
ICE Tells Foreign Students to Leave the Country If Their Schools Are Online-Only - huslage
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/07/ice-tells-foreign-students-to-leave-the-country-if-their-schools-are-going-online-only/
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atonse
It is just horrific to watch the unfolding of everything that gives us a
competitive edge and makes this country stand out. At the same time watching
people cheer it.

We are sending our best and brightest into the welcoming arms of the
competition. And I don’t mean this in a good guy bad guy way, more in the
sense of healthy competition between sports teams.

We already know about the countless contributions of Immigrants, even when it
comes to job creation from immigrant founded companies. As we turn them away,
we continue to dissolve into unprecedented dysfunction, at a time that we most
need to attract that energy to get us out of this nasty rut.

As an immigrant who came here from India at age 12, this is home. And it’s sad
to see your home being eaten into by politically motivated termites and
rotting at every level at the core, while many of my fellow Americans cheer it
on our self-destruction.

~~~
383urhdhe
I'm not seeing it. Unless Europe suddenly figures out how to pay real wages at
the same time that China discovers how to not be horrible people can always be
imported at the discretion of whoever is managing the system. People come to
the US for the money.

~~~
mritun
Higher wages in US is just cost of doing business - most top tier people won’t
work in US at lower salaries because of extreme uncertainty and zero safety
net.

Salaries in Canada are lower but the safety net makes up for it.

~~~
dungdang
this has to be a joke post. the safety net is provided to poor people, by the
taxed salary of the high paid people. you are saying the high paid people want
to work in canada, so they can pay for poor people?

my job pays 250k standard in the states. literally the same job, at the same
company, is 160k canadian. it's even less in france.

yes, yes, you get insurance. so do i -about 8k/year taken out of my paycheck.

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cchance
What the f*ck is wrong with these people, this is so transparent. First they
didn't want the "bad" immigrants coming, or the illegal immigrants, but now
they don't want the students in higher education that are studying in the USA
to be here either?!?!?! As if it's the students fault that the school they
attend is forcing them to do online classes temporarily.

I'd imagine a good bit of these students have pretty extensive lives and plans
in the US since they're here LEGALLY.

~~~
belval
Hopefully colleges will create some sort of "hybrid" programs that is not
completely online to allow foreign students to stay in the US.

But yeah, this is very sad.

~~~
astuyvenberg
It would be challenging to do so - the rule states that full time students can
only enroll in one full-time online class.

~~~
horns4lyfe
That's not true, if the school is using a hybrid model students can take more
courses online. [https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/sevp-modifies-temporary-
ex...](https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/sevp-modifies-temporary-exemptions-
nonimmigrant-students-taking-online-courses-during)

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JohnL4
So... highly political, but to all the Americans here who just couldn't bring
themselves to vote for email lady because she was just too neoliberal: mazel
tov!

~~~
splintercell
FYI, Obama administration ICE did plenty of these things. For instance the
fake College sting operation was started under Obama administration. as soon
as Obama took oath new immigration policies screwed h-1bs. Due to high
unemployment Obama administration believed that these people were stealing
jobs from Americans and contributing to high unemployment of American
citizens. There were no protests at JFK for these people against these
policies.

It's simply partisan thinking to believe that your political side favors legal
immigration, they don't.

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neilv
Is this move by ICE going to be additional motivation for schools to not go
remote for September?

Even if they believe that will probably to cost lives on campus and in the
local community?

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aussieguy1234
I'm sure we'd love these students to come to Australia, once the border
lockdowns are finished. Maybe an Australian university or one from another
country will replace Havard, MIT etc in the global pecking order.

~~~
sumedh
Education is already a big business in Australia, those universities love the
foreign student revenue so much that they even lower the bar for English
requirements so that more students can come over.

[https://www.abc.net.au/4corners/cash-
cows/11084858](https://www.abc.net.au/4corners/cash-cows/11084858)

~~~
SturgeonsLaw
Yep, and at a time when interstate borders have not reopened, let alone
national borders, the Australian federal government is making an exemption for
one group - international students

[https://www.theguardian.com/australia-
news/2020/jul/07/austr...](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-
news/2020/jul/07/australia-to-allow-international-university-students-to-
return-before-all-state-borders-open)

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throwaway9255
Twitter had hashtag #labswithoutvisas going on few weeks back where some
professors have posted images of what their labs would look like without
people on visas [1]. And this would be true for way more labs than what you
will see on twitter. Most likely within couple of years, number of research
papers coming from US would decline drastically.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/hashtag/labswithoutvisas](https://twitter.com/hashtag/labswithoutvisas)

[sarcasm] Oh wait! All these research positions can go to Americans now, damn
those pesky Indian, Chinese, Korean... etc kids who have been snatching these
opportunities from deserving Americans. I don't see why Americans won't fill
in these positions and MAGA. [/sarcasm]

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bernardv
What a disaster this administration is - literally taking the US backward deep
into the Trump cave. I experienced great joy showing up at the US consulate to
return my green card with a great big F-U smile on my face. Good riddance.

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ghufran_syed
Why is this such a problem? So they go back home for a year, save lots of
money on US rents, stay enrolled, then come back once in-person classes start
again? is there any evidence that universities want to disenroll these
students and therefore lose their extremely high tuition fees?

~~~
orm
Well, first, some schools are going online only for the latter half of the
semester. But my understanding of the current guidance is that this is not
enough to meet the in-person requirements, and so students may have to leave
anyway and miss that half. Second, intl. travel is highly disrupted already
and will continue being so. Some countries will fare worse under covid than
others, and so students may get stuck, even after their school states are
doing better. No guidance was given on students from travel ban countries, who
were already here after the travel bans. Third, student visas expire. Visa
politics are very volatile lately. Summing up, many people are now subject to
gratuitous uncertainty about whether they'll be able to come back in at all
over the next 12 months. Suppose you have to leave, a lot of people have
already signed leases, etc.

Finally, the guidance so far is quite ambiguous. It is not clear who is able
to remain and who won't, and my department sent an email basically saying they
are waiting for extra information to know what's going on. That already is bad
in itself.

~~~
zjs
An additional challenge is that classes will, almost certainly, be scheduled
based on "local time". Students attending from other countries may find
themselves needing to significantly time-shift their studies.

~~~
thomaslord
This is definitely a major issue - the US has a lot of students who come in
from China, which would require a very significant time shift. Those students
may also not be able to access the digital resources they need for class due
to internet censorship, or they may simply be unable to join live class
sessions due to latency or overall speed issues.

~~~
zjs
I had overlooked the potential impact of internet censorship. It seems like it
would be very hard to take a graduate-level class without access to resources
like Google Scholar.

