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ICE changes exemptions for foreign students taking online courses in Fall 2020

ice.gov

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Re: ICE changes exemptions for foreign students taking online courses in Fall 2020

#81

Post by detaro »

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #57
Balgair wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: ICE changes exemptions for foreign students taking online courses in Fall 2020

#82

Post by booboolayla »

pseingatl wrote: post #24

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.

>Many families viewed studying in the US as a pathway to eventual residence.

I thought they were coming for education? Now we're lamenting that they can't move their whole family to the US?

Re: ICE changes exemptions for foreign students taking online courses in Fall 2020

#83

Post by cm2187 »

smnrchrds wrote: post #43

> 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 Ir…

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?

Re: ICE changes exemptions for foreign students taking online courses in Fall 2020

#84

Post by aaomidi »

cm2187 wrote: post #83
smnrchrds wrote: post #43

> 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 Ir…

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?

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.

Re: ICE changes exemptions for foreign students taking online courses in Fall 2020

#85

Post by zaroth »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #61
zaroth wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

> 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.

Re: ICE changes exemptions for foreign students taking online courses in Fall 2020

#86

Post by aaomidi »

eiji wrote: post #70

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 caut…

> 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.

Re: ICE changes exemptions for foreign students taking online courses in Fall 2020

#87

Post by VWWHFSfQ »

Balgair wrote: post #79
VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Campuses are going to be closed in the Fall. Nobody is going to have access to those things.

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.

> Though the admin says the labs are off limits

so the labs are closed then, despite your anecdotal evidence to the contrary.

Re: ICE changes exemptions for foreign students taking online courses in Fall 2020

#88

Post by VWWHFSfQ »

mrlala wrote: post #64
VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Campuses and dormitories are closed though. Where are these people supposed to live?

They invented these things called apartments, they are pretty cool.

Do you think the average college town has enough apartments to house the 40,000+ students displaced by the closing of the university domitories?

Re: ICE changes exemptions for foreign students taking online courses in Fall 2020

#89

Post by vharuck »

wbazant wrote: post #67
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #46

Look, I know HN discussions try to keep things respectful, try to prevent flamewars, etc. but I say it's damn hard not to scream out loud "Fuck our current president" with BS like this. This is quite simply racist xenophobic pandering to his "base". International students don't have any control over whether a school is open in person or online, so why punish them like this. It's just evil.

I'm not sure, I think someone there has realised schools could essentially sell visas - if the course is fully online, the student just needs to pay for it, so they don't really need to be a real student. I'm all for opening or abolishing borders (and keep recommending No Wall They Can Build (2016), free as a pdf to people), but I'm not sure if this is simple or that thing you said.

A sensible solution would be to "grandfather" existing and in-process Visas, and then restrict new Visas by putting limits on total foreign students a school can accept. Base those limits on the number of foreign students each school had last year.

The proposal is like many others from this administration: blatant arm-twisting with an obvious intent but an obligatory excuse for the courts.

Re: ICE changes exemptions for foreign students taking online courses in Fall 2020

#90

Post by eiji »

aaomidi wrote: post #86
eiji wrote: post #70

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 caut…

> 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.

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