Trump government says a student from foreign nations must attend classroom sessions if their university permits, and they cannot continue in the country if their college moves online. The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency have discarded their earlier rule where they had permitted international college students to continue in the US as their institutions went online this spring.
The US administration has come up with a new declaration that international students must attend in-person classes this fall if their university offers them, and they should leave the country if their college adopts online learning. The only alternative they have is to find a new college that provides them with in-person classes.
US universities and colleges host over one million international students. According to government data, they contribute $45 billion to the US economy. The current decision taken by the US government risks substantial financial loss for several US universities. This is due to the reason that they were heavily dependent on full-tuition fee-paying international students. Several institutions will rely on online-only or online-heavy formats in the fall.
The American Council on Education said that the guidance released by the government regarding Immigration and Customs Enforcement is perplexing. The council added that US universities and their students need maximum flexibility for dealing with a quick-changing situation. Iron-clad rules formed by the government are not the solution for the huge uncertainty that the country is facing at present.
This damage is going to offend public colleges, where international students account for around thirty percent of total fee revenue. The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities said that the schools have to be agile as they adjust to these indefinite situations. The only thing that looks certain at present under the Trump administration is that international students are unnecessarily placed in a confusing state and will have to go to their home country mid-semester.
The Trump administration declared its decision without giving any justification or holding discussions with the education community. US government has taken unwelcoming decisions toward immigrants in the past as well. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the government has put a restriction on overseas students and online classes where the students were restricted from availing over three credit hours online each semester. In this way, the administration policy kept international students bound by their federal rules. This rule was implemented for students who were studying in colleges that offered normal in-person classes, or a hybrid mix of online and in-person.
The higher education institutions stopped conducting in-person classes from March due to the coronavirus pandemic. Since then, there has been confusion over how the academic scenario will be in the fall.
With the increase in the coronavirus infection throughout the country, more and more colleges have been surrendering that their students should get private online-based coaching this fall. Harvard and Princeton have been the most recent universities to have declared that a majority of their autumn classes will be online. Also, a majority of their students will stay away from campus. Princeton’s president, Christopher Eisgruber said that this pandemic has been the worst crisis to have affected Princeton.
Some people called it discrimination and also interrogated ICE’s drive to make this decision during uncertain times. The government should have been lenient towards foreign students. ICE announced that the agency is offering flexibility to people during this epidemic. The school is going to start soon and they agree to resume the judiciously balanced safeties executed by centralized regulations.
The president-elect of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, Allen Orr, said that there is no reason for implementing this rule. The issue is not understandable. Students are paying the tuition fee, they are registered in the school program, and doing similar things that their counterpart students are doing. A few scientists have used Twitter as their medium to voice their concerns and come up with innovative ideas around the regulation.
Source: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/
