I spent 45 minutes this morning trying to get to the bottom of this whole thing - as usual there is more nuance to this than presented.
- For as far back as I could find, students that wanted to qualify for a student visa to study in the US could take at most one online course per semester. The rest of the coursework had to be in-person.
- Starting in the spring of this year, the SEVP program (part of ICE) created exemptions so students could continue to stay in the US even though universities had moved entirely online. These exemptions were for Spring and Summer and universities were awaiting the rules for Fall.
- As of Monday, they are changing the exemptions. They are allowing any number of online classes, but with the caveat you have to have at least one in-person class.
- If you are already in the US you have to leave if your university is online-only. [This is the part that feels punitive and particularly onerous to me]
What is interesting to me is the framing of this. The new exemptions are still more flexible than the pre-existing student visa policy (which has been around through both Democratic and Republican administrations as far as I can tell). So on the one hand it's actually an improvement. On the other hand I think most of these universities were hoping the full exemption would continue as COVID is still very much a thing.
It's incredibly unfair for the the administration to target international students like this.
However Harvard and MIT aren't all about caring about their international students here. They are also thinking heavily about the money they might be losing. International students usually pay a much higher effective tuition rate. The higher the % of international students the school takes in the more money they take in. If these schools had to replace international students with domestic ones (even if they could) they wouldn't be able to get away with selecting only the highest paying students.
I'm from Boston, we have an incredibly high number of international students, and a lot of the interest in keeping them is about getting their money.
The Boston Globe estimates they are worth $3.6 billion dollars to the area... lots of money, lots of tuition, lots of apartment rentals, lots of bar & restaurant revenue.
> However Harvard and MIT aren't all about caring about their international students here. They are also thinking heavily about the money they might be losing.
It’s okay to have multiple motivations.
The fact that they have a monetary incentive doesn’t detract from the good of what they’re doing. In fact, that’s partially what enables these expensive lawsuits.
We shouldn’t try to downplay good actions just because money is also involved.
Yea but they are also afraid of loosing out on a generation of professors, post docs, academics, value generators, “job creators”.
It is very risky to cut out a generation of top students because the value is not just to the local Boston economy, but nationally. It’s not just cheap labor. It’s apprenticeship by the smartest in the world who will pay dividends for not only our lives but for generations.
I came as a student. I pay 6 figures in taxes. Some of my intl friends pay 7 figures and employ hundreds. I’ll have kids here that will generate enough value to do that as well.
Right now, there is a significant risk that a lot of economic value is going to be lost due to these immigration policies. That is not good for america.
It’s like a sports team: you have the ability to draft the top players from around the world for cheap. Why would you decide to boycott the draft itself and let the competitors (India, China) take those players? Especially some players that you have already trained (graduated students, post docs)
> However Harvard and MIT aren't all about caring about their international students here. They are also thinking heavily about the money they might be losing. International students usually pay a much higher effective tuition rate
As an international MIT alumni, I can confidently say that this is completely wrong. MIT and Harvard have need-based scholarships, meaning that students pay tuition depending on their financial circumstances. Most of the international students come from poorer countries & families compared to an average domestic student and therefore end up paying a lot less in tuition.
Also, MIT's international undergraduate students are usually around 10% of the whole class. Even if you were right, they don't represent a big enough chunk of the whole class to have a significant impact on the money they're making.
The vast majority of international MIT students are graduate students. Except for business students (i.e. MBA, executive MBA and similar), graduate students in research programs do not pay a dime to MIT. Their tuition + stipend for living expenses is paid by research or TA fellowships. I.e. they either work as either research or teaching assistants to receive this money. MIT receives part of the fellowship money as an "overhead" tax, but this is exactly what happens for domestic graduate students.
Notably, in the case of MIT these fellowships are provided to both M.S. and PhD students. I believe that Stanford M.S. students do not get such fellowships and hence need to pay for their tuition.
Source: got my PhD at MIT as an international F1 student.
>However Harvard and MIT aren't all about caring about their international students here. They are also thinking heavily about the money they might be losing.
Harvard has a ~$40bn endowment. Even if all 6,500 of its international students are affected, and all of them are paying $50,000 in tuition, and absolutely none of them are replaced, and no economies at all are generated by them not attending, then the university stands to lose slightly less than 1% of that endowment this year.
My point here is that Harvard can amply afford not to raise this issue, and that I rather suspect the issue of principle is more important than you suggest.
> International students usually pay a much higher effective tuition rate.
That might be true for other universities but not for Harvard and MIT, whose admissions are aid-blind and most international students there receive huge financial aid packages.
There are lower-ranked universities that have programs (usually Masters's ones) that are targeted towards foreign students who can pay a lot of money.
> The higher the % of international students the school takes in the more money they take in.
I thought that private institutions like MIT and Harvard charge the same rates for international and domestic students? For example, MIT's page on cost of attendance only lists one tuition rate[1].
It would be public institutions like the University of California that would stand to lose the most revenue percentage-wise from this policy, right?
edit: see replies below that elaborate on finaid for internationals
Beyond the economic value of international students, Harvard and MIT are completely dependent on these sources of cheap, intelligent labor. There isn't enough domestic supply of top students to keep top labs running and publishing state of the art research.
Sounds like incentives are aligned: foreign students get a good education and exposure to the U.S. (hopefully building goodwill). Local community benefits from exposure to foreign students (hopefully building good will). Local community gets foreign money. Only the students' home countries are potentially losing out, but even that depends on whether the student ends up sending money back home or returns home to contribute to their own local economy.
The thing about American universities, is that this transactional treatment of international students is well understood by the students themselves.
However, it is also well known, that these same universities are insane career fast tracks for them in the US, their home country and elsewhere. There was a reliability to reputed US universities. Pay us all of your family assets + more, but you will make it back soon with a high level of confidence.(esp. in STEM)
Similarly, we understand that the tedious immigration system of US does a great job of capturing the best international students in golden handcuffs, where they get to tax you like a resident, without providing any of the amenities or rights a resident has.
But, life in the US is much better than that in an underdeveloped country, and even the circus hoops we have to jump through aren't sufficient discouragement to choose one over the other. As long as life is less shit than my home nation, I can deal with some abuse. As Hasan Minhaj puts it, it's the "immigrant tax".
We have no delusions of being treated equally to American citizens/residents.
If you can pick a certain amount of cotton, then you are a free man. (/s...but only kinda)
Where this rubs international students the wrong way, is just like the slave analogy, there is no formal agreement and the slave owner is free do what he likes, since ofc, like America he owns the slave. But, most communication happens is not verbal. There was a long understood, quiet honor system. Trump is violating that.
Many of these student's parents have sold off last of their clothes to send their children to the US. Many of these PhD students have been worked down to their bones on minimum wage, just for an American doctorate. Don't change the deal now. Not when these people have already (metaphorically) signed the deal.
I completely support the choice of any American to want stringent borders. That's your prerogative. No one complains about Japan not opening up their doors to the world. Parents won't bankrupt themselves filling the coffers of American colleges and co-located businesses. Students won't destroy their health doing RA/TA jobs that pay far under what they deserve.
There is an unspoken deal an international student signs when they commit $100k+ to the a US institute. In some sense, it is codified in the OPT system. Here, have 3 years to make back some of the money and fuck off. America, please reject these people at the door. Don't take their money, sweat & blood and then kick them out. That's just cruel.
We go out of our way to pick more cotton than the other slaves. Free us, or never make that promise in the 1st place. It was not illegal in 18th century US, but it sure as hell was dick move.
- there is a rule in place whereby international students who don't take most classes in person will lose their visa status
- this rule was suspended by ICE on March 13 for the duration of the Covid19 emergency
- ICE now has changed their mind for the Fall semester
- the core part of the complaint is in paragraph 10. It has 2 parts: the ICE u-turn is "arbitrary and capricious and an abuse of discretion", and it did not follow the Administrative Procedure Act.
Now, IANAL, but here's my take: for the first part of the complaint, it's very likely ICE will be able to produce some "analysis" so they can claim their decision was not arbitrary and capricious, but rather made after careful consideration. The second part of the complaint has probably better odds of success. If Harvard and MIT can pinpoint the exact part of the Administrative Procedure Act that ICE did not follow, a judge could issue the injunction. Just recently the Supreme Court overturned Trump administration's decision to revoke DACA based on this Administrative Procedure Act.
In the end though, even if this injunction is issued, it may take months, and it may arrive too late to be of any help for the international students who will lose their visa.
It would be fantastic though if someone with legal expertise were to opine on this in this forum.
To be clear, DHS was not required to do any of this or to
“consider all policy alternatives in reaching [its] decision.”
State Farm, 463 U. S., at 51. Agencies are not compelled to
explore “every alternative device and thought conceivable
by the mind of man.” Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp.
v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 435 U. S. 519,
551 (1978). But, because DHS was “not writing on a blank
slate,” post, at 22, n. 14 (opinion of THOMAS, J.), it was required
to assess whether there were reliance interests, determine
whether they were significant, and weigh any such
interests against competing policy concerns.
The issue of reliance, I think, is important here - did ICE actually internally discuss the extent to which international students and their families were relying on the previous guidance, and did they actually do any kind of analysis that the benefit to society and economy would outweigh those reliance interests, even for non-citizens? Given that societal benefits are practically nonexistent and that many university systems economically rely on continuity of their matriculated student bodies, particularly international students paying non-subsidized tuition, it seems unlikely that such an analysis was done in good faith.
ICE hasn't really "change their mind." When they relaxed rules in March it was never going to be an indefinite change. The new rules are much more lenient than they could have been.
>there is a rule in place whereby international students who don't take most classes in person will lose their visa status
It doesn't say you can't take most classes online, it says you can't take all classes online. In a hybrid model, it gets a little grey, but nothing specifically says you can't take most classes online.
>Nonimmigrant F-1 students attending schools adopting a hybrid model—that is, a mixture of online and in person classes—will be allowed to take more than one class or three credit hours online. These schools must certify to SEVP, through the Form I-20, “Certificate of Eligibility for Nonimmigrant Student Status,” certifying that the program is not entirely online, that the student is not taking an entirely online course load this semester, and that the student is taking the minimum number of online classes required to make normal progress in their degree program.
Shortly after Monday’s announcement about our plans for the fall semester, we learned that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced new regulations that imperil the lives and academic progress of our international students and scholars. These new guidelines directly undermine the careful planning and approach we have taken for fall, specifically our plans to deliver all graduate and undergraduate instruction online. This plan was put forth to reconcile the health and safety needs of our community and the vitality of our academic mission, including accounting for the needs of our diverse, global community of students and scholars who face a host of limitations and complications brought about by the pandemic. This reckless reversal by ICE hurts our students and it hurts us as an institution. The FAS is an international community and that is a source of pride and inspiration. That we bring together the voices and perspectives of some of the brightest minds from across the world is fundamental to our intellectual strength and ambitions and must be protected.
While there is still much we don’t know, we are working quickly to respond to the needs of our international students and scholars impacted by this news. To that end, early this morning, President Bacow announced that Harvard, together with MIT, has filed pleadings in the US District Court in Boston to seek a temporary restraining order against the enforcement of this order. In doing so, we continue to be guided by our core principles to protect our academic enterprise and preserve access and affordability for all our students. The new ICE order is a direct threat to that institutional imperative. But we are committed to doing all we can to enable our students and scholars to continue their studies without further disruption to their lives and academic progress in an already uncertain and challenging time.
Many of you have reached out to express your concern about these new regulations and what they will mean for our students. I share your deep distress over this new order, and I assure you that the FAS and the University are working tirelessly to fight on behalf of our international students and scholars. We will explore all avenues and exhaust all options to chart a path forward that protects their place as valued members of the FAS community.
Sincerely,
Claudine
It's the most strongly worded email I've ever seen from Harvard. It seems like they believe that the Trump Administration is trying to manipulate them into opening prematurely, and that they are very cognizant of this.
During the Vietnam war, colleges stopped grading so that it was impossible for anyone to fail out and get drafted. Why can't these colleges just create in-person classes that meet once a semester with optional attendance?
Serious question: can the schools just have a required course that's like, walk around campus for an hour with a mask and describe your feelings? Pass/fail, 1 credit.
The lawsuit will be strong if they say online classes are temporary in order to not to violate governor order and will be in-person as soon as governor allows. I don’t see any reason ICE can argue against that.
Lots of the comments are talking about this as an MIT/Harvard issue. To be clear, MIT and Harvard are the first to file suit, but this radical policy by ICE dramatically affects every college and university, and every international student, in the country. And the suit seeks to strike down the policy altogether, not get an exemption for these two schools.
This is not about Harvard and MIT at all, except insofar as they wound up being the ones with the position and deep pockets to most quickly file a strong suit to stop it.
Higher education is due for a massive price correction. The cost of education has outstripped market ability and the movement to online while still asking top dollar tuition is going to make those education institutions increasingly pressured. Going online increases international ability to compete for students as well as professors, and this will also increase pressure on tuition pricing.
Higher ed tuition pricing is bound for a massive correction.
I think this is a first step in kicking out Chinese students. If you're from France, South Korea, Nigeria, etc. you'll be invited back soon enough. This is not a judgement on that plan, just a prediction.
I firmly believe this is being done to damage the reputation of the USA as an immigrant friendly country in order to induce a major brain drain while also stemming the flow of Chinese students away from the mainland.
It sounds like these ICE regulations are not new, they are just removing some temporary exemptions they put in to place due to COVID. So the suit is against the removal of this exemption, there are no new restrictions in place that did not exist before COVID.
My stance is typically anti-immigration, but I do not support this decision of ICE. I am likely missing big chunk of the story, but could anyone explain the motives behind ICE decision? (without blind hateful virtue-signaling please)
The Acting Deputy for Homeland Security admitted on CNN that they’re using the threat of losing international students’ immense tuition to force universities and colleges to fully open in the fall.
I really do think this is a cynical ploy to induce universities to open up more aggressively than they would like. That is the only reasoning I can come up with.
As someone who apparently has formed a stance on immigration issues, it comes as a surprise to me that you haven't noticed the continuous pattern of using executive power to restrict both legal and illegal immigration activity during this administration.
My charitable interpretation is that giving visas to online students is open to abuse. If you're an undocumented worker, you can pay a few thousand dollars to stay in the US legally. You'd still be working illegally, but that would be much more difficult to prove.
This is a reversion to the previous practice of not allowing student visas if the student is not attending in-person classes. That rule was suspended back in March for COVID, but is now reinstated.
Presumably this was traditionally implemented to prevent fake schools from enrolling students strictly for the purpose of allowing them entry into the country on a student visa.
The broader Trump administration doesn’t like universities, and especially doesn’t like universities that are taking covid seriously. They can use this as leverage to try to force universities to have in person classes.
This isn’t “blind hateful virtue-signalling”. It is the only reasonable explanation for a policy that provides no benefit to anybody, causes tremendous and sudden harm to legal immigrants, and causes tremendous and sudden harm to higher education institutions.
What actual benefit comes from this? The universities have still admitted the students. There isn’t more room for Americans, and if there was it is way too late.
The only thing I can see is that this messes with all of the students ability to get OPT visas, ensuring that they have a difficult time getting a job in the US after graduating even if they are highly skilled. But the h1b cap is filled every year anyway so this wouldn’t reduce the number of jobs “taken” by immigrants.
it's weird, this administration has been almost vindictive against some groups, like non white asylum seekers, non white students, non white Puerto Ricans, non white athletes, and non white protesters, but it is very supportive of other groups like white protesters, white farmers, white business owners ... where is the common thread? It's a complete mystery and impossible to figure out.
[+] [-] eric_b|5 years ago|reply
- For as far back as I could find, students that wanted to qualify for a student visa to study in the US could take at most one online course per semester. The rest of the coursework had to be in-person.
- Starting in the spring of this year, the SEVP program (part of ICE) created exemptions so students could continue to stay in the US even though universities had moved entirely online. These exemptions were for Spring and Summer and universities were awaiting the rules for Fall.
- As of Monday, they are changing the exemptions. They are allowing any number of online classes, but with the caveat you have to have at least one in-person class.
- If you are already in the US you have to leave if your university is online-only. [This is the part that feels punitive and particularly onerous to me]
What is interesting to me is the framing of this. The new exemptions are still more flexible than the pre-existing student visa policy (which has been around through both Democratic and Republican administrations as far as I can tell). So on the one hand it's actually an improvement. On the other hand I think most of these universities were hoping the full exemption would continue as COVID is still very much a thing.
[+] [-] ben7799|5 years ago|reply
However Harvard and MIT aren't all about caring about their international students here. They are also thinking heavily about the money they might be losing. International students usually pay a much higher effective tuition rate. The higher the % of international students the school takes in the more money they take in. If these schools had to replace international students with domestic ones (even if they could) they wouldn't be able to get away with selecting only the highest paying students.
I'm from Boston, we have an incredibly high number of international students, and a lot of the interest in keeping them is about getting their money.
The Boston Globe estimates they are worth $3.6 billion dollars to the area... lots of money, lots of tuition, lots of apartment rentals, lots of bar & restaurant revenue.
[+] [-] PragmaticPulp|5 years ago|reply
It’s okay to have multiple motivations.
The fact that they have a monetary incentive doesn’t detract from the good of what they’re doing. In fact, that’s partially what enables these expensive lawsuits.
We shouldn’t try to downplay good actions just because money is also involved.
[+] [-] vowelless|5 years ago|reply
It is very risky to cut out a generation of top students because the value is not just to the local Boston economy, but nationally. It’s not just cheap labor. It’s apprenticeship by the smartest in the world who will pay dividends for not only our lives but for generations.
I came as a student. I pay 6 figures in taxes. Some of my intl friends pay 7 figures and employ hundreds. I’ll have kids here that will generate enough value to do that as well.
Right now, there is a significant risk that a lot of economic value is going to be lost due to these immigration policies. That is not good for america.
It’s like a sports team: you have the ability to draft the top players from around the world for cheap. Why would you decide to boycott the draft itself and let the competitors (India, China) take those players? Especially some players that you have already trained (graduated students, post docs)
[+] [-] tsotnet|5 years ago|reply
As an international MIT alumni, I can confidently say that this is completely wrong. MIT and Harvard have need-based scholarships, meaning that students pay tuition depending on their financial circumstances. Most of the international students come from poorer countries & families compared to an average domestic student and therefore end up paying a lot less in tuition.
Also, MIT's international undergraduate students are usually around 10% of the whole class. Even if you were right, they don't represent a big enough chunk of the whole class to have a significant impact on the money they're making.
[+] [-] kaik|5 years ago|reply
Source: got my PhD at MIT as an international F1 student.
[+] [-] NovemberWhiskey|5 years ago|reply
Harvard has a ~$40bn endowment. Even if all 6,500 of its international students are affected, and all of them are paying $50,000 in tuition, and absolutely none of them are replaced, and no economies at all are generated by them not attending, then the university stands to lose slightly less than 1% of that endowment this year.
My point here is that Harvard can amply afford not to raise this issue, and that I rather suspect the issue of principle is more important than you suggest.
[+] [-] blue11|5 years ago|reply
That might be true for other universities but not for Harvard and MIT, whose admissions are aid-blind and most international students there receive huge financial aid packages.
There are lower-ranked universities that have programs (usually Masters's ones) that are targeted towards foreign students who can pay a lot of money.
[+] [-] jidiculous|5 years ago|reply
I thought that private institutions like MIT and Harvard charge the same rates for international and domestic students? For example, MIT's page on cost of attendance only lists one tuition rate[1].
It would be public institutions like the University of California that would stand to lose the most revenue percentage-wise from this policy, right?
edit: see replies below that elaborate on finaid for internationals
[1] https://sfs.mit.edu/undergraduate-students/the-cost-of-atten...
[+] [-] dekhn|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] balfirevic|5 years ago|reply
"Fantastic"
[+] [-] js2|5 years ago|reply
This was an incredibly dumb decision by ICE.
[+] [-] xxpor|5 years ago|reply
This is also a solid reason why they have standing to sue in the first place, so it's actually a good thing.
[+] [-] Ar-Curunir|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] screye|5 years ago|reply
However, it is also well known, that these same universities are insane career fast tracks for them in the US, their home country and elsewhere. There was a reliability to reputed US universities. Pay us all of your family assets + more, but you will make it back soon with a high level of confidence.(esp. in STEM)
Similarly, we understand that the tedious immigration system of US does a great job of capturing the best international students in golden handcuffs, where they get to tax you like a resident, without providing any of the amenities or rights a resident has. But, life in the US is much better than that in an underdeveloped country, and even the circus hoops we have to jump through aren't sufficient discouragement to choose one over the other. As long as life is less shit than my home nation, I can deal with some abuse. As Hasan Minhaj puts it, it's the "immigrant tax".
We have no delusions of being treated equally to American citizens/residents.
If you can pick a certain amount of cotton, then you are a free man. (/s...but only kinda)
Where this rubs international students the wrong way, is just like the slave analogy, there is no formal agreement and the slave owner is free do what he likes, since ofc, like America he owns the slave. But, most communication happens is not verbal. There was a long understood, quiet honor system. Trump is violating that.
Many of these student's parents have sold off last of their clothes to send their children to the US. Many of these PhD students have been worked down to their bones on minimum wage, just for an American doctorate. Don't change the deal now. Not when these people have already (metaphorically) signed the deal.
I completely support the choice of any American to want stringent borders. That's your prerogative. No one complains about Japan not opening up their doors to the world. Parents won't bankrupt themselves filling the coffers of American colleges and co-located businesses. Students won't destroy their health doing RA/TA jobs that pay far under what they deserve.
There is an unspoken deal an international student signs when they commit $100k+ to the a US institute. In some sense, it is codified in the OPT system. Here, have 3 years to make back some of the money and fuck off. America, please reject these people at the door. Don't take their money, sweat & blood and then kick them out. That's just cruel.
We go out of our way to pick more cotton than the other slaves. Free us, or never make that promise in the 1st place. It was not illegal in 18th century US, but it sure as hell was dick move.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] chvid|5 years ago|reply
https://www.statista.com/statistics/233880/international-stu...
370.000 students from China, 200.000 from India, 52.000 from South Korea.
This policy change affects hundreds of thousands students and must generate a massive loss in economic terms.
[+] [-] credit_guy|5 years ago|reply
http://orgchart.mit.edu/sites/default/files/reports/20200708...
My very short summary:
- there is a rule in place whereby international students who don't take most classes in person will lose their visa status
- this rule was suspended by ICE on March 13 for the duration of the Covid19 emergency
- ICE now has changed their mind for the Fall semester
- the core part of the complaint is in paragraph 10. It has 2 parts: the ICE u-turn is "arbitrary and capricious and an abuse of discretion", and it did not follow the Administrative Procedure Act.
Now, IANAL, but here's my take: for the first part of the complaint, it's very likely ICE will be able to produce some "analysis" so they can claim their decision was not arbitrary and capricious, but rather made after careful consideration. The second part of the complaint has probably better odds of success. If Harvard and MIT can pinpoint the exact part of the Administrative Procedure Act that ICE did not follow, a judge could issue the injunction. Just recently the Supreme Court overturned Trump administration's decision to revoke DACA based on this Administrative Procedure Act.
In the end though, even if this injunction is issued, it may take months, and it may arrive too late to be of any help for the international students who will lose their visa.
It would be fantastic though if someone with legal expertise were to opine on this in this forum.
[+] [-] btown|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] steviedotboston|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WillPostForFood|5 years ago|reply
It doesn't say you can't take most classes online, it says you can't take all classes online. In a hybrid model, it gets a little grey, but nothing specifically says you can't take most classes online.
>Nonimmigrant F-1 students attending schools adopting a hybrid model—that is, a mixture of online and in person classes—will be allowed to take more than one class or three credit hours online. These schools must certify to SEVP, through the Form I-20, “Certificate of Eligibility for Nonimmigrant Student Status,” certifying that the program is not entirely online, that the student is not taking an entirely online course load this semester, and that the student is taking the minimum number of online classes required to make normal progress in their degree program.
https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/sevp-modifies-temporary-ex...
[+] [-] ISL|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] montenegrohugo|5 years ago|reply
Dear members of the FAS community,
Shortly after Monday’s announcement about our plans for the fall semester, we learned that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced new regulations that imperil the lives and academic progress of our international students and scholars. These new guidelines directly undermine the careful planning and approach we have taken for fall, specifically our plans to deliver all graduate and undergraduate instruction online. This plan was put forth to reconcile the health and safety needs of our community and the vitality of our academic mission, including accounting for the needs of our diverse, global community of students and scholars who face a host of limitations and complications brought about by the pandemic. This reckless reversal by ICE hurts our students and it hurts us as an institution. The FAS is an international community and that is a source of pride and inspiration. That we bring together the voices and perspectives of some of the brightest minds from across the world is fundamental to our intellectual strength and ambitions and must be protected.
While there is still much we don’t know, we are working quickly to respond to the needs of our international students and scholars impacted by this news. To that end, early this morning, President Bacow announced that Harvard, together with MIT, has filed pleadings in the US District Court in Boston to seek a temporary restraining order against the enforcement of this order. In doing so, we continue to be guided by our core principles to protect our academic enterprise and preserve access and affordability for all our students. The new ICE order is a direct threat to that institutional imperative. But we are committed to doing all we can to enable our students and scholars to continue their studies without further disruption to their lives and academic progress in an already uncertain and challenging time.
Many of you have reached out to express your concern about these new regulations and what they will mean for our students. I share your deep distress over this new order, and I assure you that the FAS and the University are working tirelessly to fight on behalf of our international students and scholars. We will explore all avenues and exhaust all options to chart a path forward that protects their place as valued members of the FAS community.
Sincerely,
Claudine
It's the most strongly worded email I've ever seen from Harvard. It seems like they believe that the Trump Administration is trying to manipulate them into opening prematurely, and that they are very cognizant of this.
[+] [-] ISL|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Alex3917|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] viscountchocula|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sytelus|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrk|5 years ago|reply
This is not about Harvard and MIT at all, except insofar as they wound up being the ones with the position and deep pockets to most quickly file a strong suit to stop it.
[+] [-] rexreed|5 years ago|reply
Higher ed tuition pricing is bound for a massive correction.
[+] [-] Consultant32452|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bg24|5 years ago|reply
Imagine us being students and having to go through the pain, while Covid is all over the map.
[+] [-] sushshshsh|5 years ago|reply
What a world.
[+] [-] beepboopbeep|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] exolymph|5 years ago|reply
What is the motivation for desiring this, in your view?
[+] [-] sqrt|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GhostVII|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hello_1234|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quantum_state|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nocitrek|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spanktheuser|5 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/tcmassie/status/1280569206501789697?s=21
[+] [-] lordleft|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NovemberWhiskey|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aunche|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewla|5 years ago|reply
Presumably this was traditionally implemented to prevent fake schools from enrolling students strictly for the purpose of allowing them entry into the country on a student visa.
[+] [-] sheeshkebab|5 years ago|reply
If understand the rules have always been there (on limit for online classes)
[+] [-] UncleMeat|5 years ago|reply
The broader Trump administration doesn’t like universities, and especially doesn’t like universities that are taking covid seriously. They can use this as leverage to try to force universities to have in person classes.
This isn’t “blind hateful virtue-signalling”. It is the only reasonable explanation for a policy that provides no benefit to anybody, causes tremendous and sudden harm to legal immigrants, and causes tremendous and sudden harm to higher education institutions.
What actual benefit comes from this? The universities have still admitted the students. There isn’t more room for Americans, and if there was it is way too late.
The only thing I can see is that this messes with all of the students ability to get OPT visas, ensuring that they have a difficult time getting a job in the US after graduating even if they are highly skilled. But the h1b cap is filled every year anyway so this wouldn’t reduce the number of jobs “taken” by immigrants.
[+] [-] jhpriestley|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] standardUser|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mhh__|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _jal|5 years ago|reply
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