On wednesday, harvard university and the massachusetts institute of technology (MIT) said they had sued Trump government latest foreign student visa directive.
Under new rules released monday by the immigration and customs enforcement agency (ICE), foreign citizen are required to attend face-to-face classes to retain student visas. If their schoolwork is completed entirely online, visas for these students will be deprive.
A measure announced by the White House on Monday was seen as pressure to reopen universities and abandon more cautious measures recently announced by many universities aimed at slowing the spread of Coronavirus.
"The order was given without prior notice —— and its cruelty was second only to recklessness ," Harvard President Marco Lawrence S.Bacow told the university community. "
She continued :" It seems to be an intention to put pressure on colleges and universities to open their classrooms for face-to-face instruction this fall, without taking into account the health and safety of students, teachers and others. "
The directive, which will be finalized later this month, could significantly reduce the number of international students enrolled in the fall.
Immigration advocates say the new rules may deter many overseas students from going to u.s. universities, where they usually pay full tuition and are an important source of income for many colleges, given that the new crown pandemic has delayed visa applications.
But fearing that the campus could become a Coronavirus gathering area, many universities have taken steps to reduce exposure, from requiring masks in classrooms to limiting social activities to reducing the number of students invited back to school. Many universities have also announced a combination of different teaching methods, offering some face-to-face courses, but there are also a large number of courses to be completed online.
these changes may expose foreign students' visas, i.e. F-1 visas, to risk under the new regulations. At present, universities including Harvard University and the University of Southern California do not intend to allow foreign students to attend classes in person, and if they are already in the United States, they will be asked to return to their own country. Those overseas students will not be allowed to attend online courses in the United States.
The Acting Deputy minister of Homeland Security, Kenneth T.Cuccinelli, said in an interview with the CNN that government offered international students more flexibility than in the past, that they used to keep visas only for one online course, and that now they can take more online classes as long as some courses are conducted face-to-face.
"If they're not going to be students, or they' re going to be 100 percent online, then there's no reason they' re here ," Kuchneri said. They should go home and come back after the school opens the campus. "
