
ICE Confirms New Foreign Students Can't Take Online-Only Course Loads in the US - pseudolus
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/07/24/895223219/ice-confirms-new-foreign-students-cant-take-online-only-course-loads-in-the-u-s
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tannerbrockwell
There is tale of disruption here unfolding. The legacy educational systems
have failed to innovate, and provide online learning that can match or exceed
their on-site delivery. While the Administration may be nitpicking to say that
students applying for a visa to study on a campus must be able to go to the
campus, the bigger issue and where we will see a sea change will be the
organization(s) that can step in and provide the educational benefit via a
virtual method. Spatialization, camaraderie and task based accomplishments are
all demonstrated in AAA FPS games such as Call of Duty and Fortnite. These
companies have demonstrated an ability to innovate and deliver this content
EXCLUSIVELY online. If the Harvard endowment [1] wanted to guarantee their
legacy they would buy a publicly traded gaming company.

[1]: [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/28/harvards-endowment-is-
worth-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/28/harvards-endowment-is-
worth-40-billionheres-how-its-spent.html)

~~~
polishdude20
It's really hard to make good games without your primary purpose being that
they're fun. When you make a game and it's main purpose is educational, it
won't be fun and nobody will want to play it.

~~~
stormbeard
What about something like Kerbal Space Program? Orbital mechanics can get
pretty dry, but a game like that can allow us to “play” with concepts and
build intuition that we would otherwise have to do problem sets ad nauseum.

~~~
polishdude20
Ah yes that is a good one. Maybe it's just rare to make a good game that's
also educational. Then again KSP is more fun than educational I think. Or at
least, rocket space flight stuff is already such a fun topic to learn about.

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negamax
That does makes sense. It was shortsighted to ask students who are already in
US to leave. But isn't it better to minimize international travel and
foreigners into US (or any country) at this stage?

Even though this reeks of prejudice, ICE is not entirely in the wrong on this
one imo.

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DodgyEggplant
This is not pure travel, but tilts to residence. So if someone stays the whole
year - verification can take longer. The USA was always built on attracting
smart, brilliant, ambitious people. Those who bans them now, are using the
wealth the previous generations, created in this way that is now blocked. They
are cutting the resource from their future generations. But this is good news
to the rest of the world - other countries will benefit.

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Scoundreller
Not much different than what’s happening in Canada.

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Qahlel
This is just stupid. It makes 0 sense.

Education is not just watching someone explain to you what you are trying to
learn. It's much more interactive and social.

If online courses can on their own be a substitute for the complete
experience, then we actually don't need online courses: Just read a book and
you can be brain surgeon.

~~~
onetimemanytime
>> _Education is not just watching someone explain to you what you are trying
to learn. It 's much more interactive and social._

Interact with the monitor...you realize that these schools will be closed,
right, and all courses will be online?

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pyuser583
My understanding is that this is the same rules that have already existed.
He’s just not changing them for COVID.

I get that refusing to change rules is a bad thing, but it’s not the same
thing as “implementing a policy.”

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divideby0
While this is clearly xenophobic and just plain awful, it seems like the most
sensible workaround for this is for universities to offer very small (4
students or less per session) in-person classes specifically for their new
international students. This could work essentially like office hours with
faculty leading small group discussions to help acclimate international
students to their new lives abroad. I can imagine anyone moving to the US in
the year 2020 (the peak of our crazy) could use some emotional support.

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miles7
What about students from countries whose time zone is 12 hours different? They
can watch lecture recordings, sure, but miss out on asking live questions or
participating in discussion groups with other students unless they stay up
through the night.

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s1t5
Can they even do this? I mean legally, I understand that practically they'll
get away with much more than what's allowed by law. I don't get why an
enforcement agency should have any say with regards to what's legal and what
isn't.

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Fiveplus
Out-of-state students on F1 visa (be graduate or undergraduate) generally have
to abide by certain academic requirements to maintain legal stay.

Historically, for the graduate student subset, a course load of 6 credit hours
has always been the minimum requirement for face2face lectures in any
particular semester. Under very specific circumstances (read: literally one
course to graduation or similar) will the DSOs of their school mention the
case on their SEVIS records and allow them to continue. Arguments can be made
against the morality of not allowing students with improper internet access to
come in. But don't let armchair experts lead you to believe it wasn't always
this way. Because it was.

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csunbird
Well, that could lead to people claiming that they do not have proper internet
access, even they had, just to be back at US.

Still, I feel like this is not a good thing to do, people are there to study
and losing bright minds like these should harm US a lot.

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yalogin
The WH is finally getting to its main goal, reducing immigration overall. They
were shy about it and started with illegal immigration but really they want to
stop all immigration. Wonder if the family green card processing is already
stopped.

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mpfundstein
you can really hate Trump because of its views and manners but one thing is
for certain: he was always honest about what he would do when in office and he
is pursuing that relentlessly.

wohld be nice to have a more centric candidate who would have this persistance
and 'idgaf, attitude.

but you probably need to be a psychopat to pull that off

~~~
nawwal
Honest about what he would do? \- Build the wall: almost no new wall has
actually been built \- Drain the swamp: puts friends and family members in
positions of power or influence, gives get-out-of-jail cards to convicted
loyal friends, literally spends millions of government dollars to vacation and
golf at his own resorts \- Other random things he said early on: peace in the
Middle East will be easy (lol), get rid of Obamacare but offer a better
alternative (gets rid of provisions during the pandemic) \- the list goes on
and on

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frequentnapper
Doesn't make much sense to me from a financial standpoint. The prospective
students got the visa, they will be attending online classes from within US
when they go there, and will pay international tuition. You don't want their
money?

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henearkr
I believe that it was more a public health decision. But if they decided
instead systematic PCR tests and 15 days quarantines for the entrants there
should be actually not much any problem...

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s1t5
> I believe that it was more a public health decision.

That's a very generous interpretation.

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henearkr
I agree...

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zalkota
He extended stem educational visas

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onetimemanytime
Isn't ICE, in theory correct? You come to USA to study. If your course is 100%
online, why do you need to come? And why would you come...

(I know that Trump admin is not immigration friendly, but that's a different
debate)

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gurleen_s
Ever taken a lecture at 3am? This is going to put international students at a
severe disadvantage.

~~~
detaro
One would kind of hope that universities by now have gotten past live lecture
attendance being necessary for remote learning... Guess that's a bit
optimistic though.

~~~
adchari
For reference, the University of Illinois CS department, which has a
significant number of international students, is having synchronous online
lectures for 95% of the courses offered this semester. If you were in
India/China, you would be watching 3am lectures, taking exams in the middle of
the night, etc.

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curiousgal
Man, going after students is so petty that it is only explained by xenophobia.

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rsj_hn
This isn't xenophobia, it's just understanding what these visas are for. The
purpose of a student visa is that you need to be in the country in order to
attend the school. If that's not the case, if you are not going to actually be
on the campus, then it makes no sense to demand a student visa.

When this crisis is over, and students actually need to show up to the campus,
then the student visa will make sense again.

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OminousWeapons
Cool so what's going to happen after these admitted students do their year or
two of online coursework remotely and then need to come to the US to finish in
person classes? Are they just fucked if they aren't granted a visa?

The reasonable thing to do if immigration bans are absolutely necessary
temporarily would be to issue admitted students visas now but block their use
temporarily while instruction was purely online. This would remove the risk of
foreign students spending tens of thousands on a program only to be forced to
transfer if they can't get a visa later. Of course, the real purpose of this
(along with the green card ban, h-1b bans, previous attempts at booting
students out, etc) is to be deliberately unreasonable and hostile towards
foreigners seeking to enter the US.

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akiselev
Then they will no longer have a 100% online curriculum, making them eligible
for the standard F-whatever visa.

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OminousWeapons
The problem is that visas aren't guaranteed so it's very possible that someone
could wind up half way through their college career and then not be able to
get a visa.

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llampx
This has been a very real issue ever since 2001. I studied in the US and tried
to minimize the number of trips I took abroad because you just never know what
could happen once you are outside the country.

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akiselev
And it doesn't just apply to students. The US immigration system is a
capricious beast for all.

I was a dependent on an H1B in 2006 when I accompanied my parents to a
consulate (outside of the US) to extend the visa. The State Department placed
a "security check" on my parents and we ended up living for months on vacation
pay and credit cards, with electricity stolen from the nearest power line and
no hot water until my mom started going to the consulate every morning to
bother anyone within earshot. We had been in the US for over a decade at that
point (getting PhDs, paying taxes, etc.) and just like that we almost had to
abandon our entire life here - pets, friends, careers, and all.

The ultimate irony was that we couldn't get work permits as illegal immigrants
in Mexico to carry us through the ordeal.

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blue52
This is good news. Along with cutting the scam H1B visas.

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Qahlel
Stopping the influx of travelers is just stupid. People "are" money. They
spend that money where they are. If they are not here, then they are spending
their money elsewhere.

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blue52
It just increases the value of American's and their assets ever so much. It's
very good.

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nkozyra
It literally does the opposite.

Removing consumers and producers from a market does not increase the "value of
American's" [sic] because it reduces consumption.

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aerodog
ICE membership in this case should be grounds for deportation

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alexnewman
When did hacker news become so superficial. Us intelligence networks rely on
surveillance done in University to prevent spying..since these students are no
longer under surveillance intelligence operators are helpless to investigate
them . This is actually about national security

