Int. students may need to leave US if classes are 100% Remote

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23751931" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23751931</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23755301" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23755301</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23753413" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23753413</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23753182" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23753182</a>

This is just another step in a broad-based program to make sure as few highly qualified people as possible can come to learn and work in the US.<p>(1) F1 visas have been effectively banned in much of the world since COVID started - the required interviews could only be done in now-closed centers. (2) H1B, L1, H4, and J1 visas have been suspended until the end of the year, leaving OPT transfers, H1B lottery winners (already a 1 in 3 shot), H1B transfers, and others in the lurch. (3) RFEs (a first step to visa denials) have been on a steep rise.<p>As a result, not only are we kicking people out, but international applications to US schools have absolutely collapsed; fewer people are even trying. The US is actively abandoning its goal of being the land of opportunity, and it makes me sad.

Original press release is <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ice.gov&#x2F;news&#x2F;releases&#x2F;sevp-modifies-temporary-exemptions-nonimmigrant-students-taking-online-courses-during?fbclid=IwAR1q6W8g6uikfadS8eZDZI8ocer-Pv-mxEg5RWGZIwmb6lCu58KRklAgoL8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ice.gov&#x2F;news&#x2F;releases&#x2F;sevp-modifies-temporary-ex...</a><p>Key fact:<p>- International student cannot legally attend a 100% online school from the US (with an F or M status).<p>- International student in school with &quot;Hybrid&quot; models (some in person, some online) cannot have a 100% &quot;online semester&quot;. The school will need to certify that the student is not taking 100% online classes.<p>- If a Hybrid school moves to a fully online halfway through, the student needs to depart the US (or transfer to another school)<p>This only applies for the student to be legally _within_ the US of course.<p>EDIT: The law already prevented this, basically. Spring and Summer had special exemptions granted by DHS. So this is just a reversal to the &quot;usual policy&quot;, which it seems many school expected would not happen (at least not that quickly). My university is scrambling to understand the exact consequences.

Key quote:<p>&gt;” Visa requirements for students have always been strict and coming to the US to take online-only courses has been prohibited.”<p>So it’s a reinforcement of policy rather than change although some institutions would like to see accommodation for this kind of circumstance —which is understandable if students came here with the intent to attend in person, but it’s worth noting the the visa requirements have not changed

International students should be allowed to stay as long as they&#x27;re full-time, and are accepted into an accredited university with the intention of attending in person.<p>I guess the gray area here is that colleges, many of them being for-profit entities, are facing big drops in enrollment and can essentially sell US citizenship in exchange for tuition payments. Once an online course system is set up, the only cost is generating new user credentials.

To add a bit of color:<p>* One of my friends went to live with her parents after her OPT expired. She was supposed to enroll in an M.S. in August, but due to COVID, the embassies in her country were shut down. While her university is hybrid, she chose to stay in her home country to take the online-only courses, which are (fortunately) discounted.<p>* My sister, who is trying to renew her F-1 and has no other status options, is hoping that her school doesn&#x27;t go online.<p>* My mom, an immunocompromised professor, is asking the university for an exemption to their in-person requirement. The university said no. The word around is that a financial analyst explained to administration that if people don&#x27;t have the &quot;campus experience&quot; and therefore stop paying for housing&#x2F;dining halls, the university would face insolvency within 2 semesters.<p>All in all, it seems like a way to pressure universities to open. They cannot reasonably close and lose like 5-10% <i>more</i> of their revenue by losing all international students, especially if they haven&#x27;t figured out online course delivery to recoup some fees from F-1s.

As someone who studied in the US on an F1 visa, I can tell you that this rule has always been in place. The F1 visa was always extremely restrictive whether it was regarding minimum number of in person credits or regarding allowing students to work part time.<p>It seems especially cruel that they&#x27;d choose to enforce the rule at a time like this.

I know this will be very unpleasant and will entail a lot of hardship for a lot of people but I can&#x27;t help but wonder if in the long term this will help to start reversing the &quot;brain drain&quot; problem that many developing nations are struggling with. They&#x27;ll still have access to their classes and be able to acquire the requisite skills, but now they&#x27;ll be building something in their home country not stuck in a middle tier position within the US.<p>Of course not saying that means the policies made are good or bad, I am just curious to the second order effect this will have.

As an international student myself, it has been a very confusing last few months, and now this. I am fortunate enough to be back in my home country but I know of many others who are stuck in the US due to travel restrictions or financial reasons. Forcing them to leave for a situation they cannot control during a pandemic is cruel.<p>I urge everyone to sign this petition[0] to help international students who are here to pursue higher education in the US, by asking ICE to rescind their decision.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.change.org&#x2F;p&#x2F;ice-let-international-students-stay" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.change.org&#x2F;p&#x2F;ice-let-international-students-stay</a>

All of those students who came to the US to try to get an education will remember this for the rest of their lives. When all of those future scientists, business leaders, journalists, politicians, artists, and so on think about the US, they will think back to how the US treated them at a time of global crisis.

I really hope universities can find a loophole around this. Three days of in-class lecture per semester, but allow for three unexcused absences for any reason.

Just another step on the way to the US becoming a pariah state. I&#x27;m really not looking forward to the next few years here. While electing a Democratic government might be able to reverse some of the policies, check out what the senate is doing to the judicial branch to see why that might not be enough, it won&#x27;t return the trust or reputation of the US.<p>The nativist, anti-intellectual, and outright fascist elements of the US have gone from a vocal minority to a genuine force in American politics thanks to the Senate. While they still are a minority of the population, probably 20% if you cast the absolute widest net possible, due to gerrymandering, 2 Senators per state, lifetime judicial appointments, the electoral college, and extreme voter suppression they are in charge of huge swaths of the government. It&#x27;s gonna be a wild ride.

In an ideal world, this is where the legislature steps in and passes a law that allows these students to stay for the 2020-21 school year, rather than assuming the executive branch just selectively continues non-enforcement of this requirement.<p>If you&#x27;re a US citizen, you can contact your representative&#x2F;senators offices and ask them to deal with this.

I&#x27;m expecting universities to begin to encourage international students to sign up for in-person lab classes to bypass this rule.<p>Are any HN&#x27;ers aware of policies emerging to this effect? I expect there to be some back-and-forth between educational institutions and the government on this one.

The whole thing is optimized for maximum cruelty, but the suggestion that students should transfer to another school that has in-person classes is just mockery.<p>In normal times transferring to another college is a process that takes 9-10 months. The admission rate for transfer applications is really low. And that&#x27;s just for domestic transfer students. It is not even theoretically possible to transfer to another school in a couple of months. Not to mention that the F-1 student visa and the I-20 form needed to obtain such a visa are for a specific school only, so international students would also have to go back to their home countries and obtain new visas.

On the plus side, maybe this will help with the talent brain affecting the countries from where those students come. If it matters I live in a country heavily affected by emigration.

I&#x27;m genuine curious what economic benefits this brings. With the very limited economics I&#x27;ve learned, most students are net spenders in the country, them being here will only pour more money in. Economically, how does stopping them coming in help anyone?

My academic friends are going absolutely <i>bananas</i> over this. Particularly at the graduate level, and particularly in technical fields, this will leave some departments unable to function. Even domestic students will suffer. And that&#x27;s all aside from the long term effect on national competitiveness. I&#x27;ve seen some mention mercantilism, but this isn&#x27;t even effective as that. True mercantilism would mean doing even more to keep other countries from benefiting from those students&#x27; knowledge and labor. This is not mercantilism; it&#x27;s a very different and almost suicidal kind of nativism.

What this policy completely misses is that some courses are real-time online, not recorded, and that people live in different timezones across the globe.<p>This is extremely personally harmful to people affected.

Instructors want to reduce their risk of exposure, which is understandable. But serving that interest also means a lot of international students will lose their visas. Would limiting seats in class to just international students be a good way to reconcile both parties&#x27; interests?<p>Edit: this would raise issues of fairness and equal treatment (a lot of students, especially those not accustomed to remote learning, would feel cheated). There probably is no perfect solution.

Seems like bs to me. If you&#x27;re on the other side of the planet you&#x27;re expected to be online at 3am for lectures and exams? Ridiculous.

The most impotant part of studying is often the interaction with peers (IMO). This is very hard to replicate digitally.

Harvard and MIT are suing. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thecrimson.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;2020&#x2F;7&#x2F;8&#x2F;harvard-mit-sue-immigration-authorities&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thecrimson.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;2020&#x2F;7&#x2F;8&#x2F;harvard-mit-sue-...</a>

Some of you may find this quite interesting. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ineteconomics.org&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;papers&#x2F;Weinstein-GUI_NSF_SG_Complete_INET.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ineteconomics.org&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;papers&#x2F;Weinstein-GUI_N...</a>

It&#x27;s truly remarkable how ignorant the US now acts towards foreign students and talents given that a lot of world class scientists, artists and innovators are 1st or 2nd generation immigrants.<p>I hope this will give Europa and Asia the chance to get some of their emigrated talents back.

The last thing we need right now is to force a bunch people into international air travel. They should not enforce the policy for classes that have been temporarily moved online due to covid.

International folks need to realize that life is too precious. You don&#x27;t want to spend time with bureaucracy and threat of deportation while getting education and pursuing productive careers.<p>America of the past is gone. It&#x27;s rapidly deteriorating. Save your lives and don&#x27;t enter into any educational or business arrangement with America.

This is extra horrible for European, Asian and African students, due to timezones.

and they will have to pay full price tuition, what a deal!

vote plz tnx

This is yet another attack against immigrant students as noted in sibling comments.<p>But it is also an attempt to force universities to open in the Fall despite the dangers of doing so. Many universities depend on the tuition from foreign students. The timing shows this (right after Harvard announced plans to go online), as well as Trump&#x27;s tweets that schools must open in Fall.

Nicely timed to deport HK students back there.

I think this is done on purpose but not as an immigration move. Its a play against universities, a political enemy of Trump.<p>At the same time this is happening, they are waiving the degree requirement for federal employment: a nice little monopoly rent universities had, as well as the immigration one. Americans might not appreciate this but not only colleges subsist on international students: they subsist on them requiring degrees for visas and to get preferential visa treatment. It&#x27;s a path to residency.<p>I would have much preferred that there was a semblance of Rule of Law, and it would be more like discounting college degrees entirely for immigration and remove special visa privileges for students, but this gov is stupidly against immigration.

$50,000 a year for a Harvard undergraduate course exclusive of accommodation and food. Sounds like there&#x27;s a lot of fat that could be trimmed. Sounds immoral in fact.

Well, duh.<p>If you could get a student visa just by enrolling in a US-based online class, that would be quite the loophole for immigration.

The missing perspective is that there are visa mills just as there are diploma mills, and that enforcement from both Immigration and Customs and Department of Education is piss-weak. They should have gotten on top of these institutions long ago, but they wouldn&#x27;t, so here we are.<p>There is Georgia Tech, but there is also the College of Northern Virginia. Here is some background: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cis.org&#x2F;Report&#x2F;Dregs-Higher-Education-Damage-Our-Immigration-System" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cis.org&#x2F;Report&#x2F;Dregs-Higher-Education-Damage-Our-Imm...</a>

Learn from the immigration in Canada is a good idea.<p>USA immigration system needs reform. No free welfare for anyone who is able to work. For those who supports excessive welfare, set a donation page for them to put their money where their mouth is, tax deduction is fine with me though considering they actually did something instead of just talking the talk or expecting others do what they talk.<p>Most importantly, better the education system here first, no more trophy generation, no more AA for college admission, and reward STEM kids instead of treating them as nerds in school. Until then, you have to depend on H1B&#x2F;F1 to stay ahead, which should only be a temporary fix.

Well it makes sense... If you done actually have to be in the country to take the courses, then your stay is optional. For students that cannot go back due to travel restrictions or that have other obligations in the country, it would make sense to let them stay.<p>Of course if they come from countries that do not possess the facilities necessary to access online content, that would put some students in quite a pickle. Maybe those could also be treated in a special manner, but I doubt that many would be affected.<p>Maybe the article wasn&#x27;t explicit enough, but I&#x27;m not quite seeing the problem with this decision. Maybe the manner of communication?