Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Student visa rules called cruel, xenophobic
A last-minute mandate that international students enroll in at least one in-person class this fall — even as many courses remain online-only because of the pandemic — has left the students and school leaders at Florida’s public universities scrambling for a solution.
The rule, announced by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, would require students who don’t have at least one face-to-face course this fall to leave the country, forcing many to put their studies on hold.
“It honestly seems nothing short of xenophobia and cruelty,” said Akhil Kshirsagar, a 34-year-old University of Florida student from India who is working toward his Ph.D in geography.
International students are typically limited to one online course per term, according to the U.S. visa program. But Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, temporarily suspended that rule in March, as the coronavirus pandemic forced U.S. colleges and universities to switch to online-only classes.
ICE reversed course this past week, and now some students are reconsidering their plans for the fall so they don’t have to leave the country, and many Florida institutions, where campuses are due to reopen next month, are trying to accommodate them.
More than 1 million students from other countries came to the U.S. on student visas in 2019, when they made up about 5.5% of the country’s higher education population, according to the Institute of International Education. More than 45,000 of them came to Florida schools.
Roughly a third of the international students in the U.S. last year came from China, the largest source. Large research institutions tend to attract the most international students, though they attend smaller schools and community colleges as well, the organization found. Foreign-born students are particularly likely to study high-demand fields like engineering and computer science.
And international students are significant contributors of tuition dollars at U.S. institutions, where they often pay full-freight. International students contributed more than $45 billion to the U.S. economy in 2018, the Department of Commerce said. International graduate students also help teach undergraduates and conduct research at the institutions where they study.
UF draws roughly 5,000 students from other countries, mostly to its graduate programs, said Leonardo Villalón, dean of the university’s International Center. He said the timing of ICE’s changes, the same week the school is putting the final touches on its fall course schedule, was particularly poor. UF is adjusting its plans to allow students who need an in-person course to take at least one, which has required significant changes and “a lot more than tweaking.”
International students play a key role in UF’s mission and keeping them in Gainesville is a priority, Villalón said.
“If we’re going to be leaders in the world of higher education, we have to be able to attract the best people from around the world,” Villalón said, adding, “We want them and need them here if we’re going to be a top university and we’re going to do everything we can to make sure that is possible.”
Florida State University and the University of Central Florida, which enroll smaller numbers of students from other countries, say they too are working to accommodate them. UCF has reached out to roughly 3,000 current and incoming international students, saying it will work with them individually to make sure their course schedules meet ICE’s requirements.
“UCF’s strength comes from our diversity,” said a statement from President Alexander Cartwright and interim Provost Michael Johnson said. “Our international students, faculty and staff help shape our community. Their experiences make us smarter together, and this diversity is one of the hallmarks of a leading metropolitan research university.”
FSU sent a similar message his past week to its 1,700 current and incoming international students.
“Know that our goal is for all
our international students to continue their studies at FSU, without disruption,” provost Sallie McRorie wrote.
At FSU, international graduate students serve as teaching assistants for at least 117 course sections, estimates Michael Yost, executive vice president of the union that represents the school’s graduate assistants. Several universities, including Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have filed lawsuits intended to block the ICE rule change and Yost said the graduate assistants’ union is pushing FSU to join them.
“International students are very much a part of the fabric of FSU,” Yost said. “They are very much in the same boat as other graduate students who teach classes and perform research for FSU and without them, FSU would suffer greatly.”
The ICE ruling seems to draw a clear line between in-person and online work, but that’s not how most graduate students operate, said Bobby Mermer, copresident of UF’s graduate assistant union. Graduate students often need to conduct research and meet with their advisors for thesis work, tasks that can’t be completed easily remotely.
“It’s not as simple as getting on Zoom, watching a lecture and taking a quiz,” Mermer said.
Kshirsagar, who first enrolled at UF in 2017 and has helped teach undergraduates as he’s worked toward his Ph.D, said his department has assured him it will make arrangements that allow him to meet the in-person course requirement.
“Personally, I’ve been quite lucky,” he said, adding the same might not be true for others.
For many students, traveling back to their home countries would be difficult or impossible. Flights from the U.S. to India are limited right now and Guarev Harshe said he estimated it would take him a month or more to get a seat on one if forced to leave. Harshe, who finished a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from Colorado State University last year, is due to start work on a second master’s in higher education at FSU next month.
Harshe, 26, pointed to international students’ economic contributions to the U.S. and said he thinks they give more than they take to the institutions they attend.
“International students are their saving grace,” Harshe said.
Though many international students come specifically to study at U.S. colleges and universities, a few of them grew up here, including Julie Thomas’ 22-year-old son, Iwan. Thomas’ family moved from the United Kingdom to Florida in 2002 when she and her husband purchased a business manufacturing and selling propellers. They obtained a visa aimed at entrepreneurs that also allowed their two children to remain in the U.S. until age 21.Iwan, who was 5 when the family came to the U.S., graduated from Lake Nona High School and calls the Orlando area home, was granted a student visa and enrolled at Valencia College, where he is studying to become a teacher.
Most of the college’s courses will remain online this fall, and the recent change to visa rules is causing Iwan to consider transferring to a school where he can enroll in an in-person course if he can’t take one at Valencia.
“He’s extremely upset about it,” Thomas said.
Valencia, which has about 1,100 international students, said this past week it was working to understand the consequences of the new rule.