In The Middle Of A Pandemic, ICE Says Foreign Students Must Attend Physical Classes If They Don't Want To Be Kicked Out Of The Country
I guess the cruelty is the point.
Months after duping a bunch of foreign students into signing up for classes at a fake college run by ICE, ICE is now informing other foreign students here legitimately that their choices for the fall 2020 semester are:
1. Increase their risk of COVID exposure
2. GTFO
With COVID going through another spike after a brief downturn, there's no reason to believe schools will be back to business as usual when studies resume in the fall. That's going to be a problem if you're here (legally!) on a student visa. ICE -- the agency that gets to decide these things -- has issued its new guidance. And that guidance says studying from home is no longer an option, even if that's the only option colleges will be providing. (h/t Aaron Reich)
Nonimmigrant 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. 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.
This opens up students here lawfully to all sorts of negative consequences.
First, transferring isn't always an option. And even if it is, it's rarely an easy option. No college likes to lose a paying customer, so the process is far from straightforward.
If there are nothing but online classes available when universities reopen, students can attempt to wait it out and hope physical classes reopen before removal proceedings are initiated. Given ICE's thirst for punishing students here on visas, it seems the agency would make the easiest removals a priority, ignoring the more complicated cases that involve the "worst of the worst" and their pending criminal charges. Civil proceedings are easier than criminal proceedings, and ICE has made it clear -- through its fake college and other efforts -- which one it prefers.
Once students are removed or leave voluntarily, they're faced with more obstacles. Not every country provides easy access to broadband connections. And if there isn't a connection problem, there might be a software problem. American schools rely on American tech companies for remote learning. Any number of countries have blocked or limited access to American services (like Google's suite of educational/productivity products) for any number of reasons, including their ability to host content students' home countries don't like.
The best case scenario still involves students being forced to endure the hassle of finding a college offering classes they can physically attend in the middle of a pandemic and having that university accept their transfer request. Whatever funding or grants are in play might not transfer as smoothly, leaving students underfunded. And that's not even touching the expenses of physically moving elsewhere in the country to continue their studies.
Issuing this guidance in the middle of ongoing COVID-related lockdowns indicates ICE is willing to disrupt the lives of foreigners who have broken no laws just because it can. Yet another reason ICE deserves to go the way of your local police department: stripped of funding and repurposed to help, rather than harm.