US to force out foreign students learning online
Those given online-only classes must go, with new arrivals barred
International students in US educational institutions will have to leave or be prohibited from entering the country if their schools move to online-only teaching in response to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, announced a new rule on Monday that students on F-1 (academic student) and M-1 (vocational student) visas may not remain in the country if they take a full online-only course load for the fall semester.
The US Department of State will not issue visas to students enrolled in schools that operate under an online-only course model, and US Customs and Border Protection will not permit the students to enter the country either, according to an ICE announcement.
ICE said students affected by the new policy can transfer to a school with in-person instruction to remain in lawful status, otherwise, they will be deemed to be in the US illegally and subject to deportation.
China is paying close attention to the US policies and will spare no effort to protect the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese students studying in the US, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on Tuesday.
Due to continuing concerns over the pandemic, many colleges and universities, such as Ohio State University, will be offering hybrid solutions combining both in-person instruction and online teaching for its fall semester.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty. There’s no deadline for departing the country, and it’s not clear how they are going to implement the new rule,” said Oleg Wang, a Chinese student majoring in civil engineering at Ohio State.
After the pandemic broke out and the situation kept worsening in the United States, many Chinese students left for home. Wang is one of those who decided to remain in the US to avoid the potential difficulty of reentering the country.
Two of his roommates returned to China in March. One of them has decided to take a gap year, and the other is still considering his options.
“If they take a gap year, they’ll have to reapply for a student visa, and they may face difficulties obtaining a visa then,” Wang said.
Liu Jinyi, president of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association at James Madison University in Virginia, said his group is waiting for the university’s response.
“Many students around me are anxious about the current situation,” said Liu. “Some Chinese students who choose to stay in the US now hope to enroll in the fall semester rather than having a one-year gap.”
Schools’ options
According to data from the Chronicle of Higher Education, which is tracking the reopening plans of nearly 1,100 colleges and universities, 60 percent of schools are planning to offer in-person instruction, 23 percent are looking at a hybrid model, and 8 percent are planning to be online-only.
At Stanford University, for instance, only freshmen, sophomores and new transfer students are invited to come to campus for the fall quarter. While in-person classes will be offered on campus, online classes will be “the default teaching option for the 2020-21 school year”.
Harvard announced on Monday that it would offer only online classes for 2020-21, becoming the latest institution to announce a virtual-only operating model for the fall semester.
More than 1.1 million foreign students have active student visas, according to the US Department of Homeland Security. China is the largest source of international students in the US in the 2018-19 year with 369,548 students enrolled in various programs, according to the Institute of International Education in New York.
“This new rule poses a major problem for my Chinese students,” said Stanley Kwong, an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco. All of his classes will be delivered online for the fall semester. The freshmen who are currently in China have enrolled in the online classes, while juniors and seniors were planning to return to the US before ICE announced the new rule.