HARVARD, MIT SUE TRUMP ADMIN OVER VISA RULES
May cut off funding if US schools do not open, says Trump
Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) sued the Trump administration on Wednesday, seeking to block a new rule that would bar foreign students from remaining in the United States if their universities move all courses online due to the coronavirus pandemic.the two universities filed a lawsuit in federal court in Boston asking for an emergency temporary restraining order on the new directive issued by the government on Monday.
Harvard and MIT said on Wednesday that they had filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over a directive that would strip foreign students of their visas if their coursework was entirely online.
The White House measure, announced on Monday, was seen as an effort to pressure universities into reopening their gates and abandoning the cautious approaches that many have announced they would adopt to reduce transmission of the coronavirus.
“The order came down without notice — its cruelty surpassed only by its recklessness,” Harvard’s president, Lawrence S. Bacow, said in a message to the university community.
“It appears that it was designed purposefully to place pressure on colleges and universities to open their on-campus classrooms for in-person instruction this fall, without regard to concerns for the health and safety of students, instructors, and others.”
The directive’s effect may be to dramatically reduce the number of international students enrolling in the fall. Together with delays in processing visas as a result of the pandemic, immigrant advocates say the new rules, which must still be finalised this month, might discourage many overseas students from attending American universities, where they often pay full tuition.
But the concern that their campuses could become coronavirus clusters has prompted many universities to adopt measures to reduce exposure, from requiring masks in classrooms to limiting social activities to reducing the number of students invited back to campus. Many have announced a hybrid approach that would provide some in-person classes but offer a significant amount of coursework virtually. Such changes could put foreign students’ visas, known as F-1 visas, at risk under the new rules.
Meanwhile, Trump on Wednesday threatened to cut off funding to schools that do not open in the fall and criticised a federal health agency ’s guidelines for reopening schools as “very tough and expensive.”