WSJ: White House Weighs Scaling Back Rules on Foreign Students Studying Online

From https://www.wsj.com/articles/white-house-weighs-scaling-back-rules-on-foreign-students-studying-online-11594746772:

WASHINGTON—The White House is weighing a plan to scale back new rules the Trump administration unveiled last week that would bar international students from remaining in the U.S. while taking classes remotely this fall, according to people familiar with the matter.

The new U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement rules were met with forceful criticism from a range of groups, from universities and international students, to tech companies and states.

The administration has said there is no reason for foreign students to be in the U.S. if their instruction is completely online.

ICE hasn’t formally published the new rules and could change them before it does. Dozens of universities have sued the administration based on an interim guidance document it released, which set a deadline of Wednesday by which universities needed to report their teaching plans.

The White House and Department of Homeland Security declined to comment on internal policy discussions.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was among universities to sue the Trump administration for its move to bar visas for international students whose courses are entirely online. Photo: Maddie Meyer/Getty Images

Under the rules, international students enrolled at schools planning to teach online-only courses this coming semester would need to leave the U.S. or wouldn’t be permitted to come at all.

Schools planning to teach a mix of in-person and remote courses would be required to host their international students on campus, blocking many students stuck abroad because of coronavirus-related travel restrictions and visa delays from enrolling at all. The rules ensure that, should a school opt to switch to online-only instruction if the pandemic worsens, that decision would amount to forcing their international students to leave the country.

The guidance ICE released last week creates binding rules that universities and students must follow, and officials at consulates abroad have already been instructed to reject students whose schools are planning to teach fully remotely in the fall.

Following the intense blowback against the rules, officials at the White House and DHS are discussing paring them back, the people familiar with the matter said.

One option would apply the rules only to newly enrolling students, one of the people said. Such an approach would ensure that international students already living in the U.S. wouldn’t need to suddenly leave the country, and many new international students are already at risk of missing the fall semester because U.S. consulates across the globe aren’t processing student visas.

The administration hasn’t made a final decision on the policy, officials said.

Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which filed the first of at least nine lawsuits against the new rules, have argued they were arbitrary and capricious because ICE had allowed international students to remain in the country on their visas when classes moved to online instruction in the spring.

At the time, the agency said its policy would remain “in effect for the duration of the Emergency,” and the universities said they were relying on the earlier guidance as they planned for the coming school year.

A hearing in the suit filed last week by Harvard and MIT was set to take place Tuesday afternoon in a federal court in Boston. It isn’t clear whether the administration would be able to make adjustments to the policy if the judge blocks ICE from enforcing it.

In a brief filed in that lawsuit, ICE argued online-only instruction poses a risk because it allows international students to live anywhere in the U.S. for their studies—which the government views as a potential national-security risk—and that remote instruction could give them extra time to pursue things beyond their studies.

Typically, international students aren’t permitted to take more than one online course per semester, a rule meant to ensure students aren’t enrolling in dodgy academic programs and exploiting their visas to maintain legal immigration status in the U.S.

Last week, Ken Cuccinelli, a top official at the Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, defended the policy on CNN, saying he didn’t see any reason foreign students would need to be present in the U.S. if their courses would be fully virtual. He added that he hoped the new rules would “encourage schools to reopen”—a phrase that was cited by Harvard and MIT in their lawsuit.

The new ICE rules, combined with several other immigration-policy changes, could result in the number of new international students on American campuses falling by 63% this fall, the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonpartisan think tank studying immigration and trade policy, projected in a report published Monday.

There were nearly 1.1 million international students at U.S. colleges in the 2018-19 academic year, including those working after graduation while on student visas.

Such students provide tuition revenue for many schools, as overseas students often pay full tuition. A drop in enrollment could result in a significant financial hit for schools. Institutions and students also say being around those from diverse backgrounds enriches classroom discussions and the campus environment.