International students, you’re welcome here
On Tuesday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agreed to rescind a controversial new policy on international students announced on July 6. Under the rescinded policy, international students on F-1 and M-1 visas, including most international undergraduate and graduate students, would have been required to leave the country if their fall 2020 course load was entirely online.
This ICE policy arrived in a tense moment where universities are facing a challenging choice for our students: how to balance the benefits of campus life and face-to-face learning against the risks of COVID-19. The decision to move courses online is not made lightly, and it’s a step taken solely to protect the health and safety of our students, faculty, staff and community.
While some schools, including several Texas A&M campuses, are planning for completely in-person instruction, others, including some of our most prominent institutions such as Harvard University, have already committed to a fully online fall semester for undergraduates. Yet more, including my own institution, Rice University, are tentatively planning a hybrid “dual-mode” approach with classes capable of being both online and face-toface; however, many classes over 25 students are to be offered online-only at Rice.
Under current fall 2020 plans, many international students at colleges across the country will have an entirely online fall 2020 semester to protect our communities and minimize the spread of COVID-19. Under the rescinded ICE policies, these same students would have had to leave the country.
The day this policy was announced, I experienced firsthand the chilling effect it had on the U.S. academic community. International members of my lab worriedly asked if they would have to abruptly halt their research and leave the country, losing critical momentum in their multiyear projects. Incoming graduate students, top scholars that we worked hard to recruit from across the globe, reached out to explore deferring their admission to Rice until the next year or indefinitely.
While the exact effects that this policy would have had remain unresolved, the message it was sending was clear: International students are not welcome here.
This message runs counter to the lived experience of researchers across our country. International students are an irreplaceable part of the campus fabric of U.S. universities, bringing unique perspectives, ideas and motivations to our dynamic institutions and fueling groundbreaking discoveries. Some of the most brilliant coworkers and collaborators I’ve had during my career have been from other countries and my lab would not be able to do cutting-edge cancer research without international scholars.
Many of the key results that have pushed U.S. science and competitiveness forward would have been impossible without international students’ contributions.
I was proud when Rice joined more than 200 other U.S. universities and colleges to legally challenge the new ICE regulations and I was overjoyed when these hurtful policies were overturned.
I hope the message U.S. universities send in this legal victory is clear: we will fight to support our international students, no matter the opponent. You are welcome here.