Wisconsin international students, including 5% of UW-Milwaukee attendees, in limbo under ICE rule
After spending years studying at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Linh Nguyen, an international student from Vietnam, watched in recent days as his life fell into limbo.
Since the coronavirus hit, Nguyen has navigated the pandemic thousands of miles — and thousands of dollars — away from home. Vietnam’s border closed and so did UW-Madison’s campus. Classes moved online. He pressed on.
The 28-year-old MBA student came to UW-Madison because of the university’s well-regarded mechanical engineering program. He decided to stay and now is in his final year studying operations and technology management. He has an apartment leased for fall and a teaching assistantship lined up.
Now, Nguyen is one of 5,800 UWMadison students who could be forced to transfer, leave the country or face deportation under a new rule on student visas issued Monday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The rule prohibits students who are on F1 visas from taking all their courses online.
Thus, if a campus moves to all remote learning, its international students may be forced to leave the country.
“I was quite shocked and frustrated,” Nguyen said. “I went through this whole process legally. All the laws have been set out and I just followed them and I got my F1 visa. For them to suddenly come up with a reason to kick us out, just like that, it just doesn’t feel fair to me.”
The change presents a major
challenge to Wisconsin colleges, which are in the process of planning out what the fall will look like. Facing historic financial strain because of the pandemic, some colleges are now worried what the rule will mean for their efforts to enroll international students, who boost local economies and often pay full tuition.
Most Wisconsin colleges — including all UW schools — have told students they’ll be back on campus this fall, with some courses in-person and others online. Some major American campuses opted for online-only classes. Harvard and MIT have since sued over the new rule, saying “ICE threw Harvard and MIT— indeed, virtually all of higher education in the United States—into chaos.”
The ICE rule provides an exemption for students at universities on the hybrid model, provided the university certifies their students are learning under that
“We as schools are really trying to make an extra effort to make sure that students can equitably access that educational experience that their domestic peers are receiving and they have access to resources to go along with an uncertain future.”
Leah McSorley
Associate dean of students for international student services at Lawrence University in Appleton
structure. But the hybrid model is designed to give colleges the flexibility to pivot back to all-remote learning should the virus surge in the fall. If that happens, the fear is that students like Nguyen could be sent home mid-semester.
UW-Madison plans to move 100% online after Thanksgiving break, to finish out the semester and final exams remotely. A university spokesman said they believe that would be allowed under the rule, because it is part of the broader hybrid plan. But things are still evolving.
UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee declined requests for an interview.
In a statement, UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank said the rule created “confusion and uncertainty for international students at UW-Madison and around the country at a time when they need our support and encouragement.”
Blank urged ICE to hold off on implementing the rule and to work with universities to allow for flexibility.
Nguyen’s mind has already been spinning with possibilities of what being sent home could mean. Aside from the financial loss of leaving his job, his lease, plus tuition payments and the fees associated with coming to the U.S., he worries what would happen if he returns home and is forced to quarantine for 14 days in a government center with limited internet. With the 12-hour time difference, he’d have to wake up at 4 a.m. to attend classes.
And that’s if he even can get home. Flights to Vietnam, like many other countries, are limited and travel restrictions for those entering from the U.S. are shifting. For a period in March, earlier in the pandemic, Vietnam closed its borders and suspended all international flights.
On the other hand, he worries what will happen if campuses find themselves forced to keep classes inperson for the sake of compliance. Would student and faculty health be jeopardized?
“It is really a lose-lose situation the way I see it,” he said. “And it is really unfortunate that international students like us are being caught in the crossfire of all this.”
‘People are scared’
It isn’t the first time in the pandemic that fears over international student visas have come up.
When the pandemic arrived in the spring, campuses quickly decided students should not return after spring break and moved all classes online. Under standard rules, international students couldn’t take more than one class, or three credit hours, online per semester.
The federal government eventually waived the restriction for the spring semester.
But there were other worries looming. Embassies closed, leaving students unsure if they’d be able to get approved for the visas in time for the fall semester. Admissions officers nervously looked to the enrollment numbers, bracing for a steep decline.
Nationally, universities have seen declining numbers of new international students since a peak in the 2015-16 school year. In the 2018-19 school year, the number of international undergraduate students declined by 2.4% and graduate students by 1.3%, according to Inside Higher Ed.
Natalía Spitha, a 26-year-old international student from Greece at UW-Madison, decided to stick it out and has been wrestling with new concerns
“People are, first of all, scared,” Spitha said. “Some of them had to leave in the middle of last semester — just find the first flight they could to their home countries and they may not even be able to come back. Some may have come to the U.S. and rented an apartment and now they don’t know what to do.”
Spitha, who is a year and a half out from earning her doctorate in chemistry, said she has been avoiding thinking too deeply about the new rule for the sake of her mental well-being. But the uncertainty has weighed on her.
She hasn’t been able to visit her family since the pandemic hit. In March, her mother canceled her plans to visit Spitha in Wisconsin. Four days ago, the flight she’d booked to go home to Greece was suddenly canceled. Then there are her ties here: the partner with whom she lives, years of investment in her research using specialized lab equipment, her forthcoming dissertation.
She said it’s unlikely that things would reach a point where she couldn’t conduct her for-credit research inperson, but if that happened, she said, “I would have to take a leave of absence, because it’s unrealistic that someone else is going to do the experiment for me.”
International students bring great value to the U.S., not just in talent but in tuition dollars and contributions to the economy, especially as the country nears a
period of declining enrollment due to low domestic birth rates in some demographic groups.
“These students provide great benefit to our universities, and anything that makes it harder for them to attend will raise a host of issues during an already challenging time,” UW System spokesman Mark Pitsch said.
They pay their way through school at full price, without assistance from state or federal financial aid. Some, like Spitha, are not wealthy but attend on scholarships — money that ultimately goes to the university.
“International students like us, we bring in a lot of money, no matter how you see it,” Nguyen said. “And we are fine with it because we think that we are paying the price to a commodity that we think is valuable. And if we don’t think that is valuable anymore, we will not be paying for it.”
The value of an American education
For as much value as international students stand to get out of an American college education, the universities and domestic students also stand to benefit from them.
“They bring their entire world perspective to our campus,” said Art Munin, UW-Oshkosh’s interim vice chancellor of student affairs and dean of students.
Students help each other learn in and outside the classroom at a time when knowing how to respect and interact with different backgrounds is a highly desired workplace skill.
UW-Oshkosh has hired a firm to increase the number of international students there. The school anticipates 100 continuing students this fall and has offered admission to 244 more across its three campuses. Seven of the 54 students offered admission at the Oshkosh campus have registered for classes so far, indicating the final number could stay low, Munin said.
With continued uncertainty around federal policies, campuses across the state are doing what they can to guide and support students in continuing their education.
At Lawrence University in Appleton, which has about 175 international students and has yet to announce fall instruction plans, the rule is now factoring into calculations, said Leah McSorley, associate dean of students for international student services.
“We as schools are really trying to make an extra effort to make sure that students can equitably access that educational experience that their domestic peers are receiving and they have access to resources to go along with an uncertain future,” McSorley said.
At UW-Milwaukee, where international students make up about 5% of the student body, Provost Johannes Britz tasked faculty with ensuring all international students take at least one face-to face course under the hybrid model. That could help sidestep visa concerns.
Emma Mae Weber, president of UWM’s Student Association, said the group is brainstorming ways to advocate for international students there and “voicing the need for immediate action from administration that will protect any of our peers from deportation.”
“Our international students belong here, with us, learning as a community whether we are virtual or not,” Weber said.
In her statement, Blank said the university “will continue to support and advocate,” for its students and speak out against the rule. She acknowledged that international students have faced growing xenophobia and discrimination during the pandemic. Nguyen and Spitha both said they believe UW-Madison has their backs.
The new ICE rule, they said, sends the message that international students aren’t welcome.
Perceptions of American education could rebound in the years to come, Spitha said, but she expects the incoming class will be affected as today’s students tell their friends and family about the difficulties they have encountered.
Nguyen noted students like him pay their dues through more than tuition — from limited work options to the challenges of finding jobs after graduation if they stay.
“It is understandable that we have to suffer some disadvantages because, obviously, the U.S. has to prioritize its citizens first and I respect that,” Nguyen said. “So, we just endure. But now you are coming out and blatantly saying, ‘OK, just go home.’
“Why would you deny us the right to be here, especially when you gave that to us in the first place?”