MIT and Harvard file suit against new ICE regulations

http://news.mit.edu/2020/mit-and-harvard-file-suit-against-new-ice-regulations-0708

by andytgl • 6 years ago

365 363 6 years ago

news.mit.edu

ISL3• 6 years ago

This appears to be an appropriate response, rather than hacking around the edict by creating pro-forma trivial in-person classes.

runawaybottle2• 6 years ago

I think both are necessary. ICE is ridiculous, there should be a reasonable exception given the pandemic. I’m embarrassed this is happening in America.

letusknow1235• 6 years ago

So we should ignore laws during times of pandemic?

Edit: I can’t seem to reply to the comment below mine this might be due to the negative karma. I will edit this comment as my reply.

I was a foreigner on a visa for 14 years in America. A lot of these students are playing the system if ICE is deporting them for things like not studying or breaking the rules of the visa then they are doing their job. I have been in their position and they give you a lot of chances if ICE has to grab you then your doing something really wrong.

Edit #2: reply button is back.

Edit #3: you can downvote me as much as you want but it doesn’t change facts.

Aunche3• 6 years ago

I think a trivial in-person classes may be an intentional loophole. It stops online-only universities from being a gateway to an easy long-term Visa.

addicted• 6 years ago

There is no such thing as an easy long term visa for these schools to be a gateway for.

lalos• 6 years ago

Hacking? You're in for a surprise when you discover what tax attorneys do everyday. If that's the way it was written, it's mostly fair game. That's why it's tough to write effective laws that consider the actual incentives that they are placing instead of what they (whoever is writing) are expecting to happen in their minds.

vkou2• 6 years ago

Malicious compliance is a perfectly appropriate response to a malicious law.

ISL3• 6 years ago

It is a mitigation strategy, but it doesn't fix the problem directly.

nocitrek2• 6 years ago

My stance is typically anti-immigration, but I do not support this decision of ICE. I am likely missing big chunk of the story, but could anyone explain the motives behind ICE decision? (without blind hateful virtue-signaling please)

lordleft2• 6 years ago

I really do think this is a cynical ploy to induce universities to open up more aggressively than they would like. That is the only reasoning I can come up with.

_jal• 6 years ago

Yes, it is a classic wedge. Try to force your opponents into an unpleasant choice, either of which is OK with you.

Have to hand it to the anti-freedom of movement/association folks - this was a fairly clever one.

magicnubs2• 6 years ago

What's the end game in this scenario? It feels like political suicide if it causes coronavirus deaths to spike even more before November, as people already don't care for how the administration has handled it. Although, since it's mostly young people, maybe cases would spike, but deaths wouldn't, making the virus seem less deadly. But maybe deaths are expected to spike either way, so better to both increase cases (with relatively fewer deaths making it seem less deadly, as mentioned above) and also spur the economy somewhat? Or maybe it's pure and simply just a way to energize the base by "scoring a point against the other team", as it is seen as bringing defiant liberal institutions to heel?

sheeshkebab• 6 years ago

https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-u-s-rules-on-foreign-studen...

If understand the rules have always been there (on limit for online classes)

apcragg• 6 years ago

The rules have always been there, but as the filing mentions, ICE said in March that the rule would be suspended for the duration of the emergency. They are now going-back on that statement which given the timing of the announcement is causing chaos.

dathinab3• 6 years ago

Just guessing, but the place most foreign students come from is China.

There have been multiple claims that China is using oversees students to steal knowledge or that University have become to dependent on the money from Chinese students and cooperations. Be aware that I'm just saying such claims did happen not that they are true.

The fact that many countries also doesn't want to open border to the US again for now might also play a role.

somurzakov2• 6 years ago

I think you got it backwards. Chinese students are not stealing the knowledge, they are creating the knowledge. They do research, the hard work and publish papers. A lot of them want to stay here, but anti-immigration policies leave them with no other choice other than go back to their home countries and work for CCP.

It almost looks like Trump is forcing top students to leave US and bring their knowledge back to China to benefit CCP.

mhh__• 6 years ago

Political Extremism/Pandering.

spanktheuser• 6 years ago

The Acting Deputy for Homeland Security admitted on CNN that they’re using the threat of losing international students’ immense tuition to force universities and colleges to fully open in the fall.

https://twitter.com/tcmassie/status/1280569206501789697?s=21

chvid2• 6 years ago

I tried searching for an interview where Ken Cuccinelli says this on CNN but couldn't find it.

However here is Ken Cuccinelli on Fox News Lou Dobbs just half a day ago where he lays out the thinking behind the policy change. Basically hire unemployed americans or let them study instead of the foreigners:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3WQAP0m8qc

standardUser• 6 years ago

It would be extremely unusual for a federal agency to make such a radical decision independently. This almost certainly came from higher up.

NovemberWhiskey6• 6 years ago

No policy decisions on immigration matters in this administration are made without going through Stephen Miller.

NovemberWhiskey6• 6 years ago

As someone who apparently has formed a stance on immigration issues, it comes as a surprise to me that you haven't noticed the continuous pattern of using executive power to restrict both legal and illegal immigration activity during this administration.

nocitrek2• 6 years ago

I have noticed it, do not worry. I would gladly migrate to US. I am from Europe, highly educated and believe I can contribute to the economy of US. I wish your immigration could be merit based - instead of green card lottery (silly concept). Give me ability to migrate to US for 2 years as probation period. After those 2 years had elapsed, determine if I am overall positive for the economy, did I commit any serious crimes, do I have permanent place to live, etc...; and based on that, let me stay permanently in the country, until I get citizenship.

jhpriestley2• 6 years ago

it's weird, this administration has been almost vindictive against some groups, like non white asylum seekers, non white students, non white Puerto Ricans, non white athletes, and non white protesters, but it is very supportive of other groups like white protesters, white farmers, white business owners ... where is the common thread? It's a complete mystery and impossible to figure out.

gfodor• 6 years ago

It actually possible to figure it out. Explaining is assumed to be agreement in 2020, so you’ll have to go somewhere else to get the heuristics one can use to predict how Trump will bucket a specific group or individual. The inability to understand Trump will lead to his continued presence in politics, even after he leaves office. My intuition is that smart people who try to analyze him (eg Sam Harris) are so unwilling to try to ascribe anything other than cartoon-villain-like character traits to explain his behavior because doing so could somehow let them slip into having anything other than complete rejection of his entire being, which their morals disallow as an axiom.

nine_zeros4• 6 years ago

Let's call it what it is: Racism

WillPostForFood3• 6 years ago

non white students

I didn't see the exemption for white students in this. Because there isn't one?

andrewla• 6 years ago

This is a reversion to the previous practice of not allowing student visas if the student is not attending in-person classes. That rule was suspended back in March for COVID, but is now reinstated.

Presumably this was traditionally implemented to prevent fake schools from enrolling students strictly for the purpose of allowing them entry into the country on a student visa.

UncleMeat14• 6 years ago

The original policy is not unreasonable. The exception is extremely reasonable. Suddenly undoing the exception is so unreasonable that it can really only be read as malicious.

It would be so easy to write a policy that both prevents fake universities from existing to give visas while also not suddenly deporting hundreds of thousands of students.

Aunche3• 6 years ago

My charitable interpretation is that giving visas to online students is open to abuse. If you're an undocumented worker, you can pay a few thousand dollars to stay in the US legally. You'd still be working illegally, but that would be much more difficult to prove.

UncleMeat14• 6 years ago

Steven Miller doesn’t like immigrants.

The broader Trump administration doesn’t like universities, and especially doesn’t like universities that are taking covid seriously. They can use this as leverage to try to force universities to have in person classes.

This isn’t “blind hateful virtue-signalling”. It is the only reasonable explanation for a policy that provides no benefit to anybody, causes tremendous and sudden harm to legal immigrants, and causes tremendous and sudden harm to higher education institutions.

What actual benefit comes from this? The universities have still admitted the students. There isn’t more room for Americans, and if there was it is way too late.

The only thing I can see is that this messes with all of the students ability to get OPT visas, ensuring that they have a difficult time getting a job in the US after graduating even if they are highly skilled. But the h1b cap is filled every year anyway so this wouldn’t reduce the number of jobs “taken” by immigrants.

devalgo• 6 years ago

Steven Miller doesn’t like immigrants.

Sure he does, just not Brown ones. Trump has come out and said they want immigrants from places like Norway. Of course your average Norwegian would have to be insane to move to the US.

stefap2• 6 years ago

Regardless of the regulation. What is the difference of being in the US or anywhere else if you can't go on campus and only work /study from home. The quality of learning is low in both cases.

30013• 6 years ago

Timezone, internships and cultural exchange.Also some international students are actually on merit based scholarship.Internet connectivity is also really bad in most third world countries. I can go on and on.

WanderPanda• 6 years ago

Can confirm, internet connectivity is really bad in many parts of Germany

letmeinhere• 6 years ago

For one, it's unreasonable to assume that all of these students have home environments conducive to do high-def teleconferencing on American time zones.

syshum• 6 years ago

Would that not also apply to domestic students, even the international students as America has very very spotty broadband access even in cities one section may have great service and go 2 streets over and you get crap...

I know locally that has been one of the biggest stumbling blocks for the local schools, dealing with students that did not have good internet.

the_svd_doctor5• 6 years ago

Timezones, connectivity, can’t come back (embassies are all closed) even if it reopens, still numerous travel bans, unsafe travel... Also many couldn’t get their funding (TA/RA) or scholarship without being in the US

dudul• 6 years ago

A few comments already pointed at Timezone differences (which, OK, maybe it doesn't matter if courses are recorded and can be taken asynchronously) and Internet access (it seems to make sense, but I don't know if it isn't a little cliche to assume these students automatically come from very poor countries without internet).

Another I can think of is possibility of re-entry. Last time I heard the USCIS was virtually frozen for visas and all. If these students leave for this year we don't know if they'll be able to come back once the pandemic is over.

Raed667• 6 years ago

Internet connectivity, time zones, and costs of travel that can be thousands of dollars.

For merit students with scholarships it is almost impossible to finance a both-way trip on such a short notice.

mxcrossr• 6 years ago

We really should just be making whatever accommodation is necessary to reduce travel. The last thing we need is tens of thousands of students flocking to the airport when their visas expire. If you went home, you stay home and continue from there. If you're in the USA, stay put.

lutorm2• 6 years ago

The difference is that we can assume that this online-only move, unlike enrolling in an online-only university, is temporary. It does not seem reasonable to kick students out because one semester is online. It's extremely disruptive to be forced to get rid of your housing, figure out what to do about your belongings, and move across the world just to invert the move at the end of the year.

ben7799• 6 years ago

It's incredibly unfair for the the administration to target international students like this.

However Harvard and MIT aren't all about caring about their international students here. They are also thinking heavily about the money they might be losing. International students usually pay a much higher effective tuition rate. The higher the % of international students the school takes in the more money they take in. If these schools had to replace international students with domestic ones (even if they could) they wouldn't be able to get away with selecting only the highest paying students.

I'm from Boston, we have an incredibly high number of international students, and a lot of the interest in keeping them is about getting their money.

The Boston Globe estimates they are worth $3.6 billion dollars to the area... lots of money, lots of tuition, lots of apartment rentals, lots of bar & restaurant revenue.

dekhn2• 6 years ago

Beyond the economic value of international students, Harvard and MIT are completely dependent on these sources of cheap, intelligent labor. There isn't enough domestic supply of top students to keep top labs running and publishing state of the art research.

PragmaticPulp2• 6 years ago

There isn't enough domestic supply of top students to keep top labs running and publishing state of the art research.

I have a hard time believing that when Harvard rejects 19 out of every 20 applicants.

tryptophan• 6 years ago

There isn't enough domestic supply of top students to keep top labs running and publishing state of the art research.

Making native born people compete vs foreigners willing to work very hard for pennies just to get into the usa will make sure this is always true.

sampo• 6 years ago

There isn't enough domestic supply of top students to keep top labs running and publishing state of the art research.

This is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Foreign grad students submit to modern academic slave labor, because the long term incentive is American citizenship. Also many don't have student loan debt from their undergrad degree in their home countries, so they can agree to work for low salary.

Americans have no incentive to work hard in poorly paid grad student positions. And they need to start paying their undergrad student loan debt, so they have incentive to find a high-paid job instead of graduate studies. This especially applies to Americans who don't come from a wealthy family background, so often to American minorities.

PragmaticPulp2• 6 years ago

However Harvard and MIT aren't all about caring about their international students here. They are also thinking heavily about the money they might be losing.

It’s okay to have multiple motivations.

The fact that they have a monetary incentive doesn’t detract from the good of what they’re doing. In fact, that’s partially what enables these expensive lawsuits.

We shouldn’t try to downplay good actions just because money is also involved.

seamyb88• 6 years ago

We shouldn’t try to downplay good actions just because money is also involved.

I disagree. When there are thousands upon thousands of innocent people in privately-run ICE detention centres, whose economic value is solely based on their being locked up, it doesn't go nearly far enough to say that THESE immigrants are worth fighting for because their economic value is based on their relative wealth.

So you consider it downplaying, I consider it attempted betterment.

dominotw3• 6 years ago

Thats exactly how big pharma is usually defended.

Access to elite society is controlled by these institutions so if they have money motive then they perpetuate rich-> rich cycle.

jidiculous2• 6 years ago

The higher the % of international students the school takes in the more money they take in.

I thought that private institutions like MIT and Harvard charge the same rates for international and domestic students? For example, MIT's page on cost of attendance only lists one tuition rate[1].

It would be public institutions like the University of California that would stand to lose the most revenue percentage-wise from this policy, right?

edit: see replies below that elaborate on finaid for internationals

[1] https://sfs.mit.edu/undergraduate-students/the-cost-of-atten...

jacobzoo• 6 years ago

Domestic students get a lot of financial aid/merit scholarships/etc. not available to international students.

the_svd_doctor5• 6 years ago

Domestic students get a lot of financial aid of their parents don’t make a lot. There is no such aid for internationals.

EDIT: Apparently that not really true.

albntomat02• 6 years ago

A significant part of the student body doesn't pay the list price for tuition, due to the large amount of various forms of tuition assistance.

I'd expect there's a difference in financial assistance between international and domestic students.

Edit: As pointed out by a response, MIT and Harvard both state that their financial aid is independent of international vs US students.

huy-nguyen• 6 years ago

That’s not true at wealthy schools. I went to Reed (not need blind) and only half the student body there pay full price. That portion should be lower at Harvard and MIT.

vowelless2• 6 years ago

Yea but they are also afraid of loosing out on a generation of professors, post docs, academics, value generators, “job creators”.

It is very risky to cut out a generation of top students because the value is not just to the local Boston economy, but nationally. It’s not just cheap labor. It’s apprenticeship by the smartest in the world who will pay dividends for not only our lives but for generations.

I came as a student. I pay 6 figures in taxes. Some of my intl friends pay 7 figures and employ hundreds. I’ll have kids here that will generate enough value to do that as well.

Right now, there is a significant risk that a lot of economic value is going to be lost due to these immigration policies. That is not good for america.

It’s like a sports team: you have the ability to draft the top players from around the world for cheap. Why would you decide to boycott the draft itself and let the competitors (India, China) take those players? Especially some players that you have already trained (graduated students, post docs)

tomrod• 6 years ago

We are of a like mind.

To answer the "why" folks may think this, you and I are considering the general equilibrium impact of the policy, but the vast majority of folks think in terms of partial equilibrium/first order. And on a first order, the "jobs" that folks holding these student visas will be vacated and thus "available" for domestic students. Such nativist views typically fail to grasp that said jobs may simply not be available due to companies sending work to the talent, not just to the trained.

Myopia is a terrible thing to live in denial with, but unfortunately such as things are.

disgruntledphd2• 6 years ago

Realistically the actual competitors of America here are Canada, the UK and Europe more generally.

I suspect that a lot of this immigration is both the desire for high-paying jobs and to live in a (slightly) more stable country.

gruez2• 6 years ago

It’s like a sports team: you have the ability to draft the top players from around the world for cheap. Why would you decide to boycott the draft itself and let the competitors (India, China) take those players? Especially some players that you have already trained (graduated students, post docs)

You're thinking about it from the wrong perspective. The people who are anti-immigration are anti-immigration because they personally might be negatively impacted (in terms of losing jobs or getting lower wages), even if it means the country as a whole is better off. Seeing the US GDP grow 30% faster is little consolation to you when you've lost your job to immigrants (or at least, you thought that you did). Going back to the sports team analogy, it'd be great if your team drafted the best international players and won, but what if that resulted in you getting kicked off the team, or sidelined most of the season?

dev_tty01• 6 years ago

I completely agree that the borders should be open and bringing bright people from the all over the world to the US is fantastic. I am also opposed to the recent ruling. I am thankful that you are here. However, I do think the term "generation" is unnecessarily hyperbolic. We are talking about a year (or two), not a generation.

js2• 6 years ago

Sounds like incentives are aligned: foreign students get a good education and exposure to the U.S. (hopefully building goodwill). Local community benefits from exposure to foreign students (hopefully building good will). Local community gets foreign money. Only the students' home countries are potentially losing out, but even that depends on whether the student ends up sending money back home or returns home to contribute to their own local economy.

This was an incredibly dumb decision by ICE.

balfirevic• 6 years ago

How do you call a situation where the morally correct course of action is aligned with one's own interest?

"Fantastic"

thrill• 6 years ago

"convenient"

blue113• 6 years ago

International students usually pay a much higher effective tuition rate.

That might be true for other universities but not for Harvard and MIT, whose admissions are aid-blind and most international students there receive huge financial aid packages.

There are lower-ranked universities that have programs (usually Masters's ones) that are targeted towards foreign students who can pay a lot of money.

mennis163• 6 years ago

According to QS only Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, and Amherst do need blind admissions for international students (surprised to not see Stanford on that list). So while in this instance I do not think it is driven by any direct financial motivation, the majority of even "top" US schools do appear to select international students in part on their ability to pay.

speleding• 6 years ago

MIT's admission is need-blind (which is good), but many aid programs have some requirement attached that is hard to qualify for as a foreigner. I don't know of many foreign student in my class that had financial aid packages, let alone huge ones, so I would be interested if you have information to back up this claim.

tsotnet• 6 years ago

However Harvard and MIT aren't all about caring about their international students here. They are also thinking heavily about the money they might be losing. International students usually pay a much higher effective tuition rate

As an international MIT alumni, I can confidently say that this is completely wrong. MIT and Harvard have need-based scholarships, meaning that students pay tuition depending on their financial circumstances. Most of the international students come from poorer countries & families compared to an average domestic student and therefore end up paying a lot less in tuition.

Also, MIT's international undergraduate students are usually around 10% of the whole class. Even if you were right, they don't represent a big enough chunk of the whole class to have a significant impact on the money they're making.

NovemberWhiskey6• 6 years ago

However Harvard and MIT aren't all about caring about their international students here. They are also thinking heavily about the money they might be losing.

Harvard has a ~$40bn endowment. Even if all 6,500 of its international students are affected, and all of them are paying $50,000 in tuition, and absolutely none of them are replaced, and no economies at all are generated by them not attending, then the university stands to lose slightly less than 1% of that endowment this year.

My point here is that Harvard can amply afford not to raise this issue, and that I rather suspect the issue of principle is more important than you suggest.

throwaway_15123• 6 years ago

Yes but this is less about economy and more about Trump forcing Harvard to open in fall, which they don’t want to. It’s not about principle, it’s about the unions who don’t want to open.

corpMaverick• 6 years ago

They are also help making the case for other Universities that don't have the name reputation that MIT and Harvard do. It is a responsibility that comes with their place in society.

screye2• 6 years ago

The thing about American universities, is that this transactional treatment of international students is well understood by the students themselves.

However, it is also well known, that these same universities are insane career fast tracks for them in the US, their home country and elsewhere. There was a reliability to reputed US universities. Pay us all of your family assets + more, but you will make it back soon with a high level of confidence.(esp. in STEM)

Similarly, we understand that the tedious immigration system of US does a great job of capturing the best international students in golden handcuffs, where they get to tax you like a resident, without providing any of the amenities or rights a resident has. But, life in the US is much better than that in an underdeveloped country, and even the circus hoops we have to jump through aren't sufficient discouragement to choose one over the other. As long as life is less shit than my home nation, I can deal with some abuse. As Hasan Minhaj puts it, it's the "immigrant tax".

We have no delusions of being treated equally to American citizens/residents.

If you can pick a certain amount of cotton, then you are a free man. (/s...but only kinda)

Where this rubs international students the wrong way, is just like the slave analogy, there is no formal agreement and the slave owner is free do what he likes, since ofc, like America he owns the slave. But, most communication happens is not verbal. There was a long understood, quiet honor system. Trump is violating that.

Many of these student's parents have sold off last of their clothes to send their children to the US. Many of these PhD students have been worked down to their bones on minimum wage, just for an American doctorate. Don't change the deal now. Not when these people have already (metaphorically) signed the deal.

I completely support the choice of any American to want stringent borders. That's your prerogative. No one complains about Japan not opening up their doors to the world. Parents won't bankrupt themselves filling the coffers of American colleges and co-located businesses. Students won't destroy their health doing RA/TA jobs that pay far under what they deserve.

There is an unspoken deal an international student signs when they commit $100k+ to the a US institute. In some sense, it is codified in the OPT system. Here, have 3 years to make back some of the money and fuck off. America, please reject these people at the door. Don't take their money, sweat & blood and then kick them out. That's just cruel.

We go out of our way to pick more cotton than the other slaves. Free us, or never make that promise in the 1st place. It was not illegal in 18th century US, but it sure as hell was dick move.

kaik• 6 years ago

The vast majority of international MIT students are graduate students. Except for business students (i.e. MBA, executive MBA and similar), graduate students in research programs do not pay a dime to MIT. Their tuition + stipend for living expenses is paid by research or TA fellowships. I.e. they either work as either research or teaching assistants to receive this money. MIT receives part of the fellowship money as an "overhead" tax, but this is exactly what happens for domestic graduate students. Notably, in the case of MIT these fellowships are provided to both M.S. and PhD students. I believe that Stanford M.S. students do not get such fellowships and hence need to pay for their tuition.

Source: got my PhD at MIT as an international F1 student.

montereynack• 6 years ago

That’s just direct economic analysis. Graduate students are incredibly valuable to the universities because they generate research which can be used to either directly apply for grants and federal/commercial awards, or which can be used to just add to the university’s reputation (which, in turn, affects their chances of getting a grant or money award, as they have a reputation of expertise). Even if the direct money being paid by these students is zero, I’m sure all universities (not just MIT and Harvard) care deeply about where their graduate students go; that’s a lot of good grey matter going to waste, and universities are in the business of converting grey matter directly into money!

xxpor3• 6 years ago

They are also thinking heavily about the money they might be losing.

This is also a solid reason why they have standing to sue in the first place, so it's actually a good thing.

Ar-Curunir3• 6 years ago

Yup, you can see this from the non-action when ICE was abducting undocumented immigrants

umanwizard• 6 years ago

I am skeptical of shutdowns as a policy, and if I worked in a strategic role at a university, I would push for reopening in person.

However, the administration using federal visa policy as a bludgeon to get universities to implement their preferred policies (even policies that I personally agree with) makes me really uneasy.

bawana• 6 years ago

I suppose MIT and HArvard could allow students on campus but locked into their dorm rooms. They could have the bathroom police unlock doors individually so the kids could take showers, etc. Then they could have the cafeteria deliver meals the same way prisoners are fed in their cells. Trump could extend this edict to the workplace as well - any VISA holders working remotely get deported. Somewhere in the mists of history I remember isolationism not working out too well for us. I wonder why we are going back there?

credit_guy2• 6 years ago

The actual complaint is here:

http://orgchart.mit.edu/sites/default/files/reports/20200708...

My very short summary:

- there is a rule in place whereby international students who don't take most classes in person will lose their visa status

- this rule was suspended by ICE on March 13 for the duration of the Covid19 emergency

- ICE now has changed their mind for the Fall semester

- the core part of the complaint is in paragraph 10. It has 2 parts: the ICE u-turn is "arbitrary and capricious and an abuse of discretion", and it did not follow the Administrative Procedure Act.

Now, IANAL, but here's my take: for the first part of the complaint, it's very likely ICE will be able to produce some "analysis" so they can claim their decision was not arbitrary and capricious, but rather made after careful consideration. The second part of the complaint has probably better odds of success. If Harvard and MIT can pinpoint the exact part of the Administrative Procedure Act that ICE did not follow, a judge could issue the injunction. Just recently the Supreme Court overturned Trump administration's decision to revoke DACA based on this Administrative Procedure Act.

In the end though, even if this injunction is issued, it may take months, and it may arrive too late to be of any help for the international students who will lose their visa.

It would be fantastic though if someone with legal expertise were to opine on this in this forum.

ISL3• 6 years ago

I expect a temporary injunction while the case proceeds.

WillPostForFood3• 6 years ago

there is a rule in place whereby international students who don't take most classes in person will lose their visa status

It doesn't say you can't take most classes online, it says you can't take all classes online. In a hybrid model, it gets a little grey, but nothing specifically says you can't take most classes online.

Nonimmigrant F-1 students attending schools adopting a hybrid model—that is, a mixture of online and in person classes—will be allowed to take more than one class or three credit hours online. These schools must certify to SEVP, through the Form I-20, “Certificate of Eligibility for Nonimmigrant Student Status,” certifying that the program is not entirely online, that the student is not taking an entirely online course load this semester, and that the student is taking the minimum number of online classes required to make normal progress in their degree program.

https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/sevp-modifies-temporary-ex...

btown• 6 years ago

Not a lawyer, but I think the recent Supreme Court decision on DACA - https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-587_5ifl.pdf - is telling:

    To be clear, DHS was not required to do any of this or to
    “consider all policy alternatives in reaching [its] decision.”
    State Farm, 463 U. S., at 51. Agencies are not compelled to
    explore “every alternative device and thought conceivable
    by the mind of man.” Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp.
    v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 435 U. S. 519,
    551 (1978). But, because DHS was “not writing on a blank
    slate,” post, at 22, n. 14 (opinion of THOMAS, J.), it was required
    to assess whether there were reliance interests, determine
    whether they were significant, and weigh any such
    interests against competing policy concerns.

The issue of reliance, I think, is important here - did ICE actually internally discuss the extent to which international students and their families were relying on the previous guidance, and did they actually do any kind of analysis that the benefit to society and economy would outweigh those reliance interests, even for non-citizens? Given that societal benefits are practically nonexistent and that many university systems economically rely on continuity of their matriculated student bodies, particularly international students paying non-subsidized tuition, it seems unlikely that such an analysis was done in good faith.

jkulubya• 6 years ago

Yeah, we have a concept in common law called legitimate expectation that is quite similar to the point you're getting at. Don't know about the U.S.

Having recently been on the right side of a judicial challenge, I must say that in my non-lawyer view, it is quite a powerful check on a decision-maker's discretion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimate_expectation

steviedotboston4• 6 years ago

ICE hasn't really "change their mind." When they relaxed rules in March it was never going to be an indefinite change. The new rules are much more lenient than they could have been.

UncleMeat14• 6 years ago

"We could have been even more cruel" isn't a compelling defense.

There is more covid spread in the US today than in March when they created the exemption. If the policy made sense in March, it makes sense today.

chvid2• 6 years ago

This link was posted here yesterday:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/233880/international-stu...

370.000 students from China, 200.000 from India, 52.000 from South Korea.

This policy change affects hundreds of thousands students and must generate a massive loss in economic terms.

throwaway0a5e4• 6 years ago

This policy change affects hundreds of thousands students and must generate a massive loss in economic terms.

It certainly does. But it's worth keeping in mind that you only have to drive about an hour north or west of either campus for "MIT/Hardvard, Boston area landlords and businesses lose out on billions of dollars from foreign students" to flip from bad news to good news.

Look at the politics of this and where ICEs actions stand on the spectrum of immigration, foreign relations and COVID (and probably a couple other issues that I'm not thinking of) and it all makes sense.

The administration will win brownie points among those people who already support it with this policy from the get go. This policy also pits the landlords and business owners in the college towns (who have a big interest in the school's opening, but don't have any love for the administration) against the colleges.

christiansakai2• 6 years ago

Can you elaborate more?

as3002• 6 years ago

Look at the politics of this and where ICEs actions stand on the spectrum of immigration, foreign relations and COVID (and probably a couple other issues that I'm not thinking of) and it all makes sense.

The COVID angle seems to me to be a total fig-leaf for other aims, seeing as the administration didn't do much for public health wrt covid - no strictly enforced lockdowns, no leadership on calling out states opening up too early, and not showing the president wearing a face covering. Also lets be real, the average international student is far less likely to transmit the virus than your average face-covering conspiracy-theorist American. (Especially those from China or SK - places where there are already cultural norms formed around limiting spread of infectious diseases)

Let's call a spade a spade. This is an attempt to enforce extralegal policy limiting immigration to the US via reducing the number of people on student visas.

locthrow5495• 6 years ago

There have been very few Trump signs here in Hampden county, an hour and a half west and one of the most Republican areas of the state. Mask compliance is nearly universal as well. New Hampshire is its own thing, of course.

TigeriusKirk• 6 years ago

Obviously landlords and businesses will lose out because of the decision to go fully online. They might anyway, since there wouldn't be any requirement I'm aware of that the student visa holders would have to stay near a school they were merely logging into. They could spend their semesters anywhere in the country in theory.

But surely even if the foreign students are forced to leave the US they'll stay enrolled in (and paying for) the classes. Isn't the education the point?

op03• 6 years ago

Its a pretty blue state - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_of_Massachusetts

mc327• 6 years ago

The institutions are there primarily to educate our workforce. There are thousands of locally deserving students who don’t have opportunity, either went to wrong schools or don’t know how to navigate the system that’s geared toward connections or wealth.

These institutions could fill their student bodies with thousands upon thousands of our own students who get overlooked.

On the other hand they’ve grown used to foreign money filling their coffers.

pesfandiar• 6 years ago

I imagine international students are a major source of revenue for most schools, and help subsidize the ever-increasing tuition and fees for domestic students.

acroback• 6 years ago

FYI, international students have to pay often significantly more as turion fee alone.

Smart local students go to in state public schools to avoid crippling debt.

fzeroracer4• 6 years ago

Well, except aren't foreign students essentially subsidizing local students? Since they receive substantially less financial aid and often pay the full price of tuition. [1]

So when all of that money goes away, tuition rises and local students get less financial aid. Or said universities and colleges downsize, reducing the number of professors and students attending which means fewer local students get to go to college.

This seems like a 'cut your nose to spite your face' sort of reaction fueled entirely by xenophobia rather than any sort of rational basis.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/foreign-students-pay-up-to-t...

cauthon3• 6 years ago

I got into an Ivy on merit. White male, not legacy, not an athlete, not rich. Just good grades, good SAT score, and luck. I promise you the _vast_ majority of students I met who didn’t deserve to be at my school (academically speaking) were domestic legacies or athletes.

Can’t imagine my undergrad, first job out, or grad school without the many international students I made friends and worked with. Part of educating a successful workforce is teaching us how to work and collaborate with people from other backgrounds. Hard to do that if everyone’s from Newton or Westchester

OminousWeapons3• 6 years ago

The institutions are not primary there to educate our workforce; they exist to fill a variety of roles including policy development roles, collaborative research roles, and basic research roles that are essential to our nation's economic development. Please explain to me how we are going to fill legions of academic research roles normally held by foreign students and foreign graduates when no one can get a visa or after we boot foreigners out of the country as students and they no longer want to return. You honestly think undereducated Americans are going to rise up and fill those roles? Oh and guess where the well trained and intelligent foreigners who we kick out are going to bring their skills to: our competitors. Over 90% of my lab was foreigners and huge numbers of research lab positions are filled by foreigners. The policy is basically a self inflicted gunshot wound administered purely to get Trump reelected with absolutely no regard for the impact on the country long term.

jedberg• 6 years ago

The data doesn't back up your claims. The only Americans who are "losing" jobs to foreigners are males who didn't graduate high school. In every other category, it can be shown that immigrants only add to the workforce, they don't replace it.

UncleMeat14• 6 years ago

This policy does not prevent students from attending the universities. It prevents them from living in the US. Since it is July, there is no way that universities would fill slots left open by international students who withdraw their attendance at this point. This policy cannot produce an outcome of enabling more Americans to attend top universities.

sytelus• 6 years ago

The lawsuit will be strong if they say online classes are temporary in order to not to violate governor order and will be in-person as soon as governor allows. I don’t see any reason ICE can argue against that.

lgleason3• 6 years ago

I'm sure this will be downvoted into oblivion, but short of these regulations being illegal they are actually in the national interest IMHO. From a national security standpoint the universities have been a big trojan horse. At many state schools international students are also nothing but large cash cows and a source for cheap research labor. For years I was a pro-education person, but most of the US institutions have been hijacked by political activists who have significantly watered down the curriculums. We need a massive reset of the entire system and significantly limiting foreign students needs to be part of that.

mattwad• 6 years ago

They would be great except the problem is once you're done with school, it can be incredibly hard to stay in the US. So we end up losing the people we help train. Fixing it by reducing these students entirely is going in the wrong direction.

lgleason3• 6 years ago

The ones that stay are also national security risks in some instances. At some point, and feel free to call me crazy for saying this, but wouldn't it make sense for US educational institutions to be primarily focused on educating US citizens... in the same way that a UK, French, South African, Chinese etc. university should be focused on educating their respective citizens first and foremost? It's one thing to let a very select group of foreign students in who are truly exceptional, but that is not what is happening today. Instead most are letting anybody in who is willing to pay the money. So it's really just another back door into the US labor market and companies wanting cheap labor love having a larger supply of that.

nsm3• 6 years ago

If that is the intent behind such decisions, a more reasonable (and not punitive) response is to give a couple of years notice to universities (let them wind down operations) and allow students already enrolled to finish their education. Not “Go home right now or you will be deported, and forget about the full tuition you paid.”

gnulinux• 6 years ago

I was a pro-education person

I must say: I'm genuinely surprised reading this sentence in HN. It's very disappointing.

lgleason3• 6 years ago

Let me clarify this. I'm a pro-enlightenment education, which is pro-science. But, todays system has become a postmodernist indoctrination mill which is anti-science. Unfortunately, while public education, stressing university education etc. sounded great in theory, and I supported that for years, looking at the results of that effort, the academic standards have gone down. Thus, time to look into doing something different because todays system is no longer effective and in some aspects could be called a net negative.

ak217• 6 years ago

From a national security standpoint, it's hard to think of anything more important to the US than a continued flow of high-achieving immigrants who want to relocate here to educate themselves and contribute to the US society, and the international students (even those with non-immigrant status) are a pivotal component of that flow. Every international student who comes to the US has already self-selected on initiative, aptitude and perseverance. Allowing these students to stay is a net win for the US, and a net loss for their country of origin. Even if they don't immigrate themselves, they enable the continued cultural influence and appeal of the US in their extended networks.

You only need to look at major national security events in the US history to see the disproportionate positive impact that first-generation immigrants had at every turn.

Far from furthering US national security interests, your "massive reset" would itself be a national security threat.

xamuel4• 6 years ago

I'm sure this will be super unpopular, but I think universities are on the wrong side here.

First: If the classes are online anyway, then there's no reason students need to be on U.S. soil to take them. If the schools have policies requiring the students to be on U.S. soil, the schools should waive those policies.

Second: It's subjective whether COVID is still an "emergency". We've been locked down for many months now, there is nothing "emergent" about the situation any more. When your car crashes, that's an emergency. Three months later when you're having trouble getting to work because of your car being wrecked, that is no longer an emergency. It still sucks, but it isn't an emergency any more at that point.

Granted, though, it would have been better if ICE had given the schools more advance notice.

p0llard3• 6 years ago

One big issue here is that F-1 students must maintain residency in order to be eligible for OPT.

This is secondary to the fact that if you're a PhD student on an F-1, you literally live in the US; you aren't just popping over for a few weeks now and then. The current situation basically forces people who have lived in the US for nearly 10 years to suddenly leave the country.

xamuel4• 6 years ago

Thanks for pointing out Optional Practical Training (OPT), that's a good point. That might be a good thing for the feds to waive (once things go back to normal).

On the second point, usually PhD students with that much seniority aren't taking a lot of regular classes anyway; by 10 years, you should definitely be post-candidacy. By that point you should be working on your dissertation and "classes" should mostly consist of 1-on-1s with your advisor.

ausbah• 6 years ago

timezone disparities?

xamuel4• 6 years ago

I agree, timezone disparities are hard. These are hard times, people make sacrifices. Maybe the schools could run some night classes: sounds drastic, but maybe that would finally justify how the schools continue to charge full tuition.

nine_zeros4• 6 years ago

First: If the classes are online anyway, then there's no reason students need to be on U.S. soil to take them. If the schools have policies requiring the students to be on U.S. soil, the schools should waive those policies.

What about students midway through their programs?

And why do you think international students will pay full tuition to study from a different timezone and not even have a chance to be on campus?

Second: It's subjective whether COVID is still an "emergency". We've been locked down for many months now, there is nothing "emergent" about the situation any more. When your car crashes, that's an emergency. Three months later when you're having trouble getting to work because of your car being wrecked, that is no longer an emergency. It still sucks, but it isn't an emergency any more at that point.

No comments

trentnix• 6 years ago

The second part of your comment isn't really necessary to justify your premise.

The entire point of the student visa is that the student's presence is required in order to realize the educational benefits the University provides. Going online only eliminates that necessity.

I don't make any claims about the motives of ICE or the Trump Administration. I also recognize this will be very inconvenient for both the students and the Universities that depend on them. But the reasoning used to justify the regulations is defensible.

montenegrohugo• 6 years ago

Here's the email I got from Faculty this morning:

Dear members of the FAS community,

Shortly after Monday’s announcement about our plans for the fall semester, we learned that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced new regulations that imperil the lives and academic progress of our international students and scholars. These new guidelines directly undermine the careful planning and approach we have taken for fall, specifically our plans to deliver all graduate and undergraduate instruction online. This plan was put forth to reconcile the health and safety needs of our community and the vitality of our academic mission, including accounting for the needs of our diverse, global community of students and scholars who face a host of limitations and complications brought about by the pandemic. This reckless reversal by ICE hurts our students and it hurts us as an institution. The FAS is an international community and that is a source of pride and inspiration. That we bring together the voices and perspectives of some of the brightest minds from across the world is fundamental to our intellectual strength and ambitions and must be protected.

While there is still much we don’t know, we are working quickly to respond to the needs of our international students and scholars impacted by this news. To that end, early this morning, President Bacow announced that Harvard, together with MIT, has filed pleadings in the US District Court in Boston to seek a temporary restraining order against the enforcement of this order. In doing so, we continue to be guided by our core principles to protect our academic enterprise and preserve access and affordability for all our students. The new ICE order is a direct threat to that institutional imperative. But we are committed to doing all we can to enable our students and scholars to continue their studies without further disruption to their lives and academic progress in an already uncertain and challenging time.

Many of you have reached out to express your concern about these new regulations and what they will mean for our students. I share your deep distress over this new order, and I assure you that the FAS and the University are working tirelessly to fight on behalf of our international students and scholars. We will explore all avenues and exhaust all options to chart a path forward that protects their place as valued members of the FAS community.

Sincerely,

Claudine

It's the most strongly worded email I've ever seen from Harvard. It seems like they believe that the Trump Administration is trying to manipulate them into opening prematurely, and that they are very cognizant of this.

p0llard3• 6 years ago

It seems like they believe that the Trump Administration is trying to manipulate them into opening prematurely, and that they are very cognizant of this.

You're right, and the court filing addresses this explicitly; see 75) in http://orgchart.mit.edu/sites/default/files/reports/20200708...

deegles• 6 years ago

Oh it gets worse, he's threatening to cut federal funding to schools that don't reopen: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/08/trump-schools-reope...

ghufran_syed• 6 years ago

I'd hate to be "forced" to return to my home country, but why can't these students just study online back in their own country, then come back for in-person classes sometime next year once covid is under control?

The reason for excluding all-online classes is that historically it's been associated with much greater immigration fraud.

If this really becomes a big issue for students, it's pretty trivial for the universities to turn their online classes into "hybrid" classes that require people to physically come to campus in a safe way - e.g. "residency course requirement: at some point in the week, every week you must come into the university and sign the attendance log website from a device logged into the campus wifi" .

bg24• 6 years ago

Right decision and all universities should follow suit to help the students.

Imagine us being students and having to go through the pain, while Covid is all over the map.

GhostVII• 6 years ago

It sounds like these ICE regulations are not new, they are just removing some temporary exemptions they put in to place due to COVID. So the suit is against the removal of this exemption, there are no new restrictions in place that did not exist before COVID.

vturner• 6 years ago

MIT and Harvard being rather dishonest here. Seems like this is reverting back to what was before?

"Due to COVID-19, SEVP instituted a temporary exemption regarding online courses for the spring and summer semesters. This policy permitted nonimmigrant students to take more online courses than normally permitted by federal regulation to maintain their nonimmigrant status during the COVID-19 emergency."

emiliobumachar• 6 years ago

I don't think they're being dishonest. This is indeed reverting back to what was before. The thing is, students who normally study onsite are still studying remotely due to the pandemic. The original law presumably was targeted at permanently remote classes. One can of course argue whether the exception is still reasonable, xamuel made a fair case that it's not. But the opposite case really does not seem dishonest.

oblio4• 6 years ago

COVID-19 emergency

Where I'm standing, the US is definitely still in a Covid-19 emergency...

swiley• 6 years ago

Undoing the mess that was H1B was probably a good thing (provided an alternative path for professionals to immigrate without forcing them into indentured servitude becomes available) but this just seems stupid.

The only good thing about is that it could change the way universities think about tuition? I don’t even understand the argument for why the students are being sent home. It spreads the virus around (people crossing borders is pretty bad for that) and if they were allowed here in the first place why are they being sent home now?

jrk• 6 years ago

Lots of the comments are talking about this as an MIT/Harvard issue. To be clear, MIT and Harvard are the first to file suit, but this radical policy by ICE dramatically affects every college and university, and every international student, in the country. And the suit seeks to strike down the policy altogether, not get an exemption for these two schools.

This is not about Harvard and MIT at all, except insofar as they wound up being the ones with the position and deep pockets to most quickly file a strong suit to stop it.

sushshshsh• 6 years ago

Imagine playing politics over people's education and location of current residence.

What a world.

beepboopbeep• 6 years ago

I firmly believe this is being done to damage the reputation of the USA as an immigrant friendly country in order to induce a major brain drain while also stemming the flow of Chinese students away from the mainland.

exolymph• 6 years ago

in order to induce a major brain drain

What is the motivation for desiring this, in your view?

coreai• 6 years ago

The decision of ICE essentially was to not change anything. A student on F1 is only permitted to take certain number of online classes and must maintain his status with in person classes. The change to online classes means this affects ones status and the ICE notice meant they will not make any changes to these rules even in this situation. What people are saying is that this affects ones work status if he leaves the US post study but ideally a student is a student not seeking work or immigration into the US especially given that the H1B is suspended and OPT is not work it’s training. If the university says class is online then it means there is no reason for a student to live in the US. People confuse students with long term immigration even if that maybe the intention of the student. They are just students who are paying tuition and living in the US as far as anyone is concerned.

kevingadd• 6 years ago

There was previously an exemption put in place, they're suspending it.

foepys• 6 years ago

Doesn't the US hope that those highly educated students stay in the US afterwards? I was always under impression that this was the main goal of those programs. Get the smartest from other countries, show them how good it is in your country, and hope for them stay and contribute to the economy.

taylodl• 6 years ago

That used to be the case but I'm not so sure the current regime is down for that - at least they're not acting like it.

lutorm2• 6 years ago

Absolutely not. Maybe the US should, but according to the rules, a student visa is "nonimmigrant intent" and expressing the desire to stay in the US after your studies are over may in fact be grounds for denial of a visa because they may think you're going to overstay.

nothal2• 6 years ago

Depends on the administration, which is really a problem if you want to consistently attract talent. Seems like an opportunity for Trump to ostensibly change nothing while taking what looks like a hard-line on immigration.

There's an added benefit to Trump of punishing universities for their continued pushback against much of his goals (e.g. Title IX lawsuits, harboring undocumented people/not complying with ICE).

smsm42• 6 years ago

F1 is a "non-immigration" visa - meaning that it is explicitly designed so that the students do not stay after finishing the studies. There are "dual intent" visas which are designed with the intent of possibly staying, such as H1B. But technically, expressing intent to stay can be a reason to be denied F1 visa.

Get the smartest from other countries, show them how good it is in your country

That may be true, but that's not what F1 is made for, by design.

linuxftw2• 6 years ago

Doesn't the US hope that those highly educated students stay in the US afterwards?

I'd say the average American does not hope this, no. Foreign students are driving up the cost of tuition as they're usually quite wealthy and displace seats for underprivileged Americans, especially in state-run schools.

I don't know why someone would come to the US to study other than the hopes of immigrating. There are better schools in Europe and elsewhere that are much cheaper or even free.

On the off chance we actually face some sort of shortage of critical skills, there are other visas for that.

verdverm3• 6 years ago

Many of these students pay the bills of the department as graduate only students, and for the students it's a jump point to the US job market. Both enjoy the benefits of a misaligned program.

chenzhekl• 6 years ago

That is irresponsible. For studying in the U.S., students have to rent an apartment, purchase necessities and do lots of other preparations. If they are not allowed to stay in the U.S. anymore, who would cover the loss for them?

ptd• 6 years ago

Not if all the education is being delivered online.

nicoburns• 6 years ago

People confuse students with long term immigration even if that maybe the intention of the student. They are just students who are paying tuition and living in the US as far as anyone is concerned.

Even if it's only short term for the duration of their studies, it seems quite unfair to expect students who have setup in the US to return back to their home country for a term or two when they might well then have to come back to the US again the following year.

dathinab3• 6 years ago

Yes, especially if you consider that this students spend quite a considerable amount of money in the US.

shadowgovt3• 6 years ago

And that is the wrong decision at this time.

bytematic• 6 years ago

What is the point of spending time and money to send these students home?

DarkScholar• 6 years ago

It is not this simple. Some international students are on a significant financial aid and rely on the resources provided to them in the U.S, be it college housing and dining or else...

gamblor956• 6 years ago

International students generally do not qualify for financial aid from US schools.

mola• 6 years ago

Taking a decision to not change anything when everything has changed is not a passive act.

Ar-Curunir3• 6 years ago

Even if "it's only classes", there are things called time zones; if you're in Europe or Asia then it would fucking suck to have to get up everyday in the middle of the night to take classes.

evanb2• 6 years ago

This ignores the enormous logistical difficulties associated with, say, timezones. If my online classes are at 2 AM but the grocery store is only open from 9-5, I am going to be exhausted all semester.

viscountchocula• 6 years ago

Serious question: can the schools just have a required course that's like, walk around campus for an hour with a mask and describe your feelings? Pass/fail, 1 credit.

dharmab• 6 years ago

Normally, international students cannot take more than 3 credits of online classes to keep their visas. This rule was temporarily suspended in March, but is being reverted by ICE while the schools are not ready to fully reopen.

yoden• 6 years ago

No it's not. They're still allowing an exception that allows any number of online classes. They're just requiring at least one in-person credit, and for the university to say it is at least partially open.

LatteLazy• 6 years ago

Some students can't return for legal, practical or health reasons until covid is done (other can but probably shouldn't for personal reasons). So they lose their visa and won't be able to finish their degree when things do reopen.

Alex3917• 6 years ago

During the Vietnam war, colleges stopped grading so that it was impossible for anyone to fail out and get drafted. Why can't these colleges just create in-person classes that meet once a semester with optional attendance?

tanilama• 6 years ago

I mean probably the safety of the staff?

Ar-Curunir3• 6 years ago

ICE is evil, not stupid; they'll probably rule that as invalid.

evanb2• 6 years ago

The regulations explicitly mention and close this loophole. To count as in-person it can't just be for people who need help with their visa, and attendance can't be optional or sporadic.

SkyBelow• 6 years ago

If you are going to go big, go big. In person class with no attendance required. All projects are submitted to an online portal, like which already happens in in person classes.

Daishiman• 6 years ago

This is actually happening in Berkeley.

UncleMeat14• 6 years ago

They could try.

But this completely misunderstands how scary it is to be trying to follow the rules as somebody on a visa. "Let me try this weird loophole and hope that no agent comes to me and says 'get out of the country by the end of the week' for violating the spirit of the law" is not a compelling option.

US Immigration is already a Kafkaesque nightmare of confusion and uncertainty. Creating the equivalent of a green card marriage in an almost completely transparent and obvious manner isn't going to put people at ease.

eric_b2• 6 years ago

I spent 45 minutes this morning trying to get to the bottom of this whole thing - as usual there is more nuance to this than presented.

- For as far back as I could find, students that wanted to qualify for a student visa to study in the US could take at most one online course per semester. The rest of the coursework had to be in-person.

- Starting in the spring of this year, the SEVP program (part of ICE) created exemptions so students could continue to stay in the US even though universities had moved entirely online. These exemptions were for Spring and Summer and universities were awaiting the rules for Fall.

- As of Monday, they are changing the exemptions. They are allowing any number of online classes, but with the caveat you have to have at least one in-person class.

- If you are already in the US you have to leave if your university is online-only. [This is the part that feels punitive and particularly onerous to me]

What is interesting to me is the framing of this. The new exemptions are still more flexible than the pre-existing student visa policy (which has been around through both Democratic and Republican administrations as far as I can tell). So on the one hand it's actually an improvement. On the other hand I think most of these universities were hoping the full exemption would continue as COVID is still very much a thing.

burkaman5• 6 years ago

It is not an improvement, it's a punishment for universities being responsible. The outcome is worse for everyone involved, including anyone who lives near a college.

"At least one in-person class" doesn't make any sense. Either in-person classes are safe, and the rules can go back to pre-pandemic, or they aren't, and forcing students and professors to attend them is dangerous and cruel.

There is no legitimate justification for this. There's no slippery slope issue or anything, everybody accepts that these rules will go back to normal once it's safe to do so.

DuskStar• 6 years ago

The perspective of ICE is that there's no legitimate justification for someone to be in the US if they're only taking online courses.

mathdev• 6 years ago

Either in-person classes are safe, and the rules can go back to pre-pandemic, or they aren't, and forcing students and professors to attend them is dangerous and cruel.

Actually, in-person classes are completely safe and this is a gentle nudge from the federal administration to make the universities reconsider their (completely political) decision to not resume normal classes this Fall.

jychang• 6 years ago

"At least one in-person class" doesn't make any sense. Either in-person classes are safe, and the rules can go back to pre-pandemic, or they aren't, and forcing students and professors to attend them is dangerous and cruel.

This sounds ridiculously reductive, and too black and white.

"Either driving a car is safe, and you shouldn't need to apply safety rules, or they aren't, in which case driving a car is cruel".

There is no such thing as completely safe, only levels of risk, and how you mitigate risk. You can still catch a disease even if you wore a N95 mask, for example. There is a reason why essential groceries stores are open during the pandemic, while barbershops are closed. It's about how you manage the risk/reward balance. Starving is not an option, whereas not getting a haircut is.

Well, some classes clearly work better online than others. You can teach a webdev class online. Would you want someone who is learning to become a surgeon to learn purely online and without hands-on experience? Some other classes, like biology labs, chemistry labs, etc produce a lot more value in person.

This means that in order to manage risk, a university could implement a strategy where it reduces the number of in-person classes as much as possible, but still have some in-person classes (with added social distancing and other safety rules).

This doesnt mean international students should be forced to leave the country if they are not taking an in-person class, for example. But I don't think it means universities should be prevented from allowing in-person classes if they take precautions and understand the risk.

UncleMeat14• 6 years ago

This is the part that feels punitive and particularly onerous to me

But that's the part that people are upset about. People aren't angry that there exists a policy to prevent students of fully online universities from getting visas.

People are upset that because it is completely reasonable for a traditional brick-and-mortar university to run classes 100% online this coming semester (e.g., Harvard) and that suddenly a bunch of students who are attending Harvard and have been doing so for years are forced to leave the country on a moment's notice.

What nuance is there? The original exception (you can take 100% online classes) was thoroughly reasonable given the pandemic and the new updated policy is completely unreasonable. It only harms people and benefits no one.

sigzero2• 6 years ago

If you are taking 100% online classes there is no reason to have or need the VISA. The exception being for things like COVID etc. Those should be exceptional circumstances.

v_throw• 6 years ago

What you are also discounting for is that once the student exits the country, they are caught in the quagmire of securing a stamping to reenter. Given the stance the current administration has taken around virtually all consular appointments/stampings, these students might as well consider their chances of returning to the US to pursue their respective degrees to be close to zero.

Also my understanding is that the criteria for being allowed to stay doesn't differentiate on the level of the degree. For instance, Phd students who have completed their course work but are busy working on their thesis and building their publishing record are royally screwed. I expect a number of transfers of some of the best and brightest to research universities in Canada and Europe. I personally witnessed how much of a boon the mistreatment of Iranian students by the US govt. was to universities in Canada. They got some of the best and brightest who would have otherwise been gobbled up by top schools in the US.

I expect a massive and permanent exodus of foreign students to other countries with more pragmatic policies in place.

JamisonM3• 6 years ago

It seems like the framing is entirely fair.

Any reasonable administrative body would look at the circumstances involved in this and do the thing that would disrupt lives the least for the benefit of everyone involved.

"So on the one hand it's actually an improvement."

This seems kind of silly.

eric_b2• 6 years ago

The universities knew this was a possibility. They want to charge full tuition (particularly to their international students who account for a disproportionate share of revenue) and go online-only with no consequences. I'm not sure that's entirely reasonable either.

From my experience, distance learning isn't really worth very much. This applies to K-12 as well as university. I think it's entirely reasonable to expect in-person classes in the Fall if you're paying full tuition. We expect our grocery store workers to show up and do their jobs during COVID, I think it's reasonable to expect the same of university faculty.

WrongThinkerNo5• 6 years ago

The oddest thing about this whole topic, especially in light of the current social unrest in the USA is that people seem to totally miss the fact that Universities, American tech corporations, and the whole American economy is a cynical human resource extraction operation that syphon off the best and brightest to keep the American economy going, where it would have an immensely hard time running otherwise. I see that as the core motivation for the Harvard and MIT lawsuit, keeping the flow of that foreign talent drug flowing, not some kind of emotive narrative about injustice or unfairness.

The American economy and society is essentially a kind of massive Ponzi scheme or con job (short for trick of confidence), where the foreign "human resources" are required to keep the scheme from collapsing. The day that China, India, Europe, Russia, etc. realize that they are being extracted of some of their very most important and valuable resources, their best and brightest, and they cut the USA off; it will cause massive panic and pangs of terror among the US ruling class that needs to keep the flow of fresh supply of the foreign best and brightest to prevent their con job from being exposed.

There is all this talk of slavery and colonialism and resource extraction of the past that has sabotaged and disadvantaged countries and societies and communities. In reality though it never stopped, it only took on a different and largely more profitable form like how a con artist may shift and move around and dissolve and form new companies as needed while the con always remains more or less the same.

The same cynical exploitation and extraction of resources from one society to fuel and enrich another has always remained in place even if the branding, labeling, and narrative around it has changed over time. If people want to "tear down the system of exploitation and abuse" (or however it is characterized) all they would need to do is stop feeding the American economy with their best and brightest, let alone even their hard working manual labor like Central America is doing, who are not available to contribute to developing their own societies because they are busy serving the American corporations to "Make America Great Again".

In reality, the US economy is so riddled with massive holes and flaws that it is like a sieve that requires a constant and ever larger flow of the best and brightest and hardest working and most motivated and driven just to keep the con going. If that were to seize up, if foreign countries and leaders realized how they were sabotaging themselves and stopped fueling the US economy, the energy and economic activity of the USA would immediately start draining out at a dizzying rate.

I would love for someone to correct me if I am looking at this incorrectly.

Nasrudith• 6 years ago

Well for one that viewpoint not only treats countries like people and people like property, disregarding the will of the actors there are many problems with the argument.

1. Benefits and harms are not zero sum, that goes for "elites" and "common people" as well as countries. I thought the Coronavirus already demonstrated this quite well. The "common people" dying didn't benefit the elites nor the elites dying. 2. Even if we accept false premises of value it isn't a Ponzi Scheme. Even if it is an unsustainable demand for talent it wouldn't be a Ponzi Scheme. A Ponzi Scheme lies about generating benefits and instead just redostributes from new to old while escalating recruitment. For it to be a Ponzi Scheme no learning would be taking place, just idea extraction from immigrants and plagerism to attribute it to the professors. To put it mildly that is very counterfactual, akin to suggesting that crowds of thousands of people watching a musician perform is what creates talent and any rando you put up on stage would gain talent faster than if they practiced in an empty concert hall. 3. Just because they are educated abroad and the US benefits doesn't mean their native country is harmed or "harmed". They can and have enriched their native country either when they return or through remittances above what they earn domestically. 4. Source country interests may also be selfish. They may be glad to be rid of those pesky intellectuals with their "western" values of things like equal rights. 5. The entire reason many go abroad to study is because their native country is unable to use their full potential for whatever reason. That is like saying recruiting a subsidence farmer's genius son and training him to be a doctor stole hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from the farmer because the doctor now earns that in the city. At most the farmer lost $400/year from a farmhand's labor.

The entire intellectual frameworks involved are wrong on several levels really.

credit_guy2• 6 years ago

These exemptions were for Spring and Summer and universities were awaiting the rules for Fall.

I went to the original ICE/SEVP documents and I didn't find any mention that the rules were for Spring and Summer, and not for Fall.

Here they are: March-9 document:

https://www.ice.gov/doclib/sevis/pdf/bcm2003-01.pdf

March-13 document:

https://www.ice.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Document/2...

Consultant324524• 6 years ago

I think this is a first step in kicking out Chinese students. If you're from France, South Korea, Nigeria, etc. you'll be invited back soon enough. This is not a judgement on that plan, just a prediction.

oblio4• 6 years ago

Why do you think that?

Consultant324524• 6 years ago

There has been multiple stories in the news recently about crackdowns on Chinese "spies" in the universities. I'm using the word spy loosely there, that's not the word that has been in the news. They talk about it more in the sense of secretly getting funding from China and not claiming it or whatever. My perception is that the belief is that this is a major avenue through which US tech is "stolen".

The administration recently hinted that they will be blocking Chinese apps such as TikTok from being used in the US.

The administration also hinted at breaking the currency peg to the dollar.

A cold war is ongoing.

hello_12342• 6 years ago

This is cruel and wicked. Hopefully the courts stop this madness.

rexreed• 6 years ago

Higher education is due for a massive price correction. The cost of education has outstripped market ability and the movement to online while still asking top dollar tuition is going to make those education institutions increasingly pressured. Going online increases international ability to compete for students as well as professors, and this will also increase pressure on tuition pricing.

Higher ed tuition pricing is bound for a massive correction.

quantum_state• 6 years ago

It looks like ICE has no better things to do in this pandemic...

sqrt• 6 years ago

Northeastern University (in Boston) has announced that they're joining MIT and Harvard's lawsuit: https://twitter.com/Northeastern/status/1280961230233100297

MIT and Harvard file suit against new ICE regulations

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