NEW YORK: International students in the US are panicking and universities are scrambling to make sense of a new policy announcement by US Immigration and
NEW YORK: International students in the US are panicking and universities are scrambling to make sense of a new policy announcement by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that says foreign students in the US will be forced to leave the country or transfer to another college if their universities offer only online classes this Fall.
“Non-immigrant F-1 and M-1 students attending schools operating entirely online may not take a full online course load and remain in the United States”, the first line of the July 6 statement says.
Officials in the International Students Office at the University of Southern California told IANS they are still “analysing the new information” and swamped by a flood of enquiries from worried students.
According to immigration attorney Cyrus Mehta, the latest one pager policy announcement means three things: Students enrolled in US universities that are moving to an online-only education model will be barred from getting F-1 visas, they will be stopped from entering the US on F-1 visas and not allowed to maintain F-1 status in the Fall semester.
ICE is now turning the screws on universities to re-open despite the coronavirus roaring back across 40 of 50 states.
“So Trump is forcing foreign students to study in unsafe conditions during COVID-19″, Mehta tweeted.
Fall 2020 semester begins early September in the US, immediately after Labor Day weekend.
