Just a month before school is due to start, ICE is giving the boot to thousands of foreign students whose schools will be moving online this fall due to COVID.
In a three-page Broadcast Message released yesterday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced that students enrolled in schools which go online-only due to the pandemic “must depart the country or take other measures, such as transferring to a school with in-person instruction to remain in lawful status or potentially face immigration consequences including, but not limited to, the initiation of removal proceedings.”
No one knows what will happen with coronavirus in the next four weeks. The entire California State University system announced in April that it would be offering the majority of its courses online-only, but most schools are in a sort of limbo. It was only yesterday that Harvard announced that undergrad classes would be online for the entire school year, with Rutgers following suit for the fall semester at least. Hundreds of schools are likely to do the same shortly, and now ICE has given them a hard deadline of July 15 to declare whether they intend to provide in-person instruction or go online.
It’s (probably) not that that the government is trying to unleash chaos in the student visa process and get rid of all those foreign enrollees, most of whom pay full tuition. It’s just that they don’t care if it happens.
If a foreign student just signed a yearlong lease, only to discover this week that her school is going all online, then she must leave the country right away. They do not care.
If a foreign student has enrolled in a program which will be online for the fall semester, but plans to resume in-person instruction in the spring, she has to leave now and reapply for a visa later. They do not care.
If foreign student’s program goes online-only mid-semester due to COVID, she has to leave the country immediately. They do not care.
If a university offers some in-person courses, but none in the foreign student’s program, then she has to leave. They do not care.
If a foreign student is immunocompromised and cannot attend in-person classes during a pandemic, she can’t do it from the safety of her American apartment. They do not care.
If a foreign student cannot participate in online coursework from her home country because of lack of internet, electricity, space, or due to time zone constraints, that is not ICE’s problem. They do not care.
If university enrollments across the country are thrown into absolute disarray because American immigration authorities forced thousands of foreign students to withdraw just days before school starts, then so be it. They do not care.
ICE waived the requirement for in-person instruction for the spring and summer semesters, but now they’re cracking down in a move the American Council on Education describes as “horrifying” and “both disappointing and counter-productive.”
But hey, it isn’t all bad news. Students get a whole 21 business days to coordinate with their schools to resubmit their visa paperwork attesting that they are enrolled in courses which will require physical attendance.
And if all else fails, they can simply “transfer to a school with in-person instruction,” three weeks before classes start during a pandemic.
That sound you hear is Stephen Miller laughing at the thought of excluding thousands of foreign students for an entire year no matter what happens in November.
Broadcast Message: COVID-19 and Fall 2020 [ICE Memo, July 6, 2020]
Elizabeth Dye (@5DollarFeminist) lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.