US To Withdraw Visa For Foreign Students Attending Online-Only Classes, Lakhs Of Indian Students To Face Ouster

The Trump administration has issued a new policy stating that international students may be forced to leave the country if they are attending universities with online only classes in the upcoming semester.

(Photo By Andy Cross/The Denver Post via Getty Images)

New Delhi: The US government has issued a new policy stating that international students may be forced to leave the country if their universities fully rely on online classes in the upcoming semester. According to a new policy announcement by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) foreign students studying in American universities will be either forced to leave the country or transfer to another college if their universities offer only online classes in the fall semester. With the latest policy, it seems that the Trump administration is now hitting F-1 and M-1 visas used by foreign students. The statement issued by the ICE on July 6 says, ‘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.' It also says, ‘The U.S. Department of State will not issue visas to students enrolled in schools and/or programs that are fully online for the fall semester nor will U.S. Customs and Border Protection permit these students to enter the United States. Active students currently in the United States enrolled in such programs must depart the country or take other measures, such as transferring to a school with in-person instruction to remain in lawful status. If not, they may face immigration consequences including, but not limited to, the initiation of removal proceedings.’ The policy will not affect students who are attending ‘normal in-person classes’ and those who are attending institutions that have ‘adopted a hybrid model—that is, a mixture of online and in-person classes’ Despite steadily rising coronavirus cases in the US, the Trump administration had maintained that schools and universities must open by Fall to ‘restart the economy’. Education institutes have been mulling over the mode of classes with many universities planning to go fully online. With the new policy, there seems to be a push for universities to adopt in-person classes over the online mode.  Brad Farnsworth, vice president of the American Council on Education said in a report by CNN that the new policy ‘creates more confusion and uncertainties’. He also questions if what universities are supposed to do if conditions worsen in Fall and they have to opt for online classes for student safety. According to media reports, the largest number of international students come from China, India, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Canada.  According to data by the Institute of International Education (IIE) in the year 2018-19, there were one million international students in the US which were about 5.5 percent of the total US higher education population. Foreign students also contributed $44.7 billion to the US economy in 2018.