You need to maintain continuous residency for OPT, so this ruins a student’s chance at staying in the US after they graduate.
The timing is also incredibly sudden. Graduate students have been in the US for 5-10 years. They have leases and cars and friends. Giving them a few weeks before deporting them is cruel.
Wouldn't Graduate students be exempt from this to begin with? At least at the Ph.D level, past the first year or two you aren't even taking classes, the whole point of the degree is the research. They are also usually employed by the University as teaching assistants. How would this law impact them?
Note: I support the lawsuit, I have many friends who are or were international students, I live in Boston, just wondering how this would affect research-based grad students.
Most graduate students are in the US on F-1 visas [1] and still need to maintain a minimum course unit enrollment per semester in order to be in status [2]. IANAL, but I would assume they're not exempt from the new in-person requirement for their registered courses.
I do know that I have faculty friends who have had their grad students come to them in tremendous distress related to this policy. So at least some people believe that this would deport graduate students who have advanced to candidacy.
> Giving them a few weeks before deporting them is cruel.
This is the intention of the Trump admin's policy: discouraging people from immigrating by whatever ugly means necessary, no matter if illegal or not. This has been a consistent line from the beginning with the infamous "muslim ban".
The schools can just provide an in person class once a week and
they could wear a mask in class and sit farther away from people. I think a lot of these students either don’t want to go to class or are working on their visa. I’ve been in their situation so I have a doubt ICE is randomly coming for them. If they did nothing wrong they can present their case in immigration court.
