A Scare for Foreign Students

The U.S. backed down from a controversial policy, but students are still feeling the chill

- By Janet Lorin, with Yifan Feng and Nick Wadhams

It wasn’t the Trump administration’s first attempt to deter foreign students, but it could have been the most disruptive. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency sought to bar visas for international students at colleges that offer only virtual instruction. Students on existing visas would have had to transfer to a school that offers at least some in-person teaching if they wanted to remain in the U.S., or return home. The rules came as colleges and universities weighed how to reopen in the fall amid the Covid-19 pandemic, and immediately provoked anger and a flurry of lawsuits. At a July 14 hearing in Boston, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs announced that the U.S. had agreed to rescind them.

ICE’s guidance, issued on July 6, threatened to upend the lives of students who feared deportation if their college were to pivot to online-only instruction, as schools first did in March to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. Incoming students who need a new visa already face another hurdle: waiting for interview appointments at U.S. embassies shuttered by Covid-19. (The State Department announced it was restarting some routine visa services on July 15, depending on location.)