Policy affects international students

ICE says enrollees must leave country if colleges offer online classes only

The Trump administration announced that international students will have to leave the United States if the college or university they attend switches to online-only classes in the fall because of the coronavirus pandemic or face possible deportation.

Similarly, international students enrolled in colleges or universities offering only online courses this fall will be barred from entering the U.S.

The Trump administration’s announcement comes as some colleges and universities, including Harvard University, say they will only offer online classes in the fall to protect students and staff from the new coronavirus.

The Trump administration’s move, a reversal from the spring when international students were allowed to remain in the U.S. to attend online-only classes, could represent a major economic blow to colleges and universities as well as local communities over the loss of tuition and other revenue from international students who typically pay full price.

It comes at a time when colleges and universities are already implementing layoffs, furloughs and other cost-clotting measures to offset a loss in revenue amid the coronavirus pandemic as more and more students opt to defer attending college.

The move drew immediate criticism from immigration advocates who say it is part of the Trump administration’s ongoing attempt to restrict legal and illegal immigration into the U.S.

The new policy, issued in a memo by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is “clearly designed to chase foreign students out of the United States and to bar foreign students who were coming to the U.S. from entering the country if the schools they are going to are only online,” said Charles Kuck, an Atlanta-based immigration lawyer and representative of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, an advocacy group.

Kuck predicted the ICE policy will push international students from U.S. schools to schools in Canada in Europe.

The policy memo comes two weeks after President Donald Trump signed an executive order that will suspend temporary visas for foreign workers until the end of 2020.

Kuck said the new policy is directly contrary to the memo that was sent out in March allowing international students to remain in the U.S. while attending online only classes because of the coronavirus pandemic.

International students generally must attend all of their courses in person and are prevented from taking more than one online class a semester while studying in the U.S.

In March, however, ICE made an exception for international students attending schools that had switched to online classes only amid the pandemic.

There were 872,214 international students enrolled in the U.S. in 2018-19, the most recent year data was available, according to the Institute for International Education, a State Department-backed initiative that tracks international student enrollment in the U.Sand internationally.

International students contributed $45 billion to the U.S. economy in 2018, the institute said.

Under the policy memo announced Monday, international students enrolled at institutions that offer classes entirely online in the fall will be given the option of switching to a school that offers a hybrid of online and in-person classes or leaving the country and taking online classes from their home countries, said Carissa Cutrell, acting ICE deputy press secretary.

Those who decide to return to their countries while enrolled in all online classes in the U.S. will maintain their non-immigrant visa status, Cutrell said.

“So you can engage in remote learning as any other student would at that school but you would just do it from home as the other students would,” Cutrell said.

Universities and colleges rely on international student for a significant share of their revenue. The move requiring them to go home if only online courses are offered could put added financial strain on U.S. colleges and universities, said Doris Meissner, senior fellow and director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute.

“Universities and colleges are struggling enormously as it is to figure out how to provide education under these pandemic circumstances and so this adds a much greater burden,” Meissner said. “International students are so baked into the higher education, environment and model that exists in this country.”

U.S. schools benefit from international students in other ways beyond financial, including through cultural exchanges, Meissner said.

“They are an important part of the student body. They make it possible for native-born students to meet people from all over the world,” Meissner said. “They create the possibility for international students who come here and experience living in this country and experience going to colleges, universities in this country at a really formative time in their growing up.”

U.S. schools benefit from the research conducted by international students, said Kuck, the immigration attorney.

More than 60% of STEM grads are foreign students, he said.