From USA Today:
“College student visa: Trump
admin bars new foreign students taking online classes in US”
New international college
students — incoming first-year undergraduates and graduate students and the
like — won't be allowed to come to the U.S. this fall if their courses are only
online, President Donald Trump's administration said in guidance issued Friday.
Students from abroad who had enrolled in
spring classes and already had student visas may remain in the country or come
back after summer vacation, even if their university is offering only digital
classes. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement's guidance comes after a bitter dispute between the nation’s
colleges and the federal government. It's a clarification of previous guidance,
but it's likely to prompt complaints and a scheduling scramble from some
universities. A previous rule from
Trump’s administration would have effectively barred international students
from the country if their university only offered digital classes because of
the coronavirus pandemic. Several universities, including Harvard and MIT,
filed a lawsuit trying to stop the order from being enforced. In an abrupt
reversal, the administration withdrew that rule after public backlash, before
ever defending it in court.
Traditionally — when there's not
a pandemic —international students have been barred from taking more than one
online course each semester. ICE allowed foreign students to stay in the U.S.
when classes went online in March, but has feuded with universities about what
to do about students now that colleges are again going online this fall, as the
pandemic persists. The guidance issued Friday makes it clear that new
international students looking to study in America will need to enroll in an
institution offering at least some in-person classes, even if their veteran
peers can take only online courses. ICE did say new international students
would likely be able to enroll at universities that were offering a mixture of
in-person and online classes, and they can stay in the country if their college
switches to online-only instruction in the middle of the semester. The guidance
will likely be disruptive to universities. These institutions often try to
recruit international students because they provide cultural diversity and
often pay full-price tuition. And as the
fall semester draws closer, more and more institutions have announced plans to
offer only digital instruction due to the continued spread of coronavirus
nationally. Given their population density — with crowded classrooms, dorms and
dining facilities — college campuses are especially susceptible to the rapid
transmission of the virus.
Some universities, including
Harvard and the University of Southern California, had already told their
first-year international students they would be unable to come to the U.S.
during the fall because of the ICE policy. They encouraged these students to
start online or to defer the beginning of their studies. "We are exploring
all legal options and are disappointed that the Department of Homeland Security
has not made a more affirmative policy statement to offer clarity and
flexibility to new students and universities during this global pandemic,"
read USC's guidance to new international students. Already, universities expected to see a drop
in new international student enrollment said Terry Hartle, a senior vice
president with the American Council on Education, because of delays tied to
embassy and consulate closures due to the pandemic. Even if they can get their
visas and passports arranged, students from places such as China, which sends
hundreds of thousands of its citizens to study in America, currently are barred
from entering the U.S. if they have spent time in their home country in the
last two weeks. So students would have to quarantine in a different country
before flying to the U.S. About 1.1
million international students studied in America during the 2018-19 academic
year, and they made up 5.5 % of the higher education population, according to
the Institute of International Education. International students contributed
nearly $45 billion to the U.S. economy in 2018, according to data from the U.S.
Department of Commerce.
^ This new rule is just going to
make things even more chaotic then they already are. ^
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