ICE changes exemptions for foreign students taking online courses in Fall 2020
ice.govSuch pathetic leadership. International students already in the country must now either attend an in person class and risk their lives, or fly out from the country with the highest number of infections and spread it to their friends and family at home. Not to mention the loss to the research community.
I can’t see anything that is to be gained from this, other than pandering to a xenophobic voter base.
> or fly out from the country with the highest number of infections
Are there exemptions in place for when it is difficult to actually return to country of origin? (e.g. it remains very difficult to fly into China)
Only a visa extension (I-539), which will cost you > 400 bucks. We just went through with this for my mother in law, whose Delta return flight was cancelled a week before she was to go back after an almost 6 month stay. Fortunately, the USCIS is being pretty accommodating on letting people file extensions close to the end of their stays (usually you have to do it 45 days in advance), and she will probably go back before they even decide her case, hopefully (but she will have to carry around her I-539 app/judgement for awhile).
We've got her booked on a flight at the end of October, which is the best we can do right now. There are flights to China that you can get tomorrow through Taiwan or Hong Kong, but neither will allow you to board if you aren't Taiwanese or from Hong Kong (so no mainlanders). The remaining direct flights are in very limited supply and very hard to get and/or very expensive.
It's difficult, if not impossible, to fly to basically any country from the US.
The EU is currently debating exemptions for spouses who have been separated, so I doubt they have exemptions for students.
And even if the exemptions and all are sorted out, who thinks it's a great idea for a whole bunch of students to have to fly in what will now potentially be crowded planes, and then have to spend at least a couple of weeks in quarantine, for something that was not a choice of theirs at all.
Also, as if the rental/retail market wasn't bad enough, especially in college towns many of which are single industry towns, this is gonna add to even more completely unnecessary and avoidable hardship.
This is disastrous policy in every form, other than if youre someone who gets off on unnecessary cruelty.
In this case, the students would be returning home, and therefore be citizens of the country they are flying to. Generally speaking (including the EU, which you mentioned), citizens are exempt from the travel bans. Even during the quarantine, there were once-a-week flights to China from the US (https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/16/business/us-china-flights-int...)
Not saying that these changes aren't horrible, they are, but I don't think getting home is impossible. Very difficult, in most cases yes.
I haven’t heard of any country turning down their own nationals returning home.
China effectively is by limiting flights.
I finally shelled out the $ for the paid version of a flight radar app because I was curious. The friendly skies are mostly empty. 85ish% of all flights in and out of Bay Area is from/to China.
I always had the free version but the paid version will ping me every time a flight goes over me(my phone actually) and for a mere $6.99/month, I can find out the air traffic of the area. It’s an affordable hobby for covid. I highly recommend it.
I don’t know what it really means but just an observation.
You may be looking at freight flights. There are 8 (4 until recently) pairs of commercial passenger flights between US and mainland China per week. 2 of those starts/ends Bay Area.
That’s what I thought too. The really tiny number of other flights illustrates how much air traffic has diminished. Fascinating.
That's not the same thing at all. There's always been a flight a week from the US to China, so even if it takes a while, it's still possible. Especially so with at least a month's notice.
In the long run, we're all dead. Or perhaps just cured of covid.
There's ~375k Chinese students in the US. At one flight a week, it would take over 20 years for all to return home (to be fair, there's actually 4 flights a week I believe -- so merely 5 years). This is a de-facto blocking of citizens from returning.
And no, you can't just "wait" a month. As a sibling commenter noted, the best they could find were October tickets.
Does that mean that students on invalidated visas will get a free government flight home, or that they won't be deported?
A month is not enough if all the tickets have been snatched by scalpers and you can't afford the markup they ask for.
Is scalping airline tickets actually something that happens? I’d assume no since you have to provide the name of the passenger when reserving.
Yes.
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/fpdKM1iJBr0as6osJ2e0Tw
李慧早就决定回国，但是她两次订到的“便宜机票”，航班都被取消了。现在，她已经订不到低于4万元价格的机票了，有可能订到的机票，价格几乎都在“6万出头”。当然，这些机票都在一些黄牛手里，她身边不少想回国的中国留学生，都是通过黄牛高价订票。
Li Hui decided to return home long ago, but the "cheap tickets" she had booked twice had their flights cancelled. Now, she can't find any ticket with a price of less than 40,000 yuan. The tickets she might be able to book are almost all from 60,000 upwards. Of course, these tickets are in the hands of some scalpers. Many Chinese students around her who want to return to China are booking high-price tickets through scalpers.
Doesn’t sound correct. If an airline cancels a flight, they will generally reschedule you for the next possible flight.
The article is from June. Those were flights she had booked in February/April for May/June. They got canceled because of the pandemic. Same for the next flight. And all others after that. The airline couldn't reschedule her for the next flight because it wasn't flying.
Airlines don't follow SOP when they are on the verge of bankruptcy and needs $ any way it can.
I've changed the name in the ticket after the fact and it hasn't been a problem. They do it for national security purposes, not to prevent scalping.
That's very rare on low priced tickets. Are low priced tickets a national security threat?
> The EU is currently debating exemptions for spouses who have been separated, so I doubt they have exemptions for students.
Presumably, most students kicked out of the US would fly to their home countries where their status isn't "student".
> who thinks it's a great idea [...]
Most of Trump's voter base, sadly. Less immigrants in the U.S. is the only metric they care about.
It's not leadership.
Only possible good thing I can see from a US student perspective is that it's now more reasonable to go to grad school in US. Many programs in STEM have gotten out of hand with the number of the foreign graduate students--in some programs the number is over 80% [1]. I think this has led to the US educating many persons who later leave the country for visa issues. Also, some of the competition to get in can be considered bogus: near perfect GRE math which measures high school level math skills is hardly germane for research.
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2017/10/11/foreign...
> I think this has led to the US educating many persons who later leave the country for visa issues
I’ve never been to the US but, if this is the problem then wouldn’t it be better to make it easier for people to stay also after they have finished their degrees? If the goal is to have a lot of highly educated people in the US I mean.
I agree. I'd like to see more educated foreigners stay in the US through a more sensible immigration policy. But another way to attempt to fix the weird brain-drain is by controlling who is getting the education.
USA educates more international students (by far) than any other country. I think the goal of policies like this is to prefer US students. But you're right that it would also be nice if foreign students had an easier time staying in USA after they graduate.
It wouldn't just be nice - it'd be smart. We could probably have more immigrant-owned business and immigrant-developed inventions of we made it easy for foreign born US graduates to stay. Both of which should add jobs to the economy and make the US more economically competitive.
I think everyone would support that kind of policy except where it would have an adverse effect on American students. The goal of policies like this are to promote USA students admission to higher education over foreign students. But the reality is that foreign student tuition is a huge money-maker. So USA students are at a disadvantage in the admissions process.
I highly doubt that's what will happen. How many of these programs are dependent on foreign tuition? These aren't efficient institutions, mind you, so a downturn could lead to collapse of the weakest ones, leading to increase domestic competition at the remaining ones.
How many of these programs are dependent on foreign tuition?
At least some are. And this is nothing new.
When I went to college decades ago, I and a bunch of my friends got kicked out of our university at the end of the semester because it was over its legislatively-mandated limit for out-of-state students. The university had loaded up on lucrative international students in previous years, and when the ratio was changed, people like me got the heave-ho.
The problem is that we have to remove the greed from the university administrators. But good luck with that.
My comment was only considering graduate students, whom I think, are the group most affected by this change. Graduate students in STEM usually don't pay tuition--their lab pays the fees for them to be enrolled.
International Graduate students, even in STEM, are mostly Masters candidates paying extremely high fees.
https://cgsnet.org/master%E2%80%99s-or-doctorate-internation...
Well yes, of course, international students pay significantly more than in state. Money makes the university go round, that’s how the Confucius Institutes got started.
You may be interested in reading the president's thoughtful policy proposal here: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/12802099460853391...
> see anything that is to be gained from this
Cruelty. Being publicly cruel.
Are any universities even offering in person classes? I doubt it. This seems designed/intended to chase away immigrants.
> This seems designed/intended to chase away immigrants.
No, it's designed to chase away non-immigrant student visa holders.
But it's part of a broader set of policies designed to make the US hostile to foreigners, whether current visa holders, non-immigrants visa applicants, or immigrant visa applicants.
Or, it could be designed to encourage universities to hold in person classes.
In particular, to pressure those universities that have business models relying on foreign student tuition.
Many universities are planning to have at least some of their classes be in-person this fall. My daughter was just admitted to Seattle U, and they expect her to be moving into her dorm in about a month. I am mostly expecting this to be cancelled, though.
> Nonimmigrant F-1 and M-1 students attending schools operating entirely online may not take a full online course load and remain in the United States ... Active students currently in the United States enrolled in such programs must depart the country or take other measures ...
This is going to ruin so many lives. An example of how this could result is significant hardship for international students is the case of Iranian students.
Iran has mandatory military service for all male citizens ages 18 and over. People who are students can defer their military service until their studies have concluded. If the studies are outside of Iran, the temporary exemption from military service for the purpose of education status allows students to be present in Iran for a maximum of 3 months per year (approximate length of the summer intermission, so students can have some vacation and visit their family). Stays longer than that are deemed to be at odds with being an active student in a foreign institution, so if a student is present in Iran for longer than that, they are deemed to no longer be a student—the exemption is invalidated and the person has to go through two years of military service before they are allowed to leave the country again.
Any male Iranian student who is forced to leave the US due to this directive is effectively expelled from their program. I am sure this is not a unique situation. There are likely many other such edge cases that affect certain demographics of students. I hope they reverse their decision, otherwise so many careers will end before they even begin.
I am not going to defend the Iranian regime or military services in general, which I think is a waste of time for all parties. But is it the role of the US immigration regime to circumvent military duties in foreign countries?
My point was that there are likely hundreds of edge cases that ICE did not think about (or care about) when they decided to change the rules. When you create rules carelessly, people fall through the cracks. ICE has now created a massive crack many will likely fall through.
Military service is just one of such cracks, there are likely many many more. Just imagine how many people are likely to lose their scholarships (that is their only way to pay for the program they are in) because this ruling triggers a clause in the scholarship terms, how many mature students with families now have to take their children out of school and out of country for who knows how long and what the effect of this on those children is going to be, ...
Have the rules been changed though? These on-line education restrictions (known as "Full course of study") had been in the law for a while, see 8 CFR 214.2(f)(6)(G) [1]. What ICE has done is a temporary suspension of enforcement. Now they just resume normal operation. You could argue they had to suspend it for longer but accusing them of changing rules seems bizarre as what you actually want is for them to change rules (because current rules say that F-1 students cannot do full-time on-line classes).
For F-1 students enrolled in classes for credit or classroom hours, no more than the equivalent of one class or three credits per session, term, semester, trimester, or quarter may be counted toward the full course of study requirement if the class is taken on-line or through distance education and does not require the student's physical attendance for classes, examination or other purposes integral to completion of the class. An on-line or distance education course is a course that is offered principally through the use of television, audio, or computer transmission including open broadcast, closed circuit, cable, microwave, or satellite, audio conferencing, or computer conferencing. If the F-1 student's course of study is in a language study program, no on-line or distance education classes may be considered to count toward a student's full course of study requirement.
That is true. But the difference is that students used to have a choice (online vs in person classes), and now most don't.
To be honest, there is no purpose for most students to be in the US if they're taking online classes. But there are a lot of edge cases (e.g., students doing research in the lab, graduate students with a research stipend, students in economical hardship with a part time job, etc.) I wonder whether there will be exceptions for them.
Classes are the smallest part of college.
Why would someone lose a scholarship for attending their online-only school?
This isn't even related to the military service. This is related to making a promise to someone when giving them a VISA and then breaking that promise for no good reason.
There is literally no reason for ICE to be doing this.
I think one is not the same as the other. The intention is to get an education, the benefit is avoiding Iranian military service. That analysis has no basis in federal law, so no, it’s not the governments responsibility.
I feel so bad for my Iranian brothers and sisters :(.
The IRR keeps losing more and more value, which means if they were getting help from home it keeps getting more and more expensive to be able to afford to live here.
And then on top of that they have to worry about piece of shits running this country that give no regard to their lives.
the u. s. is not the only country in the world
Do you understand the amount of money spent to be able to immigrate to a country? Or to be able to pick a country to do your studies in?
It literally sucks life savings of families.
As some have pointed out elsewhere, the idea that "they can just do the courses remotely from their home country" has some issues:
- live classes may happen in the middle of the night
- tools like GSuite are blocked in China
- internet connection quality varies
Given the amount of revenue foreign students bring in, this seems like the admin is using access to those students as a lever to force schools to reopen prematurely.
There's also the sad reality that for many students, it's not possible to work unimpeded on school work at home. For many, university is the a psychological retreat from home circumstances that are distracting at best the best of times and downright abusive at the worst. It doesn't matter if your Internet is solid if you can't actually focus on the work.
Post quals grad students are going to be hard pressed to get a PCR machine, vivarium, or fluoroscope up and running in their parent's house. You know, machines vital to figuring out covid vaccines.
I've no idea how most of them will get any quality lab-bench research done. It pretty much nukes them.
Campuses are going to be closed in the Fall. Nobody is going to have access to those things.
Limited lab access is a lot easier to safely implement with shift reservations and people looking after each others projects than classes, so I'd expect that to happen to a degree. At least some universities here in Germany already do allow occasional lab access if needed, with appropriate precautions.
You seem to be very convinced of this. At my institution, research activities has resumed for the past month (albeit with restrictions on occupancy).
I know a few grad students at 'closed' campuses currently. Though the admin says the labs are off limits, the PIs are turning blind eyes to it. The labs are effectively open.
At the school where I work, they disabled key card access for everyone campuswide. You need to special permission to have them unlock it for a limited time period to get in.
Of course a few old buildings still use regular keys so people can sneak in potentially.
> Though the admin says the labs are off limits
so the labs are closed then, despite your anecdotal evidence to the contrary.
I mean, they are closed, but a lot of people seem to come in anyway and do things just as before, so I am told.
Define that how would wish to.
Nothing is stopping students from living in their own apartments for online school.
That last point seems particularly apt. I didn't consider that, but maybe should have, it explains this decision in the context of Trump's desire to punish people into getting what he wants.
the money they save on rent they can use on getting a kick ass internet connection. internet is pretty good in most countries if you are willing to pay up. GSuite is blocked, means use word online? not insurmountable barriers
You pretend like you have solved things here, clearly you have not. Please stop trolling
Most relevant part:
"Active students currently in the United States enrolled in such programs must depart the country or take other measures, such as transferring to a school with in-person instruction to remain in lawful status. If not, they may face immigration consequences including, but not limited to, the initiation of removal proceedings."
I wonder if the Harvard decision today will be modified in response to this. I imagine their international students, especially in graduate studies, must be highly impacted.
Probably international students will now attend in person classes and others will be fully remote. Weird to even think that such drastic changes are all happening during a pandemic.
Agree. I wonder what is the rationale for all this. Other than plain old xenophobia.
Will this reduce pandemic ? No, it will incentivize colleges to offer in-person classes promoting COVID.
Will this reduce students on non-immigration visas ? Not sure it does (students might find in-person classes somewhere). Some students might just say 'fuck it' and study elsewhere. Maybe that's good for them.
Will this reduce unemployment? Maybe. But I'm doubtful. Most F1 students are barred from working off campus other than internships, and I doubt on-campus work and internships make a dent in unemployment.
Plain old xenophobia? How about double digit unemployment rate? We can debate the means. But I can understand why Trump would want to cut down on immigration.
Now a good question is whether there will be unemployment among highly educated people with STEM degrees, who were in hot demand only a few weeks ago, and if not this is counterproductive. But every economic indicator seems to point at a major recession (beyond a technical recession during the lockdown). I would assume everyone will be impacted.
You may not know this, but graduate research assistants make less than what many Americans get in unemployment benefits. You are basically getting cutting-edge research work done by non-immigrants for that money. Do you think it is more beneficial for your country to pay a US citizen for doing nothing?
I am a GRA and I work on translational research in neuroimaging and data science. With my career prospects dwindling, I'm considering leaving US if the president gets reelected.
Unemployment payments are temporary, not 4 years.
Yes, once you get employed you keep making even more.
Students on F1 visas are not immigrants, and in general can’t stay after their studies are over (with a limited-time exception via OPT status), unless they get a different type of visa.
All my friends who emigrated to the US did so from an F1 visa (followed by a work visa sometime during their first year of employment). Of course it is a source of immigration.
+1. I believe a lot of (if not most) people come to the US not only for the education system, but to have a good chance of getting the green card and eventually citizenship.
I don't think that's bad for any party - the US gets access to very smart and enterprising young people (and can grow the edu market), and those people get access to the US.
Making studying and converting F1=H1b->green card process harder is going to have significant drawbacks, such as
* shrinking edu market will itself negatively affect the economy. * Now that FAANG etc have seen that work-from-home can really work out, I expect ever more hiring outside of the US in the future. That doesn't mean that jobs will be opening up in the US. * Harder to find qualified people in the US. [Remaining US workers in STEM can anticipate ever higher wages?]
These drawbacks will take some time to materialize, so it's possible to use this argument (less immigration == more work) during campaigning and deal with the fallout later (or pawn it off to the democrats. Or silently walk back the rules after the election).
Maybe one good thing to come out of this change would be the need to press for domestic STEM education more and earlier.
I think the shrinking edu market is going to exit universities that probably didn’t add much value in the first place. So it might not be a bad thing in the end.
And I agree that we need more STEM education though I have my doubts in the capacity of the population to “upgrade” intellectually. Lots of people aren’t STEM material whatever means you mobilise.
Which is why, long term, the immigration of smart and skilled STEM students is a good thing.
But I really see the next 2-3 years as really tough, probably worse than 2008. And I can see why the administration would try to remove any additional pressure on the job market in such exceptional times.
>How about double digit unemployment rate?
How many jobs are going to be lost at universities because of this?
what exactly do students on F and M visas have to do with employment? they can't work to begin with.
International students attend classes in separate rooms, looking at live video feed.
What a mess. There will be schools that have confusing plans, ICE won't quite get that student A is in program B that followed plan C and now they switched to D so something something. Just another piece of terror for all those students to deal with, worrying about immigration confusion.
The students may not have that choice. Professors are equally worried about their health and that of their students and are trying hard not to be in classrooms.
There's no perfect solution and many conflicting needs.
1. The health needs of students and professors, some part of them are vulnerable, plus the normal health considerations of covid-19
2. The learning needs of students, plenty may struggle to succeed in an entirely online world. It might be required by reality, but there will be new difficulties for people.
3. Financial needs of the school - they still have to pay for classrooms, office space, dorms, the campus, even if they aren't using it right then
4. Financial needs of the student - they might have financial aid from the school or other sources, how does it apply when the school is remote or unclear, what if things change, what do you pay, what does your scholarship cover?
5. And now immigration clarity. That student might need to be in the us for other reasons - if it's grad school, your relationship with your advisor used to be crucial. Now you'll never have a chance to see them in person. No one wants to be terrified of being deported for violating a rule or the govt confused about their status. The school might close down with little notice, what happens to that person who can't afford to fly back overseas?
This has become so absolutely stupid at this point. I can even maybe understand this for future admissions. But from the messaging it looks like they want to deport students who came after a valid visa process. This is just absurd.
I hope unis do a hybrid thing like CMU, otherwise it is a lot of pain for students who are already here.
This reads like "open your campuses or go fuck yourself". International students make up 6% of all the students in the US with certain institutions probably averaging very large numbers of international students.
This is the sad current state of affairs in this country. A pandemic became a political weapon.
At Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, currently ranked the third best business school in the country, 32% of students are international.
https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/programs/full-time-mba/...
I don't see anything to be gained from this call other than solidifying the current administration political stance. Unless I'm missing something, this seems to be an incredibly destructive decision creates little to no benefits to the American society... For instance, that "6% of all students" alone contributes a great deal to the US economy:
> According to the Commerce Department, international students contributed $45 billion to the U.S. economy in 2018.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/506072-ice-tells...
This is lunacy. Also likely will fail in court since it doesn’t follow proper procedures - something the recent Supreme Court DACA ruling pointed out. These nitwits are cruel and incompetent. But all of this has damaged America’s higher education system and its attractiveness to foreign students for the long term. Many an economics PhD thesis will model GDP lost from doing everything in our power to scare away educated immigrants.
> These nitwits are cruel and incompetent.
This is why I'm afraid of Pence getting President in the event Trump catches corona or has a heart attack or whatever. Or for whatever the Republicans put up after Trump. Because right now the only thing that keeps this administration from doing massive unrepairable damage is their own incompetence because Trump took a bunch of yes men as his advisors and Cabinet.
A government filled by someone with the malice of the current Republicans and the competence of actual professionals? Good night democracy.
This also pressures universities to have in person classes regardless of the safety of that practice. Universities want to support their students, and indeed one of the draws of many university programs for international students is the entry into the visa system for employment in the U.S. One effect of this policy is to push universities to NOT be in the online-only category, even if it means risking lives by a policy the school would have otherwise preferred to avoid.
I don’t understand how universities think they can get away with charging full tuition to students while offering online only classes. I would be so furious if I was stuck in this situation of trying to graduate on time but being scammed out of the whole experience I worked so hard to get in to.
If the schools feel so strongly against reopening they should waive their tuition for anyone already enrolled to attend online and close enrollment to new students, and give anyone the option to defer if desired.
I don’t blame ICE for not extending their exemption past the summer for online classes. The visa does not allow for online courses. Schools are not making an evidence based decision here, and should not expect special treatment if they aren’t willing to offer actual classes. I hope the students who are suing will prevail in court for unjust enrichment.
Tuition is a consensual transaction. Students can withdraw if they don't like what the school is offering. How is it unjust to sell something people want? Remember, tuition is for the diploma. The education is already available online for free, or for much cheaper at a local community college, in almost every case.
> I don’t blame ICE for not extending their exemption past the summer for online classes.
1. difficulty of returning home 2. risk of pandemic spread by returning home 3. internet connectivity issues 4. timezone issues 5. software availability issues 6. home suitability for studying 7. ....
"I don't blame ICE". Destroy ICE. This is appalling.
When I became a citizen 3 years ago, I told people that one motivation was that I was very very slightly afraid of Trump even though I was a white european permanent resident of 28 years. It's only taken 3 years to get to where I'd say "not imminently but genuinely afraid" for that sort of immigration status.
The schools really should have thought through of all this before canceling classes on all their students who depend so much on attending them.
There’s no excuse for outright canceling classes. Classes can absolutely be held safely, if these universities simply chose to invest in the training, procedures, and equipment necessary to do so.
Instead they chose to bank their tuition payments and setup a Zoom call.
This is not a new policy, student visas have never allowed for online classes, and the universities certainly knew this. I think the blame pretty clearly lies with schools who decided to close up shop.
> There’s no excuse for outright canceling classes. Classes can absolutely be held safely,
Why do so few people actually charged with making this decision agree with you?
And US college is about a lot more than classes.
Probably because they didn't consider the downside to their decision. They don't empathize with the students who can't possibly learn the material without a classroom environment, or for those who worked and dreamed of attending that University for years only to be sent the bill without most of the benefit. To say nothing of those students who literally don't have a (safe) place to live lined up besides being on-campus.
The people making the decision are Administrators who get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to cash the tuition checks and did the calculus that they could shut down "for the safety of their students and faculty" and still cash those checks.
> And US college is about a lot more than classes.
Absolutely true. I'd say classes are no more than half of what you're paying for. Harvard and Princeton just announced today that many students will be returning in the fall, but still taking classes online. They want freshman and juniors to return in the fall, and sophomores and seniors to return in the spring.
If the decision was simply based on the actual data, the reality is that the student body is much more at risk from the drugs and alcohol on campus than they are at risk from SARS-CoV-2. More to the point; if you take a holistic view, the social, economic, physical and mental welfare of their student body is massively degraded overall by canceling on-campus housing and classes versus by holding them.
What about the students that can't go to class because they're with family or friends that are at risk? What about the immigrants who came here to get an education that are now being kicked out because of the administration's cruelty? Why are you encouraging something that would exacerbate the spread of the coronavirus and celebrating forcing people to travel back home and potentially spread the virus cross country?
Come on. This is a ridiculous thing to defend.
So you agree there's a lot more than classes, but think that the claim that classes can be held means that schools should just stay in regular mode.
I don't disagree with you about the cash flow. My disagreement is with ICE telling students they cannot remain here just because schools went online-only.
>Nonimmigrant F-1 students attending schools operating under normal in-person classes are bound by existing federal regulations. Eligible F students may take a maximum of one class or three credit hours online.
This pretty nuts. From what I understand, even schools that are allowing everyone on campus will have a majority of their classes online or have them be up to the discretion of professors.
This may keep the vast majority of international students out of the US.
> schools that are allowing everyone on campus will have a majority of their classes online
That would make it not a "school[] operating under normal in-person classes" but rather a "school[] adopting a hybrid model." No?
A vast majority of international students already admitted into the fall semester are already looking for alternatives because 1) coronavirus situation in the US and 2) US embassies being shut down in many affected countries.
I had hoped my university (Brown) would follow Harvard's suit and err on the side of remote instruction this coming year. With this policy announcement, the chances of that dwindle.
Brown had made special accommodations to allow their international students to remain in dorms over this summer. By eliminating extraneous travel, these accommodations were in the best interest of both these students and the general public. Who is served by expelling them!?
> Who is served by expelling them!?
The nativist agenda.
This will further encourage universities to offer in-person instruction. Paying top dollar for a sub-par online education is not what students are after.
Chinese students will be safer in China. Bad news for US universities that built dorms and counted on the cash from foreign students. Now they can't come. Many families viewed studying in the US as a pathway to eventual residence. That's gone, at least until there's a new administration.
> until there's a new administration
197 days...
the clown single handedly destroyed this country
Can someone offer a sensible reason for this policy? I am trying to look for anything that would make it not look like an outright political decision, but I can't.
As Speaker Pelosi said: Don’t let a good crisis go to waste.
If I were a school I'd be finding as many possible loopholes as possible.
One minute a semester in-person instruction per course, for starters.
*with the instructor being remote :)
I’m completely in favor of this guerilla approach to fighting stupid knee jerk policy changes.
This is intended to punish foreign students - either move to an unsafe university or get out and reset your visa. With a government that’s decided to block visa applications arbitrarily.
Alternatively universities have to reopen to people so that it looks like they agree with the absurd demands of the current administration to open earlier than they should.
And this is how you piss off a bunch of 18-23 year olds who may have had foreign friends impacted by this. Maybe this gets the youth vote out?
OTOH maybe their friends couldn’t get in because the spot went to a student in a visa
Do you think they're not already pissed?
I wonder how they feel about foreigners now working from home...
Any prospective international student reading this should REALLY reconsider education in the US. The administration is using everyone as pawns in a massive game of vote pandering.
It's hard enough to study hard and achieve goals. Why come here where you will be treated like unwanted foreigners at best and asylees who should be arrested at worst?
My partner has been struggling with the US immigration system her entire stay here. With this administration things have gone even further downhill. They're violently, cruelly dedicated to the idea of shutting down immigration and dying a slow intellectual death.
International students should simply avoid America all together. There are too many risks, consequences, and pitfalls to make it worth wild.
Sadly I made that decision few years ago and I regret it. I came into Canada, and from what I see, industry and research is not even close to USA.
> Sadly I made that decision few years ago and I regret it. I came into Canada, and from what I see, industry and research is not even close to USA.
All the research and industry in the US is shattered. Even if it isn't, the administration is making sure it won't be accessible to you.
Don't have a view a America with rose tinted eyes. The America of the past is gone, all vanished in the last 4 years.
is there at least a countdown clock somewhere that marks the remaining time until this is challenged in federal district court?
#abolish_ice
It's likely continued xenophobia from (the one non-family senior advisor to Trump):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Miller_(political_advi...
My hunch:
Trump hates universities. So he’ll do anything to ensure universities are on life support. This is a great way for him to bring the uncertainties to follow his orders.
This is a trick.
Trump is telling universities to open up for in person classes or lose all their international students, who will mostly choose universities that have in-person classes over online classes after ICE's ruling.
This is a diabolical move, arm twisting universities into opening up or else losing international students - a major sources of revenue.
I doubt this decision is coming from the WH. It's a very simple calculation made by an agency with different priorities from what might be represented here in this forum.
You have thousands of foreigners, a large portion of which might not be in the country, waiting to return to the US to continue their studies. Many of those countries don't even allow US travelers to arrive at this time. Everybody is urging for caution, but that there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of individuals preparing to arrive back here, with possible infections, is something an agency might be concerned about. So naturally, why not prevent this travel from happening in the first place with a policy like that?
Of course it's a heavy handed approach, but so are the lock-downs and closed schools. So we go to great length trying to prevent the spread, we close schools for over 4 month, and some don't even want schools open in the fall, but somehow an influx of half a million students is something nobody should be concerned about?
Those are valid discussions to be had. Assuming right away that this is a way to force universities to open is not a very genuine way of thinking. You cannot encourage full online classes for health reasons, and applaud that on Monday, and on Tuesday complain we don't allow students from all over the world to return just to sit in front of a computer.
Everybody is laser focused on these case numbers, and some states will close schools due to high case counts in the fall, impacting millions of families. If you support that, you should probably also support any measures possible to keep case counts low, including discouraging international travel.
> Active students currently in the United States enrolled in such programs must depart the country or take other measures, such as transferring to a school with in-person instruction to remain in lawful status. If not, they may face immigration consequences including, but not limited to, the initiation of removal proceedings.
Seems like someone didn't read the OP.
I read that. And again, this is a policy. You are not thinking this through, in my opinion.
Think about this in a way an accountable official would think.
Most universities don't know what they will do yet in the fall. If you make an exemption for people who are currently already in the country, what would that solve? It would artificially pick those students over those who happened to travel home for the summer. You can't do that. That would probably make such a rule unlawful. So you have to craft such a "heavy handed" rule in such a way that it doesn't have loop holes that can be exploited. Don't think lawyers didn't review this exemption for weeks.
And my earlier points still stand.
I'm not trying to convince people that this rule is all that good. But understand where it comes from, and don't think it's all because of a particular administration. There is certainly logic to this rule. You may not agree with it, but I might not agree with closed schools either.
> Think about this in a way an accountable official would think.
No they wouldn't. I've held various (small scale) public facing offices before and this isn't how I would think.
Thinking of the consequences of your actions is a very important thing.
> If you make an exemption for people who are currently already in the country, what would that solve?
Decrease the damage done?
> So you have to craft such a "heavy handed" rule in such a way that it doesn't have loop holes that can be exploited. Don't think lawyers didn't review this exemption for weeks.
They probably didn't. We've seen this administration do bullshit orders before. This isn't a new one. Remember when they banned green card holders from coming to the US and there was chaos for 12-24 hours until they came and said whoops those are exempted?
> And my earlier points still stand.
Your wrong points do stand, yes.
> But understand where it comes from
I do. It's bullshit.
You are not addressing any of my points with any substance. But you have to resort to cursing twice.
The reason the other commentator thinks your post is bullshit because it doesn't address the clause in the order that requires F-1 students currently already in the country to leave if classes are online-only. This order is not done by some agency being thoughtful about covid19, it's about using the pandemic to put out more xenophobia that the WH will more than approve.
Thank you. I just didn't see a point in discussing this further.
Isolationism and enforcing an extra set of standards on __others__ is always disgusting to me. Especially when we've been failing at every step of the way of this pandemic.
True. You'll see later that the commenter simultaneously holds the view that covid is overblown but also that we need to move heaven and earth to save schoolchildren, while I bet they're in full support of Trump's asinine "SCHOOLS MUST OPEN!" tweet.
But I am addressing it. You cannot make circumstancial exemptions like "if you are currently in the country" to a merit based visa. That way the whole thing can be struck down in court.
And again, we are negatively impacting the entire population with very draconian rules and lock downs. Heavy handedness all around. But somehow none essential foreign influx is just fine? They can come if they have to, clearly.
People are really measuring all this by two standards. If you think it's okay for citizens to be impacted by necessary lock downs, parents not working due to young children staying home, but foreign students are cozy in their home office?
You're being disingenuous. They already had an exception through Spring and Summer 2020. No one batted an eyelid. They're removing the exception they had to a stricter by-the-book enforcement for no particular reason except to use the opportunity to kick out more foreigners. I see that as a plainly xenophobic motivation.
> People are really measuring all this by two standards. If you think it's okay for citizens to be impacted by necessary lock downs, parents not working due to young children staying home, but foreign students are cozy in their home office?
I think this phrasing is completely devoid of empathy. Students in a foreign country typically having taken big loans and paying through their teeth are in a much more vulnerable position than citizens. There's no reason to compare one set of circumstances with another.
At the end, universities will be forced to offer some portion of their courses as in-person which will only make the pandemic worse. Do you think these measures are making the country safer if that happens?
> I see that as a plainly xenophobic motivation.
Why is that? The pandemic drags on. Half of the country remains under severe restrictions. Schools and summer camps are still mostly none-existent. Why would a country continue with exemptions when similar privileges are not granted by many originating countries?
> Students ... paying through their teeth ...
Do you have any sources for those students typically paying through their teeth?
While other countries close their borders to visa holders due to the pandemic, we don't do that in most cases. Only if your particular institution doesn't need you to be here. This rule is not void of fairness. It's compromising a difficult situation.
I'm not naïve about the bigger picture, which certainly doesn't make this any easier. We have a gravy train setup for higher education, with students paying full tuition, often displacing the local population. We have higher ed with signaling power to schools across the country. We have political disagreements with the biggest origin country. And we have a pandemic.
If there is just one student saved from coming here, that would've caused an elementary school to go into a month long covid19 shutdown in September, then this by-the-book enforcement is worth it to me. I would never assume a University would adjust their attendance plans for a semester just for foreign students alone. That wouldn't be very rational, or would it be?
* https://www.statista.com/statistics/233880/international-stu...
* https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/...
I don't understand why responses of other countries weigh into the US's response. There are good reasons to have restrictions, there's no good reason not to continue to relax their strict interpretation.
> Do you have any sources for those students typically paying through their teeth?
Not at the moment. I encourage you to read up on where funding for US universities typically comes from. I also would encourage you to try to be empathetic towards an immigrant student in this country.
> We have a gravy train setup for higher education, with students paying full tuition, often displacing the local population.
This is conveniently `othering` framing. Displacing the local population? The ones whose jobs and livelihoods depend entirely on the college towns economy? I'm afraid you're picking and choosing facts and painting a narrative that either assuages your discomfort with what's happening, or worse, betrays a complete lack of empathy.
> If there is just one student saved from coming here, that would've caused an elementary school to go into a month long covid19 shutdown in September, then this by-the-book enforcement is worth it to me. I would never assume a University would adjust their attendance plans for a semester just for foreign students alone. That wouldn't be very rational, or would it be?
I'm sorry, it's hard to engage with this sort of reductive black and white thinking while the same administration still doesn't have a national mask mandate and is still planning to have the RNC convention in a place like Florida. Occam's razor suggests that the simpler explanation, far more consistent with the administration's past actions on DACA, asylum seekers, and recently, skilled immigrant workers -- xenophobia. You really have to cherry pick a convoluted narrative to avoid seeing this.
I think you're being nakedly disingenuous considering your past comments such as this:
> For 2.5 month now we are always two weeks away from a catastrophe with mass graves and hospital parking lots full of dead people. And then two weeks pass and nothing really happens. Reality just doesn't seem to square up with the fearmongering.
And now, even if one person might have caused a chain event you want to shut out potentially close to a million kids looking to educate themselves?
I appreciate having a discussion. It's very simple to to paint an opinion as xenophobic. I think that is too easy. And a sign of our times to cancel people, opinions and debates.
If people are concerned about half a million adults educating themselves, than please also be concerned about 100 million people of a country trying to make it through a difficult time. Black and white thinking is all there seems to be these days. Either we close schools and businesses, or we don't. Either we allow the beach, or we don't. But whenever it suits we put on our refined thinking hat and try to think about all the consequences.
If a person supports closing schools, closing businesses and to not have political gatherings, all of which impacts hundreds of millions of people in the US alone, but finds excuses for exemptions, that for me would be a convoluted narrative. You quote an earlier comment of mine. Which is still valid. I made it two weeks ago and look around you. Are we accommodating peoples lives, all of them, or are we not. If you don't want to accommodate a gym instructor, nail salon owner, or working parents with what they need, its hard to get the policies you want, or the country you want. You want to prevent the spread with heavy handed measures, ruining peoples lives, and at the same time walk a fine line for expat students and protesters? You can't do both at the same time.
It is simple to paint certain opinions xenophobic when they are! This is not another instance of culture wars under which the right is so fond of painting themselves as victims.
> If people are concerned about half a million adults educating themselves, than please also be concerned about 100 million people of a country trying to make it through a difficult time. Black and white thinking is all there seems to be these days. Either we close schools and businesses, or we don't. Either we allow the beach, or we don't. But whenever it suits we put on our refined thinking hat and try to think about all the consequences.
Absolutely hogwash! You think the folks outraged by this aren't equally outraged by the nonsensical way in which Congress is acting towards social nets in this country (the 100 million or so struggling while the 1% get even wealthier)? That's why I put out your earlier comment because it reeks of bad faith arguments. You've not put forth one coherent good faith argument in all the discussions we've had.
> If a person supports closing schools, closing businesses and to not have political gatherings, all of which impacts hundreds of millions of people in the US alone, but finds excuses for exemptions, that for me would be a convoluted narrative. You quote an earlier comment of mine. Which is still valid. I made it two weeks ago and look around you. Are we accommodating peoples lives, all of them, or are we not. If you don't want to accommodate a gym instructor, nail salon owner, or working parents with what they need, its hard to get the policies you want, or the country you want. You want to prevent the spread with heavy handed measures, ruining peoples lives, and at the same time walk a fine line for expat students and protesters? You can't do both at the same time.
Wrong once more. I'm employing empathy in both scenarios. Your solution is to view things in a black and white manner. Instead of suggesting that we close businesses and incentivize them to keep things safe for themselves and others, through expanded social safety nets like Europe is doing, so that they may reopen quicker, you paint it as a black and white open or close. Your opinions come from the same place, that of abject selfish thinking devoid of empathy. You want things to be open because the alternative, the 1% of the country taking on their fair load during these difficult times to help support the rest is unfathomable. Then, you look at a scenario that again requires empathy and placing others needs ahead of your own and choose to deploy a "safety from covid" narrative which is an awful convenient fig leaf around xenophobia.
You brought up protestors which suggests to me that you're not coming from a place of having a reasonable argument. You've got your victim narrative, everything else be damned. I pity your inability to get out of the narrow republican talking points and I wish you luck getting to a more empathetic and genuine place of discourse.