the United States and prompting China to warn of possible reciprocal countermeasures.<\/p>\n
The rule announced by the Department of Homeland Security will do away with the \u201cduration of status\u201d system, which allows foreign journalists to stay and work in the United States as long as they meet eligibility requirements. That will be replaced with a fixed period of time, though the visas may be extended.<\/p>\n
The agency says it’s necessary to better vet the visa holders. But advocates for foreign journalists oppose the change, saying the drastically shorter stay would severely restrict their ability to live and work in the States.<\/p>\n
The even shorter visa rule for Chinese journalists, which does not include those from the \u201cspecial administrative regions\u201d of Hong Kong or Macao, is particularly harsh and could add tensions to the already fraught relations between Washington and Beijing, despite both leaders stating they intend to stabilize ties.<\/p>\n
The decision comes at a time when President Donald Trump is targeting news organizations<\/a> with multiple threats and legal actions at home and his administration is tightening immigration policies, though foreign journalists are not considered immigrants.<\/p>\n The rule will take effect 60 days after it\u2019s published in the Federal Register. Congress can reject a rule, but it’s extremely rare.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are outraged that the Trump administration has cruelly limited the duration of visas for foreign journalists from a period of up to five years to a fixed eight months,\u201d the advocacy group Reporters with Borders said in a statement. \u201cThis change destroys international journalists\u2019 ability to report from the U.S. and makes it extremely difficult for international outlets to operate here at all.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe relentless cycle of visa renewals restricts press freedom, as journalists will feel compelled to avoid drawing the administration\u2019s ire, lest their applications be rejected,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n The Committee to Protect Journalists released a statement calling the new visa policy \u201cthe behavior of a backsliding democracy, not the international vanguard of free speech.\u201d<\/p>\n In proposing the change in August 2025, the federal agency said the rising number of foreign journalists in the U.S. \u201cposes a challenge\u201d to its ability \u201cto monitor and oversee these nonimmigrants while they are in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n It added that students and foreign visitors also will see their previous rule of \u201cduration of status\u201d replaced with fixed periods by the same decision<\/a>.<\/p>\n By admitting them into the country for a fixed period, the Department of Homeland Security said it could better vet the visa holders to ensure their activities are permissible. The visas can be extended.<\/p>\n The first Trump administration sought to change the visa rules in 2020, but the proposal was withdrawn in 2021 when President Joe Biden took office.<\/p>\n But the White House then tightened visas<\/a> for Chinese journalists to only 90 days, in response to the treatment of U.S. journalists<\/a> in China, including the expulsion of three Wall Street Journal reporters, as tensions flared up during the COVID-19 pandemic between the two countries. The Biden administration later relaxed the rule<\/a>, allowing stays to increase to up to a year.<\/p>\n When the Trump administration proposed to revive the 90-day rule last year, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said it opposed \u201cthe U.S.\u2019s discriminatory move targeting a specific country.\u201d<\/p>\n China’s Foreign Ministry called the decision \u201cdiscriminatory\u201d and said it would affect the work of Chinese media in the U.S.<\/p>\n \u201cChina urges the U.S. to immediately revoke its discriminatory policies targeting Chinese journalists and effectively safeguard their lawful rights and interests in the U.S.,\u201d said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian at a daily briefing in Beijing. He added that \u201cChina reserves the right to take reciprocal countermeasures.\u201d<\/p>\n AP journalists Fu Ting in Washington and E. Eduardo Castillo in Beijing contributed to the report.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yakimaherald.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The Trump administration announced Thursday it will drastically shorten visas for foreign journalists in the U.S. to 240 days, down from years, and cut those for Chinese journalists to only 90 days, raising concerns over press freedom in the United States and prompting China to warn of possible reciprocal countermeasures. The rule […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2505885,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[413499],"class_list":["post-2505884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-ap-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/China-warns-of-reciprocal-countermeasures-after-US-shortens-foreign-journalist.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2505884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2505884"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2505884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2505886,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2505884\/revisions\/2505886"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2505885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2505884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2505884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2505884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Journalism organizations denounce the decision<\/h2>\n
This isn’t the first time shortening visas has been proposed<\/h2>\n
China warns of reciprocal measures<\/h2>\n