The United States visa system is very complicated and it has no room for error. Someone who overstays a visa could be barred from returning to US for many years, up to a decade.
One of the more common visas are student visas, known as F visas. F visas generally allow a student to remain in the US for up to five years if they remain in their educational program. They may, but don’t have to leave the country during summer break. When they complete their program, they must depart the US within 60 days. The visa can be extended if they continue in education.
In 2017 there were close to 400,000 F1 visas issued. It is estimated that a million international students are studying in the United States.
On July 6, 2020, the Trump administration announced that F1 visa holders would have to leave the country if their schools went to full time online classes,[i] the justification being that there was no need to be in the US if you could take classes online. Many schools including Harvard, Princeton, UCLA, U Mass in Boston, Rutgers, most Cal State campuses, and many more have announced they will go online for the fall semester.[ii] Many more plan to have a hybrid system where some classes are in person and some online. That is a lot of international students looking at having to leave the country for no good reason. If they stayed they would be “out of status” and at risk of being barred from returning to the states for many years.
I view this as a civil rights issue as it involves immigration rights, rights to education and simply treating a class of people differently than others are treated. There no legitimate reason for forcing all these students to uproot their lives. It would cost them large amounts of money to travel home and break lease agreements here. It would cost the universities millions of lost tuition revenue. As it turns out, this was primarily a ploy by the administration to pressure schools to reopen in the fall.
On July 7, Harvard and M.I.T. sued the administration to block the new rule.[iii] Then on July 10, Trump stated that he was having the Treasury Department review the tax exempt status of Universities with an eye to revoking that status.[iv] Several California schools also sued and then on July 13, 17 States joined in a lawsuit against the rules.[v] Three more states then joined in and large corporations such as Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and Google announced their opposition.
Then finally on July 14, the administration backed off and dropped the rule.[vi] Trump has been pushing his racist anti-immigration policies since he took office. This was just another attempt by him to expel foreigners from the country. He’s done it repeatedly and I have written about it several times.[vii]
Trump has also shown his antipathy to higher education, portraying colleges as liberal indoctrination factories. He clearly wants to intimidate them as he feels threatened by them. You might think he would want colleges closed to limit the organized opposition to him as the election approaches. In any event Trump is once again showing his opposition to free speech, opposing political views and common decency.
He also seems to believe that returning kids to school will give parents flexibility to go back to work and help drive the economic recovery. While there may be some truth to this, it is putting students at the center of a likely surge of new COVID infections. He seems happy to risk other people’s lives to increase his chances of re-election.
Trump and his administration have ignored medical experts all through this pandemic, and other experts throughout his administration. So it is no surprise he continues to ignore them now.
[i] https://nyti.ms/2VQQIKz
[ii] https://www.chronicle.com/article/Here-s-a-List-of-Colleges-/248626
[iii] https://nyti.ms/3iSTcC6
[iv] https://nyti.ms/2DxKEQZ
[v] https://nyti.ms/2Oiop3w
[vi] https://nyti.ms/390knpR
[vii] https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2020/07/07/trump-speeds-up-plans-to-force-foreign-students-others-out-of-us/#7f7a32362493
The author[s] is solely responsible for this blog submission. It does not represent the position of the New York State Bar Association or its Committee.